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See and seen weren’t opposites of each other; one couldn’t exist without the promise of another. Because to follow with his eyes would say that he was the hunter, that he was the distance if what he noticed was going to die. Yet he was the measure that instead, it would survive because it saw him, it’d seen him — he was the hunted to his prey.
To see and be seen was a cycle of no escape that his body, his soul, and perhaps his heart bore defenses — sharpened out of instinct, a knife he’d always wear. Sutured to his being, it was the difference between life and lived.
Because he was ready, prepared, synonymous with his hands was the hilt behind his shoulder and the other near his hip. Layered between his soul and the flesh surrounding it, like muscles or an instinct while they waited near the surface: the consequences of being followed were neither new nor unexpected.
Especially as he felt this.
Something violent near his skin, something dangerous that his hairs were rising higher down his arms. Something tested, patient, yet that patience was unraveled. Something hungry; it wouldn’t growl; that was a warning it couldn’t afford. But it would stare: it would watch him, it could trace him for what he was, and it’ll strike him without a thought, without a promise or as such, and taste the life he might’ve lived if he had hunted, if he could kill.
But there’s something different in how he’s looked at, in how he’s measured in spite of it, that Ichigo bears a smile no wider than a grin; there are crinkles at his eyes he might’ve worn when he fell asleep. In that they’re brighter and sweeter — now, he knows he’s being watched: the gaze turned to kindness, but it was dark with something dangerous that it hackled all his instincts, now he heard them near his ear.
His attention, being tested; but he could wait — he doesn’t mind it. He’s got the world, perhaps the moment, hanging softly from his lashes.
‘This is different,’ he tells himself.
‘So you trust him.’ It’s not a question, or an observation nor a pout, or something to have pointed at when there were others they could’ve said. It’s… well, it’s disappointment to say the least while at the same time, it isn’t — they’re trying to understand and bridge a gap that’s only widened between a hollow and their human.
His instincts — Shiro, the hollow, what was said to him — are a breath and a thing of teeth down the vertebrae of his neck. And they’re nipping while they saunter as any mother would want to do if one of her chicks was being rowdy or had gotten himself into trouble.
‘Because I do.’ It’s an answer, the most simple explanation, and it bears nothing and everything and something — all at once.
It’s the most earnest, honest…it’s the only thing that makes sense. He’s not afraid, he’s not worried, he isn’t scared of being seen as there’s nothing that could hurt him, he has no reason to fight back. And he tells it, prods it, to his instincts and to himself — and then to Shiro when he’s prompted and damned to explain himself.
So he does, and he did.
He tells the khyber to his soul — the jagged black weight that’s come to bear upon his bones, hungry for vindication and a hollow between their jaws; insistent that they should maim it because it eyed him like a meal, that they buckled between the seams of insurmountable control. And just a word, a phrase, and maybe a scathing remark away from ripping out of flesh to tear another into ribbons.
Until Ichigo — he’s woken up and has a vice grip on his soul — found an orange more interesting than being stared at from the floor, or pressed at through his thoughts when there’s a shudder through his bones: and bit by bit, he peeled the orange until it was almost kind of funny. It’s like he’s peeling all the reasons why he should but was not afraid; he’s careful to look down and not acknowledge he was seen.
He’s even better at making a mess, which alone is what makes it funny. Because there are long, winding strips of where his nail fought the rind that it’s staining both his hands; it doesn’t bother, but makes him smile.
Because there are slices like a flower starting to blossom as if it’s spring; he could smell that summer’s coming from all the juices around the seeds; autumn’s around the corner as he picks at all the strings and the tangy bitter whites around his fingers and where he sees; and there’s winter when he squeezes all the sweetness from these things because being an older brother means shit when it comes to this.
It’s not a requirement to peel an orange. Or to be good at it in any way. Or to peel it in such a fashion that if you looked at it, it wasn’t slaughtered — it wasn’t mangled like a thug who had tripped, never settled, and didn’t apologize for what they did that someone had to beat common decency into their head. Until they begged, apologized, and promised they’d do better; until they’d never see a flower vase without flinching while around it, knowing better than to kick it unless they wanted one for their grave.
This orange wasn’t pretty with how it slopped down his hands: but it was good, it was tasty, it was sweet with where he licked and while rough around the edges, it’s still an orange for him to eat.
‘Or I could feed you,’ he tells himself — or rather, tells it to his watcher — as he’s finished about a quarter and finally glances down at Grimmjow.
Or better yet, his voyeur if he could split that down the middle. Between French, Latin and who precisely the hollow was: voir is ‘to view’ as videre is ‘to see’ that voyeur is a person — or an arrancar in this case — who’s viewed, watched, studied another’s action as if it’s the first time, the last time and will never happen again. And what they feel from it is like an itch that not a language could profess.
But the body — the senses — knows exactly what was said. Ichigo heard it clearly like it was whispered to his skin. And could hear it still while he was eating it, while he was looking at only him, and there’s a smile he couldn’t keep; it told everything he had to say.
It told the hairs down his arms, dialed sharply to his left, like a thousand listeners tuning in for a broadcast. It told the twitching near his lips, trying to figure if he should laugh, while there’s a litany of voices trying to knock him with common sense. And it told one of his thighs had pushed when it was pushed back, bumped from where it’s at before it’s fishing for what had done it.
Because a pair of feet, round of toes, and a Grimmjow found his knee and that he had kneaded back and forth like this was normal, this was sane; this was something he ought to do while the other ate an orange. For good luck, better health, and all the riches of the world; but these were nothing — ‘these are pale,’ he had to be honest if Grimmjow wasn’t — when he was looked at, frowned at, disregarded as a pest, tsked at between a squint and perhaps what started as a yawn, and ignored at as if Ichigo was the reason he was fucking soft.
As if the crookedness of his back, lack of hunches where it mattered; how he tilted farther right and watched him eat from behind his shoulder, how he swaddled around the blankets overflowing the living room and was as one with the carpet, the kotatsu, the moment as he would with Pantera , Ichigo and his instincts; the whispers in his breath, the lie near his mouth, his toeing between a frown and something worthy of a smile — and when he turned, ducked away because he was challenged when he did it first, could you blame Ichigo if he told you he’d found it cute?
His not-enemy, maybe-rival, are-we-friends-or-what-are-we? was more and more like a housecat than a nightmare he’d woken up from. And Grimmjow stared at him when he thought Ichigo was distracted, when he found the other had fallen asleep as soon as he turned and heard him breathing, and when he felt nothing but the absence of a softened look — and softer eyes — meeting the back of him and not a window of Karakura in a foot of snow.
Because Ichigo was distracting, more interesting than the cold, about as exciting as the blankets and the heat wrapping Grimmjow, and he was scandalous — an anomaly — and he was something to be afraid of.
Because he allowed a hunter — a hollow — inside his home, and then his heart. And instead of watching or building space, instead of slicing him into ribbons or expecting something out of this because he was a stranger in another’s den, Ichigo invited him for an afternoon and some oranges, a kotatsu and tons of blankets, and had the nerve to look away because he was comfortable with where they were.
As if to tell him, “I’m not afraid of you. You’re always welcomed. I trust you.”
That him being here — Grimmjow, the hunter; the stare, the wanderer; the blunt, the liar; the housecat, and then a monster — is a confession he had to hide when he darted from his shoulder. Looked away, looked anywhere, and definitely not at Ichigo. Because if he held him in any way, and especially with how he’s stained with all the juices and the flesh of a bruised and battered orange, then what was Grimmjow if he said he liked that?
What was Ichigo for having done it, for slaughtering what was sunlight if it bore the shape of a summer fruit, for watching him — momentarily — in a language he understood where prey and hunter weren’t spoken, but rather equals when he licked?
What were they — not-enemies, maybe-rivals, they weren’t friends — if they were safe around each other and were susceptible to their softness? That they liked it when they were near, that they could share this and it wasn’t awkward. But maybe it was, but it wasn’t to Grimmjow as he harried all his questions to the window and the sun, ticked for no reason as he snuggled to the floor.
Adamant, sured, going stab something if he broke because Ichigo didn’t — couldn’t — feel and see him for what he was. Didn’t figure that he was centuries and an amalgamation of wild instincts that were honed, sharpened and never dulled for a moment. He was a switchblade without a cover, here to fuck and tear you up, yet Ichigo looked at him like he was a kitten or something soft.
Except — grits his teeth — he’s a hollow that should’ve been killed, but never was because his hunter was an idiot and a human. And frankly, Grimmjow should meet the Pope for how saintly he’s been acting, throwing daggers at the man to try to elicit something dangerous. Glaring into his soul and just waiting for him to snap, grab his badge, wear his knives, and then unsheathe the sushi one. And they could beat each other black-and-blue because that was saner than what they were doing.
That the thought of it has him gnawing on a slice of the sunset through the window, to give him something to have hunted if the shinigami wasn’t offering. And he chews it while he’s sulking, though he’ll never call it that, and he spits it out — but it’s stained him.
He’s a wash of haunting colors: bruised and purpled where his hair met the carpet, a smattering of deep reds and a pervasive glint of orange line about him like the bubbles you’ll often find across the ocean, his bone mask is an island off the coast of evergreen and the brown threaded blankets and his soft hierro-ed skin, and he’s got the sunset like a splatter down his mouth to his chest and from his stomach to below his waist — like a monster, now fed; like a hunter who got to kill.
But to Ichigo, that’s the softest he’s ever seen of him: this is Grimmjow at his sweetest, this is him while he’s bundled and without a place he’d rather be, and this is him while he snuggles and tries to figure something out. And he’s adorable — that could kill him if Grimmjow heard him say it out loud.
Because this is Grimmjow when he’s anything but a nightmare or a monster: fitful beneath the blankets because it’s safe enough for him to pout, grumbling without a worry and not a care he was listened to, and he was on his back — his stomach up — and was looking anywhere but at Ichigo. While his toes and his feet had then and wandered back to him and were kneading softly at his thigh, like to remind himself that this was real.
That Ichigo was right there.
Not a fissure through his person that this was something not-allowed, that the entire script he would’ve swallowed was just that — just a script; not something he had to follow, but it was hard against his instincts. And Ichigo could understand that, bit by bit while he watched him.
Because to see and be seen — not as predator or as prey — was scarier than a knife coming to haunt you if you weren’t awake. And there were no defenses, no hierro, zanpakutous were useless: it’s the one thing that all humans, hollows and souls were a victim of, were weak to, but were stronger having found it through the eyes of whom they trusted. And through it, they saw parts of them that they would never share if they were alone.
Because to be anything than what they were, than what was expected for who they were…he would never take this for granted as he peeled one of his slices. And instead of eating it, he pressed it near the corner of the other’s mouth. Like an invitation, an offer, something better for him to chew on — Grimmjow steals a glance that reminds Ichigo of a housecat, quietly sizing their human and trying to figure what he was up to.
But when Ichigo wore a smile and started to move — to eat the orange — calloused hands and a harder glare caught him from the blankets before they snaked him to the floor. Fingers behind his neck, they could snap him within a second; Grimmjow around his wrist and he’s taking what was offered; and Ichigo’s leaning farther until he’s inches from Grimmjow’s face. And his shadow’s an eclipse and the only color across the hollow, turning the haunted blotch of purples, reds and things of orange into a sweet, all-encompassing and the kind of hue that looked good on him.
Like he was seeing Grimmjow for the first time, and Grimmjow could look at him: there’s still a darkness and a tension that will never leave his gaze, but there is something so vibrant that Ichigo wants to say it.
It’s the kind of fondness you’ll normally find in a housecat who accepts you — who’ll let you lean over it with an offering between your fingers, who’ll knead and will settle and will watch you like you’re special, and who’ll hunt for your attention — not your inevitable demise.
Who wants to seek you without its eyes because it could smell you on its tongue, and you want to find it without your senses because you could feel for it through your heart.
He slips the orange and Grimmjow eats it, and then he licks him for another. Or maybe, the taste was so addicting that he would lick Ichigo’s fingers and nip them to the knuckle while he watched the shinigami try to break his other slices. And they were truly some of the ugliest, banged-up orange slices — but they were good as he had another and finished the rest of what was offered.
That his mouth and his tongue were thoroughly bathed in sweetness, and the real kind and not the sunset that was washed down the other.
Brightening the shinigami into a lovely splash of orange that he could peel and take his time to try savor before he ate it. But he didn’t — couldn’t; he could smile and hope for the best. And perhaps, there was something at his lips that Ichigo had to bite to remind himself that this was real.
That Grimmjow was right here. And it was a soft, gentle thing that was a promise for something more: if Grimmjow wouldn’t mind, if weakness wasn’t bad, if this was something that a hollow and a human could want and have.
That Grimmjow loosens to let him go, to let Ichigo find his grin, and how it twists into something savage that the heart had no defenses. It wasn’t cute, playful or rosied to his cheeks — but it was worth a try and it was a weapon for more kisses and tangs of orange.
It was the kind of hunting and predation he’d throw a glance to meet it back. And when he does, then he does — there’s a question somewhere in there, but he never hears it. Because he answered and bit an orange until it peeled between his teeth.