Work Text:
but the thrumming of your ceaseless,
your disturbing heart:
that untried ocean liner
on its maiden—
on its only—
voyage— Rebecca Elson, A Responsibility To Awe (2001)
Kurosaki sleeps violently. He dreams often, and often in the shape of nightmares. Grimmjow doesn’t need to sleep, but he finds it’s a modicum soothing.
Soothing. A human concept that Grimmjow has previously never known, moreover never cared to know. Maybe it’s not that to a T, but at least it’s some sort of approximation. This particular approximation involves the two of them crammed into Kurosaki’s slim bed. Grimmjow’s fitted like a simile against Kurosaki, touching from shoulder to shin, and they’re dozing in the-post sunset that’s etched the clear expanse of the sky outside Kurosaki’s window in streaks ten different shades of a pyre.
In this approximation, Grimmjow’s allowed for his mind wander. He’s sunk into that liminal space amidst everything and nothing. Sometimes he does fall asleep when inside that non-space—on those occasions when he’s submerged so deeply and fully that he finds himself relaxed to a point he’s theretofore never managed. There’s never been space for it. Hueco Mundo doesn’t forgive complacency. It devours, it’s unforgiving, if you give it so much as an inkling.
This is not Hueco Mundo, though. And on this occasion, within this approximation of rest and relaxation, Grimmjow is roused—with a jerking start, though he’ll vehemently deny this if pressed—when Kurosaki’s nightmares makes him go full-body rigid. He gnash eshis teeth and lashes out, sitting halfway upright in one spasm. The lanky lengths of his arms go every which way, and his reiatsu crests and then solidifies into a whip crackle of whiteout energy.
Fuck sake, Grimmjow thinks. Tonight’s one of those nights. “Kurosaki,” he grunts, voice rough like Hueco Mundo when it’s not still. When there’s a whip of storm brewing in the air, and a whorl of sand on the horizon.
He’s not gonna be an asshole about it (it doesn’t serve him, so why would he bother?) so he keeps his tone pitched low, aims to coax Kurosaki down with minimum violence from the peak of whatever terror’s seizing him tight, curling its claws into the agitated meat of his human psyche.
It’s never a sure fire thing: Grimmjow’s not soothing by nature; he’s not a continuous well of peace and tranquility, or what-the-fuck-ever. Except for here, and now, in this situation—the likes of which have started to crop up with more-or-less frequency in Grimmjow’s quasi-human day-to-day, entirely without his say so—he finds that he apparently is. Who would’ve fucking thought.
Grimmjow sits up and tucks himself snugly against the wall. With a measure of care he worms one arm to sliver between the erratic pivots of Kurosaki’s upper extremities. One sharp jack of his shoulder knocks them skin-to-skin, but Kurosaki is too far gone to notice. Grimmjow steels his forearm and holds steadfast, until Kurosaki shivers and relaxes a smidge. Then he fits one hand over Kurosaki’s jaw, twists his upper body, and cups his other palm over Kurosaki’s bare shoulder. He splays his hand, presses three fingers into the skin and strokes them quickly downwards, first harshly and then softening, the trajectory set across Kurosaki’s bicep and reaching down to the crook of his taut elbow.
Can’t restrain Kurosaki in the throes of a dream despite the vast physical advantage that Grimmjow—taller, broader, and currently conscious—enjoys. They’d learned that the hard way on one night, when Kurosaki had lashed out wild, unseeing, unreachable for his subconscious litany of horrors—and popped his elbow clean out the socket for struggling against Grimmjow’s increasingly terse, alarmed attempts at holding him still.
Kurosaki’s breath catches. A half whimper burrows and sticks in his throat. Grimmjow clicks his tongue. He tamps down on the ugly, fleshy tangle of indecipherable emotion stirring up shit in his gut, clears his throat of whatever deigns to stick there, and restrains himself from saying anything save Kurosaki’s name, repeating it like a low-churning mantra. He fits it between loose strokes, now with his whole palm, up and down his arm.
It takes a few minutes before it has any effect. When it does, Kurosaki seizes exactly once—like so many times before, and fuck help Grimmjow that he knows as much—like he’s been electrocuted, wrought taut like a bowstring with full-bodied shock. Then he sits all the way up and pries open his eyes.
He’s confused at first. Out of time and space, wrestling himself right. “Huh, what—” he claws out, hoarse and unsure—like he’s said now so many times before. More familiarly than Grimmjow necessarily cares for it to be. Sweat is slicking his half fringe across his forehead. When he twists his head violently, Grimmjow notes absently a single fat drop that wells from his hairline, tracks down his temple. “Grimmjow? I don’t—”
Kurosaki jolts, meeting Grimmjow’s eyes. He quickly averts his gaze, jerks his head sideways. He flares an ugly red, realization coming up on him quickly and mercilessly. He scores his jaw so hard his molars crick. He mutters, chin tilted mulishly downwards, “Fuck. Sorry.”
Grimmjow rolls his eyes. “Dumbass.” He tightens his fingers over Kurosaki’s arm, bearing down hard enough to bruise. “Quit it with that bullshit. Gettin sick of repeating myself.”
Kurosaki’s frown might as well be cut from stone, he’s internally-to-externally repenting so hard. Grimmjow rolls his eyes again, one time out of so fucking many, and moves his bruising grip from Kurosaki’s upper arm to his chin. He tilts his face up and toward himself. Kurosaki meets his gaze unwillingly, like he’s still embarrassed—looking like he expects Grimmjow to honestly give a fuck.
Grimmjow’s not sure why he is. Another dumbass human custom, he figures. Status report, day too-many-past-giving-two-fucks: they’ve all got demons—what’s new under the sun? Kurosaki, seasoned war veteran and barely past the age of human anything, never mind the undead asshole brigade he keeps close to his fragile chest, should probably be a whole lot more fucked up than he is. So what?
So what: the sum of Kurosaki’s trauma has yielded in the Shinigami stretched out beside, across, around Grimmjow in his skinny human bed more often than not. It’s nothing bad that hasn’t yielded something in return. Kurosaki slumped and leaning heavily into a jut of rock, bleeding freely onto the crumbling surface of the Urahara shōten underground after one or other of their violent, and violently satisfying, weekly spars. It’s yielded the physicality and presence of him Grimmjow’s in every sense and situation. So it begs repeating: so what, that Grimmjow has to bear this in return?
Without sounding too goddamned corny, or like he cares all that much, or whatever. Fuck sake.
Whatever. The point is: Grimmjow’ll gladly swallow, challenge, disregard the weight and breadth of any and/or all of Kurosaki’s torments, imagined or real. And he’ll deal with it, insofar as he needs to. Doesn’t make a difference to Grimmjow, really.
“Whatever,” he dismisses. He slides down until he lays flat again. “Sulk all you want, ain’t gonna make a difference.”
Kurosaki’s expression reconfigures immediately, from the stricken and sullen to flatly annoyed. Grimmjow isn’t above feeling satisfied when a trap yields prey, figuratively or no.
“I’m not sulking,” Kurosaki protests. “I just—”
“I said whatever, Shinigami. We’ve all got stories." Grimmjow yawns. Waves a flippant hand. “Now lie the hell down and go back to sleep, the world ain’t about to end.”
“Since when are you so into sleeping,” mutters Kurosaki. He obediently folds back down onto the mattress, though, so fuck him. Point to Grimmjow.
“Since I could order you to do it. Now do it.”
“Asshole.” Kurosaki’s tone is fond. He twists until they’re facing each other.
Grimmjow raises an eyebrow. “Uh-huh, right. What’re you gonna do about it.”
Kurosaki, frail and slow and human though he is, lunges sideways. In the span of a breath he’s seated halfway straddling Grimmjow, one leg tucked lazily across the span of his hips, one hand framing his cheek. Grimmjow snarls, though it’s half heartedly.
Kurosaki’s face splits into a positively shit-eating grin. “I can think of several things I can do about it.”
“The suspense is killing me,” Grimmjow snipes back, mostly because he can, and mostly because the more annoying he is, the tougher it is for Kurosaki to pretend like it doesn’t always—and won’t always—rile him up.
Kissing, in its own right and physicality, is fucking weird. If Grimmjow’d previously seen no point in sex, the desire to suck face with someone—stick your tongue in their mouth and swallow their saliva, merge with them in every sense of the word bar one—seems even more, from a survivalist standpoint, pointless. A uniquely human thing: sensible only in the equation of hoarding meaningless, self serving pleasure.
He won’t lie to himself and pretend like doing it with Kurosaki isn’t a continual highlight in his otherwise suspiciously highlight void life, though: Kurosaki tilts over and sinks into him, gossamer light, the press of his lips over Grimmjow’s the single hardest point of contact between them.
Grimmjow refits his palms over Kurosaki’s hips and pressures him more firmly over himself. Kurosaki grins wider; Grimmjow bites his bottom lip meanly in lieu of separating to actually reply. Kurosaki hums, undeterred, and licks into his mouth in a way that reads pure filth, and which makes Grimmjow’s toes damn well near curl and the air hiss out, like from a knife point puncture, from his already tight lungs.
Kurosaki’s breath comes in short bursts when they break apart. “Shitty Shinigami, shitty tricks,” Grimmjow says. If he thought himself capable of expressing such things, he’s pretty sure his tone could be read as fond.
Kurosaki’s lips quirk. “You like it,” he says.
“The tragic result of sustaining one too many head injuries, that’s for fuckin sure,” Grimmjow mutters. He tugs Kurosaki back down before he can run with that sentence. Or worse—before he can start waxing any sort of lyrical and making fucking morons out of the both of them in the process. Fucking gross, is what it is.