Work Text:
Ever since the Las Noches High School closed down, Ichigo’s life has been… Interesting, to say the least.
The school had always had a reputation, but because it had been so far away, most of the students looking to hang out and make trouble would go into the city, and so Ichigo didn’t deal with them very often.
But once the school closed down, a lot of its students were rerouted to Karakura High.
Ichigo is pretty familiar with the concept of delinquents, at least. Most people think he’s one because of his temper and his penchant for getting into fights, even though he has one of the highest grades in his class and only misses school when he really has to (like for something involving his sisters), and he only fights people who do something to really deserve it, like intentionally picking on others.
Well, since the number of delinquents who seem to think the only way to prove themselves tough or manly or whatever the fuck is to prove they’re stronger and scarier than everyone else— including those who they should know full well are weaker than them.
They’re exactly the kind of people Ichigo hates most.
And the one he hates more than the rest combined is Nnoitra.
Tall, with a grin full of teeth like tombstones, wearing an eyepatch but always happy to show off the ‘badass’ scar he got in a fight that took out one of his eyes, Ichigo doesn’t know why he even bothers with school when he skips well over half the time and doesn’t seem to care that he’s failing pretty much everything.
When he does bother to show up, he only does so to be a distraction and cause trouble, picking fights with the other students and running around with other troublemaking students to shake down others for their pocket money and other typical delinquent bullshit.
Nnoitra isn’t the toughest student, or the most dangerous. He isn’t even the one that gets in Ichigo’s face the most. But he is the one with the most vile personality, the one who gets under his skin the most just by existing.
And all of that comes to a head one day when he and his friends are just walking down the hall, minding their own business, when Orihime— who is busy keeping up a conversation with Tatsuki and not looking where she’s going, which is pretty typical for her— bumps into someone.
If it were anyone else, even one of the other students that came from Las Noches, it probably wouldn’t be an issue.
But the person she walks right into is Nnoitra.
“Hey, watch where the fuck you’re going,” he snarls, and as soon as Ichigo hears his voice and realizes what’s just happened, he turns back to see Nnoitra with his hand on Orihime’s shoulder poised to give her a sharp shove, Orihime letting out a sharp cry.
Tatsuki is right there, and Ichigo doesn’t have to worry about anyone hurting Orihime while she’s around— but he’s had a personal issue with Nnoitra since the first day he walked into their classroom and when he’s the one who reacts fast enough to grab Nnoitra’s wrist and yank him off Orihime, he figures she won’t mind letting him handle this one on her behalf.
“Keep your hands off her,” he snarls, just as Tatsuki grabs Orihime and pulls her back away from Nnoitra, and other students in the hall are starting to back away from the fight that definitely seems like it’s about to break out— but not too far away, because they’re all curious to see what’s about to happen between the school’s newest troublemaker and the kid who’s known for beating up on guys like him.
“Who’s going to make me? You?” Nnoitra scoffs, but it quickly turns into a sneer as he leans down and gets right in Ichigo’s face.
Considering how tall Nnoitra is, that would probably intimidate most people, but for someone like him? All it does is make him angrier.
He knows starting a fistfight in the middle of the hallway is only going to end in tears, but he’s not about to let Nnoitra just walk away when he was very clearly about to assault someone who just happened to bump into him in the hallway— someone like Orihime no less, who would never hurt a fly and has never done a single thing to upset anyone.
He’s gotten away with too many things already since he started coming to Karakura, and Ichigo is fed up with it. He glares right back at him, fully convinced that this time, he’s going to—
“Hey!”
Nnoitra is the one who breaks eye contact first, but not because he’s afraid of Ichigo or wants to avoid the fight— in fact Ichigo is pretty sure that he wants to fight him just as much as vice versa— but rather, because of the voice that just called out to him, courtesy of the person who’s stalking down the hall with an annoyed frown on her face right now.
Nel isn’t a school monitor or anything, not the sort of person you would expect to step into the middle of a fight about to break out. Especially because she’s a former student of Las Noches herself.
But she shoves herself between him and Nnoitra, and Ichigo takes a step back.
Nel glares up at Nnoitra, with her hands planted firmly on her hips. Nnoitra glares right back at her, the two of them leaning in towards each other until their faces are almost uncomfortably close together—
And then Nnoitra lets out a huff and rolls his one good eye.
“Whatever,” he mutters. “Not worth my fucking time… Be glad your girlfriend stopped you from getting your ass kicked, Kurosaki.”
Nnoitra shoves his hands in his pockets, turns, and walks off.
Now that the tension has broken and the threat of a fight has passed, the other students standing around watching and waiting for the fight to begin start to wander off, whispering to each other and casting looks at both Ichigo and at Nnoitra retreating down the hall until he’s out of sight.
The only people left are himself, Tatsuki and Orihime, Keigo (who is mostly hiding behind Tatsuki), and…
Nel.
She has her hands still planted on her hips and her eyes still narrowed in the direction of Nnoitra’s retreating figure, even after he turns a corner and is gone and out of sight— but eventually she just sighs and shakes her head.
“Sorry about that.”
Ichigo just nods because he doesn’t know what to say to that, because he knows Nel isn’t apologizing for interfering in their fight (although considering she’s from Las Noches that’s not actually a big stretch to imagine), but apologizing for…
Nnoitra existing?
He doesn’t understand it, but he also doesn’t really know what to say about it, so he just… Nods and says,
“Thanks.”
Nel gives him a smile, nods, back, and says,
“No problem. That’s what I do.”
That’s what Nel has done for a long time.
Nel has known Nnoitra since before she can actually remember; the only reason she even knows how long it’s been is because of her uncles, who still have pictures of her as a toddler, covered in dirt with a gap-toothed smile— Nnoitra right next to her just as covered in dirt, the two of them still the same height at this age, and both of them holding frogs or whatever other thing they’ve managed to find while on their adventures.
There are lots of pictures of them together as kids. As the two of them get older in those pictures, there are fewer and fewer of them— but the pictures don’t stop completely until fairly recently, when the two of them started going to Las Noches and Nnoitra decided that in order to fit in or whatever it is he’s been trying to do, he had to become tougher than everyone else— and in the process become not only a huge bully (which would be bad enough) but a delinquent with a reputation for getting into the kind of trouble he eventually won’t be able to just laugh off and walk away from.
Things have been… Strange between them, recently. When they first came to Karakura along with a bunch of their other classmates, Nnoitra started slipping even further and further away from her, barely acknowledging she even existed. She had only been holding out hope that he would turn things around because of their long history together, and for a while that had been starting to disappear, too… But then her birthday had rolled around and he had gone out of his way to give her a present, a meaningful present, even if he had also gone out of his way to make sure no one else saw him do it or knew that somewhere inside he still cared.
And so here she is, caught in some weird limbo where she knows she shouldn’t keep saving Nnoitra from himself— she should just let him actually experience the consequences of his actions for once (and as much as she doesn’t want someone like Ichigo to get in trouble for picking a fight with him over his abysmal behaviour, as much as she disapproves of fighting for any reason other than defending yourself from harm, he needs someone to kick his ass and put him straight before he does something even he’s going to regret) but she can’t stop herself because she knows the boy she used to be friends with is still inside of him somewhere.
She has new friends now, though, so her and Nnoitra’s… Thing doesn’t sting quite as much as it used to. Sometimes it takes her a while to realize she hasn’t seen him for a while, even though she used to go to his house and literally drag him to school most days until they finally had a huge fight about it.
Her little… Encounter with him that morning doesn’t even manage to drag down her spirits. She’s doing well. She’s made new friends. Maybe she’ll be able to get Nnoitra to turn things around, maybe she won’t, but either way she’s going to be okay.
As she’s walking home that night, she stares at the bracelets she’s wearing. They match the ones that Nnoitra always wears, but no one except for her— and maybe her uncles— has noticed that.
Or so she thinks.
She turns the corner to walk down the alley that will cut her time walking home from the station in half, a walk she’s made plenty of times before without any issues.
Which is why she’s not really looking where she’s going when she bumps right into someone.
(You would think after stopping a fight about to break out over someone doing literally the same thing that morning would have her more aware of her surroundings, but she has… A lot of things on her mind at the moment.)
“Ah, sorry—”
She starts to apologize, but a hand falls on her shoulder.
“Hey, fellas, look at this— we’ve got ourselves a new friend.”
“And she’s a pretty one, too.”
The guy who has his hand on her shoulder is big. Not as big (at least not in terms of height) as Nnoitra, but plenty broad, and with a sinister look on his face. His friends behind him don’t look much more friendly, in spite of their words.
“And check out what she’s wearing, boss.”
Nel is good at protecting herself— it’s just the fact that she’s caught off guard that has her blinking instead of instinctively punching when one of the skinnier and more weaselly looking members of the group (there are four of them, as far as she can tell, at least as far as she can see) grabs her by the wrist and holds it up to show her bracelets.
But she recovers quickly, shrugging them off and taking a step back, tightly gripping the strap of her school bag. She knows from experience that it makes a good impromptu weapon, as she’s more than once had to swing it, filled with her heavy books, to make a… Lasting impact on anyone trying to pick on her or trying to pick a fight with someone weaker than them.
Taking on four— no, maybe five, and does she see someone else trying to poke their head up over their leader’s shoulder?— guys at once definitely doesn’t seem easy, but what else is she supposed to do?
She could turn and run back the way she came, but she has a feeling they’re not just going to let her go that easily. Besides, as much as she might not like fighting the same way everyone else from her old school seems to, she’s not the sort of person to shy away from a fight when it’s something she needs to do.
When she was a kid, there was a time when some bullies had been tormenting her, and Nnoitra had been the one to show up— throwing a rock at the lead bully’s head and sending them all running away crying. Then he had taken her by the hand and led her home, and when they’d told their guardians about what had happened, Nnoitra’s guardian Tesra had told him he had done well and her uncles had fussed over her and everything had continued like normal.
But as she got older and as she and Nnoitra drifted apart, as her day to day life became filled with more and more people like those bullies that Nnoitra had driven off and he wasn’t around to do anything about it anymore, she had realized it was important that she be able to take care of herself.
Nnoitra wasn’t always going to be around to protect her, after all. In fact—
“Let me go,” she says, sternly, staring their leader directly in the eye. “I have somewhere to be.”
“Aww, what, you don’t wanna hang out with us?” he asks, leaning to get closer to her face. She can smell alcohol on his breath that makes her scrunch her nose up. “I think we have a mutual friend and everything.”
He reaches out for her, and she puts her hand up to defend herself— but for right now, at least, he just taps her bracelets.
As soon as it hits her what he’s talking about, she both narrows her eyes and feels something inside of her deflate.
Of course these guys have a problem with Nnoitra. These are exactly the sort of people he gets himself into trouble with all the time— and even though he and his crew of similar troublemakers don’t seem to have much of a hard time taking care of them on their own, they seem to forget that people, especially people like these guys, hold grudges.
And can take it out on people who have nothing to do with their stupid little fights in the first place.
She could try to deny that she knows him, but honestly, she doesn’t think that’s going to do much good. These don’t seem like the kind of guys who listen to things like logic and reason or anything like that, so instead she just slides her bag off her shoulder, gripping the strap tightly as she says,
“Whatever problem you have with him, leave me out of it. I don’t want to get dragged into any more of his nonsense.”
And instead of waiting for an answer, she hits their leader.
She gives her bag a strong swing and catches him upside the jaw, probably with the edge of a textbook, and she’s already swinging it hard in a big arc to get the next guy who comes up on her.
Nel is good at fighting, even if she doesn’t want to be. That’s how she’s deterred Nnoitra from causing even more harm than he already has; she’s tough enough to stand up against him and his friends without them thinking she’s just someone shoving her nose where it doesn’t belong without being able to back up what she’s saying.
But she’s not some kind of ridiculous battle crazy person like Nnoitra, or even someone like Ichigo, who seems to have a natural talent for that sort of thing that he uses for— mostly— good.
And she’s in a very narrow alley, with multiple combatants who she’s just pissed off even more than when she started, and she’s starting to wonder if maybe she is actually more similar to Nnoitra than she’d like to admit— at least in terms of starting a fight she’s overconfident about winning.
Of course, that doesn’t mean she’s going to back down, but even though she bloodies a few noses and probably breaks a few bones, someone manages to tackle her around the waist and bring her to the ground— and once she’s down there she doesn’t have the advantage anymore, especially when she’s outnumbered.
Part of her honestly hopes that they just plan on beating her up. There are worse things they could be planning on doing, honestly— and from the sinister looks on their faces and the way they’re laughing when one of them manages to pin her down, she’s going to guess that isn’t what they have in mind.
And then the head of the guy pinning her down snaps back, because a rock— or probably a part of a brick— hits him square in the face.
Nel doesn’t have time to consider this, and she doesn’t want to waste what precious time she has, either; she kicks the guy in the stomach and yanks her arms out of his grip while he’s still stunned, scrabbling backwards and getting to her feet.
This is a part of the city where you can’t really expect that someone will come along in time to save you if something bad happens, or that even if someone does come along, that they’ll do anything about it— so she’s honestly ready to just consider herself lucky and take off, when she glances back and sees who just threw that brick.
Nnoitra isn’t just standing there waiting for her to thank him, though; he charges past her to deliver a kick to the guy’s face that, if he wasn’t already going to have trouble getting up in the morning, definitely makes it a sure thing.
He dives in, fists swinging, ready to take down the entire alley full of guys on his own— and even though Nel knows that, since it’s him picking fights that’s gotten her into this mess in the first place, she should leave him to fight his own battles.
But she’s not the little girl who needs someone to throw rocks at bullies for her anymore, especially not when two is much better than one in this instance.
And besides… Even if Nnoitra is the reason these guys decided to single her out, the fact that he immediately rushed in to save her has to count for something, right?
He doesn’t tell her to save herself when she jumps in to help him— but he doesn’t tell her to fuck off, either, so she considers that a win.
With the two of them working together, their fists and knees and feet flying, and the two of them able to read each other well enough that they’re not getting in each others’ way like the thugs are, it isn’t long before the two of them are standing over a pile of groaning and bleeding miscreants— some of the gang run off when they see that they’re now very definitely losing, and others are knocked completely out and won’t be getting up for a while, but either way as soon as the coast is clear the two of them step over the broken bodies of the people they just beat up and continue on their way through the alley to the other side.
The two of them don’t say anything as they make their way home, for a good few minutes. But eventually Nel looks over at Nnoitra, then down at her birthday present, then back at Nnoitra, and…
“...Thanks. For helping back there.”
“Don’t mention it.”
His reply is immediate, and definitely sounds like he just wants her to stop talking and not bring it up again.
But she takes a chance and reaches out to grab his hand.
She can’t remember the last time they held hands while walking home… But it was long enough ago that it meant something different back then.
Nnoitra doesn’t stop her. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t stop her— and when their bracelets clink together, and she moves to slot their fingers together and give his hand a squeeze, she swears she feels him squeeze back.
As they make their way home, Nel dips her head and stares down at her feet so Nnoitra won’t see her smiling.