Work Text:
月のうた
The Moon’s Song
窓に切りとられた夜空を
The sudden nightfall outside the window,
君も見上げているのだろうか
I wonder if you are looking up at it
Something about the overcast sky was unsettling to Grimmjow.
The porous clouds that hung heavily overhead dyed the dying day in shades of melancholic and monochrome metallics, wistful tones of cobalt and cinnamon cream fighting ferociously to paint the sky in shades of sandstones and scarlets as the sun fell ever so slowly past the horizon’s line. If he squinted enough, letting lashes brush against the baltic blush blooming across pale cheeks, he could almost see the halo of the setting sun hidden behind water-logged clouds that promised the first snow of the winter season.
It was unnerving to him, the incomprehensible idea of the constant changing of seasons, the wetness of the weather and the humid heat of the incandescent and all-encompassing sun. Every second he spent chasing footholds in the frigid skies reminded him that this hyperborean human world was not his own, his supernatural form sailing across bare treetops in a streak of soundless sonido only a mere tourist in this terrible town.
Taking a deep breath of the brittle air, Grimmjow sighed loudly. This meaningless and morose trek through a sky devoid of moon and midnight sky was all Kisuke’s fault. The arrancar wasn’t his errand boy in the human world, the hollows being a hecatomb of the shinigami stationed in this silly little city, breathing their air, watching upon the masses like martyrs of a contemptible cause. At least the arrancar was upfront about his reasons for his own sadistic slaughter- he needed to eat , feed on the flesh of the forsaken so that he could continue to survive in the world that had long forgotten him. The shinigami were only imprudent, ignorant puppets strung up on silk-spun strings, cutting down any scintilla of a soul that wasn’t part of their pure little pseudo-peaceful and perfect world. He didn’t even know why he took to Kisuke so well, considering the brain-dead bastard was once one of their best scientific soldiers, but he supposes that he could sympathize with his erroneous exile from the facsimile of a fictitious, fairy tale world.
Cobalt eyes searched the empty streets below him, goldenrod lamplight illuminating the streets like a festival of loquacious lightning bugs, the ochre and aureolin luminescence almost dazzling beneath the dreary skies of the darkened day. Under the warm whispers of butterscotch brightness the sign of the Kurosaki clinic shone like a beacon of subdued shades of prussian and pewter, while the hues emanating from the second floor windows were a dazzling dance of dandelion lights, a familiar head of fomenting merigold fire resting on the pane of his bedroom’s sole window as he stared almost straight through the clouds in the crowded sky and searched for the magnificence of millions of shimmering stars, snuffed supernovas sleeping in the sapphire sky.
Like a moth to that very flame, Grimmjow found himself pulled to the marmalade male, eyes of cinnamon and sienna widening as the cold wind carried the wild radiation of his reiatsu to his tantalizing target. It was not long before ice met the calculating calidity of fire, Ichigo staring into the endless sherbet sky with confusion and comfort in conflicted eyes. He didn’t need to close the distance in the breadth of a silent sonido, didn’t need to be close enough to taste the amber waves of reiatsu that radiated off the human like the aroma of a fresh feast to famished beasts, but he couldn’t help himself when it came to the other male. He had to invade that space, needed to let him, and anyone in this godforsaken town, know who was who’s prey- a fresh kill for the taking that only Grimmjow was afforded the honor of possessing. It was animal, an instinct that had not so much as faltered as the sleek fur and armor of an adjuchas morphed into the flesh of man; it was an instinct Grimmjow could not deny.
“What are you doing here? I told you last week that we weren’t fighting today, tomorrow’s Christmas,” Ichigo spoke first, heaving a sigh of exasperation as he averted his molten chocolate gaze, instead becoming fixated on the chipping paint of a window pane worn with the use of a languishing lifetime.
“As if I’d come to fight you in the middle of a town filled with humans,” Grimmjow scoffs, “Have some fuckin’ respect, I’m not a wild animal,” He can see the roll in Ichigo’s eyes, the pin prick of a smile pulling up the corners of strawberry lips, “Kisuke sent me to invite your old man and the twin brats to his holiday party. ‘Said something about you all needing to get out of the house,”
This time it’s Ichigo that scoffs, hands wringing together in thinly veiled discomfort- a reaction Grimmjow hadn’t expected. “I’ll let dad know, but I’m busy, so you can tell Kisuke I won’t be there,”
An azure eyebrow raises in intrigue. “What, too good to be seen hanging around hollows? If you’re that disgusted by me, you can save your breath- Nelliel will be there too,” He knows he’s prying, knows his subconscious is somehow spellbound by the happenings of a minute and morose mortal existence, but he can’t help himself. Somehow he expects himself to know all there is to know about the knightly nuisance- expects himself to be literate in all the life of Ichigo Kurosaki, though he loathes to confess that’s untrue. They are but strangers bound together by the suffocating silken strings of fate, two insects inescapably woven within the webs of the three worlds, doomed to come together again and again until the end of one of their meaningless lifetimes.
This time when the shinigami looks at him, his eyes are burning bright, fierce embers floating forth from a raging fire, “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” His serpents tongue is venomous, leveraging Grimmjow a glare that he’d only been graced with in the heat of battles waged during a fruitless war, “Besides, I don’t know how you missed the memo, but I’m a hollow too, whether or not you care to acknowledge it isn’t my problem, but don’t put your insecurities in my mouth,”
The arrancar is taken aback, his shinigami is a full-to-bursting firecracker of ferocity tonight, the perfect mood, perfect atmosphere, to pull out pantera and sheath it right between his ribs, right where it’ll hurt, but not enough to kill. He wants so badly to be the center of his prey’s attention, wants so badly to be interlocked in combat with the other, gnashing teeth, trading blows, wiping the sweat and sanguine from his brow as they both try to come out on top, but now is not that time. The crackling of captivating electricity in the air that vibrates between chalcedony and fire opal calls not for battle, not for brutality and brash biting comments, but instead for answers, whispers of why the other seems reluctant to relay any sort of information, any inkling as to why he refuses to spend, what humans deem an important holiday, with those he seems to contemptibly care for.
Before he can vex the other further, a forcefield of glass shuts in his face, cutting him off from the clandestine cinnamon air.
“Get lost Grimmjow, really, I’m not in the mood to argue with you and I’m certainly not in the mood to fight you. I’m useless to you right now, so just, go away,” He pauses for a second, molten chocolate irises turning to lifeless winter-bitten mahogany, “ Please ?”
He wants to fight the other, kick and scream like a tantruming toddler being ignored by an object of interest, like a toy left at the bottom of the bin to gather dust and decay, but his mouth remains sewn shut, oceanic eyes practically plastered to pewter curtains as they close, obscuring his only view into the surreptitious sphere of Ichigo’s whole reticent world.
星と星を線でつないで 指でなぞる
Tying stars together with a string, I caress them with my finger
｢形の見えない星空へ 連れてって｣
“Take me, to the shapeless night sky”
The night is spent on the roof of the ramshackle Urahara Shōten, stars glistening in mesmerizing metallics above him, mocking him, sneering down at him with sardonic and desolate slitted eyes. Venomous reptiles they were, singing stories of his stupidity as Ichigo Kurosaki slept like a baby. While the porous clouds had long dissipated from the midnight sky like a pitiful practical joke promising precipitation, the sky still unsettled the arrancar, the putrid planetoids glistening and creating a kaleidoscopic mirage of opalescent figures haloed by the moon's illustrious glow. Perhaps this is why Hueco Mundo was free of stars in the endless night sky, the inky onyx of departed daylight and slaughtered sunrise of Los Noches was as ironic as it was idiotic, a prophecy of the espada’s extinction.
He’d remembered sitting soundless atop the dome of Aizen’s perfect palace before, staring at the inverted moon and wondering what life would have been like had he continued his feline trek of the ashen sand of ground bone and body, baring his fangs in a fruitless fight for life as time passed endlessly, that is to say if Hueco Mundo allowed it to pass at all. When padded paws had grown to fleshy feet and human hands, the fur of his body retreating and becoming hair, his armour cementing its remainder atop his cheekbone like a macabre memento mori, he’d sat for what had felt like days, weeks even, trying to remember that which came before the flesh, before the fur and even before the revival of mutant menos.
Scoffing loudly into the frigid night, he watches the vapours of vexation disappear in the late moon’s light. A hollow too , Grimmjow thinks to himself, not even close . Kurosaki didn’t know the desperation, the emptiness, the malicious mourning of a life you couldn’t dream of remembering- he was no victim. The epic tale of his human turned hero life was nothing short of a silver spoon slipped between strawberry lips to savour, the whole of the soul society practically bowing at his feet. He was no hollow, no matter what that beast inside of him had to say for it. So then, with a life as perfect as his, why couldn’t Grimmjow forget the sorrow lurking behind soporific sepia eyes, the melancholy miasma that had seemed to envelop him entirely?
By the time the horizon began to glow with hues of bubblegum and blueberry brightness, a portrait of pulchritudinous pastels, Grimmjow had made up his mind. Today, on Christmas Day, he would follow Kurosaki around, hiding his raging reiatsu and biting back the belligerent bile on his tongue; he would get to the bottom of what harried the heroic human, come hell or high water.
ここから叫ぶ叫ぶ｢僕の声｣が
“My voice” that screams from here,
あなたの夜を照らす月になるように
I hope that it will be the moon to shine on your night
Orihime Inoue, hair like the shimmering Summery sun, saccharine sweet honeydew eyes filled whole with compassion and grace- it is one of earth's many wonders that the motherly maiden was of earth herself and not haloed and ethereal like the angels of foreign scripture. She vexxed Grimmjow vivaciously, anything so close to prim and perfect making him bite his lip in both abhorrence and envy, yet his senses still human enough to be unable to resist her charitable charm. Loathsome as the girl was, he watched her closely, tracing the snowy sanguine ensemble she stood stationary in, waiting quietly for a Kurosaki to open the door as she froze in the frigid cold. Ringlets of ruby and scintillating citrine billowed backwards in the blistering breeze, the heavy scent of herbal perfume and peppermint being carried by the wind to the tree in which Grimmjow sat, the feminine fragrance dancing around him like specks of glitter adhering to his skin- if she hadn’t been spiritually aware, he would’ve gagged like a ferocious feline with an affronting appetite for a fur ball.
It was the elder Kurosaki that answered the door, hair damp and dripping as he stood shivering in a gaudy robe, explaining in hushed tones that Ichigo wasn’t doing well and that this time of year always put him in a funk . Confusion couldn’t cover the cascade of emotion Grimmjow felt avalanche over awestricken and sagging shoulders. What was it they knew that he didn’t? Kurosaki Ichigo, the savior of the three worlds, not doing well ? The man who had slain Aizen mere weeks before this miniscule mortal merriment, this Christmas festival, had a notable history of not doing well during this season? If his memory served correctly- and he knew it did, because dead as his dutifully decaying vessel might be he was no senior citizen- Kurosaki had battled half of Los Noches by the time Karakura Christmas bells had rung that year, so how could a ravishing record of victory, the undeniable coronation as king of the winter war demolish and depress him?
The healer’s perfectly manicured nails jingled jovially, the bells adhered to the acrylics bouncing against colored paper as she dropped boxes wrapped in neons and pastels into Isshin’s damp hands, the older male eyeing their gaudy appearance wearily, but as a father-figure all the same as they huddled in hushed tones, tresses of tangled tangerine brushing gently against damp onyx as they shared scintillating secrets. Mentions of Ichigo’s name were implicitly whispered, wrapped in care and topped with a christmas bow; talk of his whereabouts gently reaching the twitching of reactive arrancar ears in the form of a secretive sigh. The Cemetery .
まぶだに隠す 涙の跡
Traces of the tears which hide in your eyelids,
泣き顔より悲しく見える 笑顔が
Your smile that is sadder than your tearful face
一人の夜に耳を澄ませばぶつかり合う
On a lonely night, if we listen closely we can hear it
｢夜空に落ちた、涙の音が、聞こえる｣
“I hear the sound of teardrops, falling upon the night sky”
If anything, Grimmjow finds himself ugly with envisaged envy, the huddled heap of honeysuckle hair crouched before a crystalline clean gravestone proving the Inoue girl right in her idiotic insinuations of Ichigo’s apparent agony. The arrancar has spent entire eternities enveloped in his goal to gut the other, paint the whole of Karakura crimson as a statement of his status; he , Grimmjow , was the King of worlds, the single being who bested the saviour of the soul society, the killer of quincy, the anguish of the arrancar, it is him who should have their grotesque forms groveling for a ministry of mercy at his feet. Kurosaki has been his incessantly unobtainable prey, his opulent obsession through wars and worlds, his only malignant musing for months on end, so why was it that a girl, a mere mortal, imprisoned and infantile for most of the raging wars, knew more about Ichigo than he did? Something about it made him itch, a bubbling and burning belligerent and powerful pounding and prodding that made him want to vomit.
Yet, as it was always so, he bit his tongue, instead continuing to cloak his rambunctious reiatsu and regard the other from a distance, silently studying him.
“Yuzu is really growing up fast. She’s been doing all the housework and shopping for years, and I know I should’ve noticed it sooner, but she’s taller than Mizuiro now,” He can hear Kurosaki’s soft and somber voice whispering into the winter air. There’s no one around to hear him- not a human, hollow, or even a wandering careless konpaku, so Grimmjow sits, staring at the cinnamon creme fur that lined the hood of a pseudo prussian blue peacoat, listening to his meaningless musings, “Karin’s been training with Tatsuki at her dojo recently. She’s better at karate than I ever was,” A small chuckle, “She’s even been working around Kisuke’s place with him, Yoruichi, and Ururu. I think he’s training her, just like he did for me, but let’s just keep that our little secret. I’m sure if dad found out he’d have a heart attack,” He pauses for a second to look down at peachy pink hands, empty except for an amulet of a shiny steel quincy cross, “Dad told me everything- about you and Ryuuken, about my hollow and dad’s powers, and even about your powers and what they meant to everyone else. I had Uryuu make me this for you. I know whatever latent powers I have are probably useless by now, especially with Zangetsu and my hollow powers being so hard to control, but I wanted to let you know I acknowledge this part of me and our heritage,”
As he haloed the perfect pendant over the pristine stone, Grimmjow is finally able to read the kanji etched carefully into old stone. 黒崎 真咲. Kurosaki Masaki.
He doesn’t know what comes over him, doesn’t understand what makes him jump from the cold and crackling branches of the nude treetops to stand at Ichigo’s back, but he can’t stop his boots as they bounce on the cold cement of the cemetery floor.
“Who’s she?” He asks, all shades of suave and solicitous sophistication, shaking off the better part of an hour he’s been secretly surveying him in the winter wind.
Ichigo’s spine straightens, statuesque and startled as he turns to regard Grimmjow. His face is awestriken at first, eyebrows knit in careful confusion as he considers what to say, how to react to the presence of the other in such a sacred place, but as circumstance and sentiment blend with the picture of electric azure and tantalizing teal, the face of a stubborn shinigami returns, sarcasm a superimposed facsimile of the sadness hidden behind sardonic sepia.
“Grimmjow,” He sounds out every syllable, however lacking in venom it would be foolish of him to assume its benevolence, “I told you already-”
“Yeah yeah, Merry fuckin’ Christmas and all that, you’re depressed, not fighting, and you’re blowing off Kisuke’s deadly sake and shabu shabu to sit and talk to a stone in a cemetery- I’ve got it, alright?” The furrowing of brows made of orange marmalade excites him and leaves a satisfied smile on softening sadistic features, “So tell me, who is she?”
There’s hesitance there, a horizon of sun sitting silently, warming rays ailing and blown asunder by the absurdity of such a conversation with an adversary. The warmth of cocoa traces every line of etched and pristine pewter, surreptitious sunlight haloing a hazardous and hurting head. “She’s- was - my mother. She was killed by a hollow a month before my tenth birthday,” Guilt settles in the lines of a battle-hardened face, “I couldn’t protect her, even though it was my fault,”
Grimmjow scoffs at Ichigo’s admittance, “Your fault? Give me a break. How many times over did your sorry ass die trying to kick my ass and rescue your little healer girlfriend ?”
“It was a mirage,” Solemn guilt solidifies into indignation as icy as the winter wind, “I was lured by a hollow right into its trap. My mother died protecting me from my own idiocy-”
“ Bullshit ,” It’s spoken as a finality, absolute truth leaving no doubt to his own belligerent beliefs, “You were nine years old . You were a little brat who saw a ghost, wanted to help it, and was saved by a mother who loved you enough to give her life for you. You really think she did that so you’d sit here, ditching your family, to mope on Christmas every year?”
He could argue with the ailing idiot all night if he had to, erasing and re-establishing conflicting and cruel insinuations drilled into the guilty conscience of a growing boy, but it is a tear, a single salinated drop leaving damp trails down frost-bitten and rose dusted cheeks that breaks something that has been quietly building inside of him for what seems like lifetimes.
It starts in his chest, a clamouring that steals the breath from his lungs and causes hardened hierro skin to feel suffocating. Like a fist gauging out phantom flesh, his hollow’s hole squeezes his abdomen, throbbing tight like an open and oozing wound as solemn skin remains unsullied to the touch. It’s terrifying; horrendous humanity seeping through cracks in a carefully hidden hierro heart, arrancar abandoned humanity filling him with aimless ardor as one tear becomes two and then three, the dams opening with the rush of raging rivers. Grimmjow knows he is defeated as he wearily pulls this weeping willow into his arms, sagging sepia branches begging, pitifully pleading, for the warmth of the wicked.
そこから叫ぶ叫ぶ｢君の声｣が
“Your voice” that screams from there
ひとりの僕を照らす月になるから
It shall become the moon that shines upon my lonesome
あなたが 泣いた 泣いた 涙の音が
The sounds of the tears you shed
ひとりの僕がうたう意味になるから
They shall become the meaning behind my lonely song
The time they spend embraced in the garden of stones is incalculable, the silence of the dead deafening as snow begins to fall slowly, gently, around them. Words are lost to both as billowing breaths are shared, condensation climbing towards the heavens as Grimmjow hesitantly holds a hurting human. He’d debated at first with what credence Ichigo could call himself a member of his own race, the dominion of the damned, a hollow shell left to unfailingly feast on the famished, but the emptiness, the endless torment of holding the gallons of a guiltless death upon already shaking shoulders, now that, that, was a pain he knew.
He’d felt it before, vehemently swallowing down vomit as he watched his trailing team of adjuchas fall one by one, and then again when watching as those same four, now his fracciones , fell to the pseudo sovereigns of the soul society. He’d even felt it as he’d ground his teeth in agony listening to the anguished screams of both baby arrancar and substitute soul reaper as Ichigo had shielded him long enough to escape Nnoitra’s wrath. All he’d wanted was to be a king, to be the one at the top of the food chain for once in a world where cruelty was currency and kindness was a conviction, a death sentence. As he gazed down at the red-rimmed eyes of the honeydew head resting gently against him however, he saw not a hero, not a king or an impalpable saviour, but a mere mortal bending under the weight of man. Heavy was the crown indeed.
Sparing no time in making what could possibly be one of the most momentous mistakes of his many lives, Grimmjow hooked patient palms under Ichigo’s arms, hoisting him upwards with no effort at all, “Hold on tight,” He murmured into tangerine tresses dusted softly with snowflakes, stepping into a silent sonido as Ichigo scrambled for the lapels of a milky jacket.
“ Grimmjow -” His anxious intake of breath was humorous to the arrancar, perspiring palms knitting together perfectly behind a bare neck, “You know I’m human right now right? If you drop me I’ll seriously turn into a fleshy pancake or something- you gotta let me down ,” Rambunctious as a rowdy kitten into a human’s hold for the very first time, he struggled sternly against Grimmjow’s unrelenting grip on his meager mortal body.
“ Can it Kurosaki ,” He sighed, the tantalizing taste of amusement sitting strong on his tongue, “I’m not gonna drop you, look-” Strawberry lips part in amazement as Ichigo looks up at the unobstructed sky, the cool condensation of crying clouds wisping wondrously against twin boots, “Whenever I feel fucked up I look at the sky. Shit makes me equally uncomfortable in the human world, but I guess I find comfort in the moon being there. I’ve stared at it for so long in Hueco Mundo that I find myself looking for it wherever I go now. Thought it might make you feel a bit better,” There’s a pause while burnt sienna searches for icy azure, their eyes meeting in inexplicable understanding, “Listen, I don’t know what your mom was like, but if she was anything like you, I know she’s watching you from somewhere. Sometimes I think that when we all run out of resurrections and we become used up wastes of reishi, we become part of the moon. Makes me feel a little better about losing comrades I guess, even if it’s a little stupid,”
He’s not ready for the taste of cinnamon cocoa and winter wind, the warmth of strawberry lips parting against his as he asks for permission to taste him back, but he opens his mouth willingly nonetheless. It’s as if he’s swallowed the sun; chest beaming with incomprehensible warmth, he’s become enlightened . As if he’d been sheltered by the tinted sheen of shaded goggles and the confines of the ivory sleeves of a straightjacket, he is reborn, baptized into the otherworldly light of the moon as blunted nails rake through tangled teal tresses as if they hold buried treasure. He is feeling for the first time in what feels like ceaseless centuries.
When had he realized he’d wanted this? Had the winter wind somehow awoken him to luxurious latent desires, was this a fancy he’d only withheld until the press of perfect lips piercing his icy core, or had he mistaken predator and prey for a more animalistic and amorous feeling, one that caused him to tighten his grip on hidden hip bones as he chased the sugar sweet taste of Christmas treats?
“You’re right Grimmjow,” The warm words are spoken against ruby red lips, “Thank you, really,”
He can feel the calming calidity of cardamom heating his face in indignant embarrassment, but he can’t find it in himself to care. The whole of Karakura lay sleeping beneath them, shielded away by clouds that blanket the bare city in fresh snow- they were hidden away above what felt like all of humanity, their own little hideaway under the gleaming glow of the frigid moon. “You don’t need to thank me,” He whispers against lips equally as crimson, kissed bright with care, “Just, don’t ever stop letting me hold you like this, okay, Ichigo ?”
If the other was rosy with the cosmic chill of cooling clouds before, he was a perfect poinsettia now, glowing and glimmering with happiness he had never seen on sun-kissed features. His answer of course, was to lock their lips together once more, the footholds Grimmjow had cemented himself to holding them high above the celebrating city as they finally figured out what it meant to love and be loved totally by another, sultry and soothing kisses sealed with a soft and sonorous:
“ Merry Christmas. ”
ここから叫ぶ叫ぶ｢僕らの声｣が
“My voice” that screams from here
僕らの夜を照らす月になるから
It shall become the moon to shine on our night
夜空に 落ちた 落ちた 涙の音が
The tears that fell upon the night sky
僕らの夜を照らす月になるから
They shall become the moon to brighten our night