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“Alright alright! I get it I won’t be bothering any of your other patients,” Grimmjow waves a hand dismissively at the group of Squad 4 members that had gathered around him as he made his way through the winding hallways of the infirmary. He’d gotten turned around at some point and burst into some poor unsuspecting sap’s room, it’d been an honest mistake but he found himself being chastised for causing a disturbance.
A faint, “And don’t bother the captain too much either!” followed him as he pulled the correct door open and stepped inside. Hah! If his visits were a bother to anyone it was him, spending time day after day in another Squad’s barracks just so a socially inept woman didn’t rot with no visitors while she was stuck in bed.
Said woman hardly flinched when he stalked across the room, pulling a chair from nearby to her bedside and sitting himself in it with a huff. He hadn’t been expecting a greeting but scowled when she didn’t even turn to look in his direction.
“If I keep spending so much time here, people are gonna start whispering some nasty things about the two of us,” he drawls, trying to get some sort of reaction out of the stoic captain. A slight shake of her head is all he gets in response, though, and an uncomfortable silence fills the room.
Silent, except for the now noticeable murmuring coming from outside. Grimmjow paid little attention to it and simply tuned the buzzing voices out, he assumes Ulquiorra would do the same so is surprised when she seems to pick out what’s being said.
“They’re talking about you,” she says, “They’re saying that—”
“I don’t care what they’re saying,” he grumbles, squashing a spark of excitement that’d bloomed in his chest when she spoke. Sometimes his visits were spent in total silence.
She falls silent again. Grimmjow wonders, and is mad that he wonders, if he’d said something wrong.
“I… know all about the rumors told about me, you know.”
Grimmjow raises his head, quirking an eyebrow up even though Ulquiorra wasn't facing him. Instead, she gazed out the window at the shinigami milling about. It was a hot day, no one was eager to be doing any actual work. The tightly-wound lieutenant itched to yell at them to get moving but thought making such a ruckus would get him kicked out of the infirmary. He realizes after a moment of contemplation that Ulquiorra wasn't going to elaborate on her own, he frowns, “Which ones? Secretive guys like you tend to attract all sorts of them.”
She turns her head slightly, still not facing him much to his irritation. “The ones that question if I'm really human. I've heard them all, even though people try to hide it from me,” she rattles off all the speculation she's heard, putting a finger up for each theory, “That I'm a Mod Soul in a special gigai, some experiment by Szayelaporro. Or a machine, the human world has some intriguing technology nowadays. Or even that I’m actually a Hollow, that one is frankly ridiculous even for a rumor…”
“A Hollow? That one's new to me,” Grimmjow snorts, leaning back in his chair. He'd heard the whispers that followed Squad 4's stoic leader. Never participated though, despite the two having a well-known dislike for one another. Maybe it was because he'd known her since the Academy, but the idea that she was secretly some monster incapable of feeling anything left a sour taste in his mouth.
He smoothes out a wrinkle on his uniform, it fits him perfectly unlike the one he'd worn during his time as a student. The girl he'd traded with was taller than him at the time. You wouldn't have guessed it now though, not even as she sat straight as a pin up in bed, staring holes into the backs of her hands.
Ulquiorra spoke again, pulling Grimmjow from his memories with a jolt, “You don't suppose this incident will stifle any of those, do you?” She raises a hand to her chest, thick bandages peeking out from behind her shihakusho. “Everyone got to see my insides after all,” her puzzled frown after the words had come out was the only indication she was reconsidering her own phrasing. If it had been anyone else Grimmjow may have thought it was an intentional joke.
“Incident has to be the understatement of the century, you asshat,” he grumbles, fidgeting with the lieutenant badge around his left arm. How was it she was able to speak so casually about it? When she'd fallen from the sky, a gaping hole where her internal organs should have been, he thought he'd stopped breathing himself even though his lungs, unlike hers, sat perfectly healthy in his body. But she'd always been like this. Unfazed by the poor reputation of Squad 4 among the combat-centric guard squads, of the injuries and death cycling through their barracks, even while she talked about the seemingly constant mean-spirited rumors— no… that's not right, she wasn't always unaffected by the rumors that followed her. Grimmjow's mouth twists into a scowl, “If anything, you surviving that,” he makes a loose gesture towards the lump of bandages, “Will make them worse. You should be more mad about it.”
A slight upturn of her lips has his frown melting away. She's not quite smiling, but it's close enough. More than he'd seen in the last few decades. In fact, they'd exchanged more words just now than they had in those same few decades. Something in his chest aches and he wished it was just from having his own insides torn out.
“Is that so? I should have expected that, I suppose.”
A silence falls over the two of them and Grimmjow lets his gaze drift from her face. He tries to content himself with simply being in her presence without the stifling tension they'd been enduring earlier but it wasn't long before a restless energy had him bouncing his leg and tapping a finger on the edge of the bed. Maybe she noticed, maybe that's why when he finally glances back up at her he's met with a pair of startling green eyes staring directly at him.
He opens his mouth, struck by the inexplicable urge to apologize, but doesn't get the chance to say anything before she breaks the silence herself.
“Do you need to use the bathroom,” she says it with zero inflection, no indication that she was actually asking a question or that she cared about the answer. She scans his face for any spark of understanding and averts her eyes again once she realizes he was completely lost. “I was joking. Or… I was trying to make a joke, at least. You had the oddest expression on your face so I thought—”
If he didn't know any better, Grimmjow would have said she looked almost embarrassed. But he did know better. Ulquiorra Cifer did not get embarrassed. But then again, he’d thought Ulquiorra Cifer did not make jokes, and yet she did. His stunned silence lasts long enough that a look of irritation flashes across her face and disappears just as quickly.
“It wasn't that confusing.”
“You—” Grimmjow manages to sputter out, the corners of his mouth twitching into a giddy smile despite his best efforts.
Ulquiorra blinks slowly, her flustered anger about the missed joke fading as she sees his expression “I…?”
“Are GOD awful at telling jokes,” he finishes, bringing a hand up to cover the lower half of his face. “And I wasn't making a face, by the way.”
Her eyes widen, looking more offended at being told she sucked at telling jokes then she did being told she acted like a Hollow. She leans closer to him, tugging Grimmjow’s hand away from his face and pinching his cheek. “If—” Ulquiorra catches herself, quickly pulling her hands back and laying them across her lap. When she speaks again it's a bit harried, the frigid monotone long gone from her voice, “If I'm so bad at telling jokes, then why are you smiling?”
Grimmjow sits back, putting a hand over the quickly reddening mark she'd left right above the scar covering his right cheek. Her hands had been freezing, but it meant he felt a lingering cold like a ghost of the touch. He wished her actual touch had lingered a bit longer.
He laughs suddenly, not noticing the awestruck look on her face as he tilts his head back and tries to find his words again. “You're just so bad,” Grimmjow chuckles, meeting her eyes and being unable to stifle the excitement bursting in his chest when Ulquiorra smiles back, “So bad, it's actually funny again. If you tried to tell that to anyone else you’d probably set off a whole new wave of rumors that you’re a robot tryin’ to be human.”
Her face falls, “I… do not have much practice telling jokes,” Ulquiorra murmurs, lowering her eyes and turning away again.
He'd hit a sore spot. Grimmjow was so good at finding weak points in a battle, he wished he stopped accidentally poking them in conversation too. He realizes, a bit too late, that she may have been trying, clumsily, to be more human just then. Flustered, he blurts out a clumsy proposal. It was stupid, really. She would probably say no to such a frivolous suggestion. But if she didn't…
“So practice then, with me,” he can feel his cheeks burning and considers rescinding the offer right then and there, but he’d never been one to turn back once he was set on something, “Your jokes I mean, you come to me and test them out. Got it?”
Ulquiorra's head shoots back up, eyes wide. She examines his face for any sign he was messing with her, playing a cruel prank he might not even realize is so cruel. She finds none. She can't guess what he might be thinking, but with what was right in front of her as all she had to go on, “Okay.” her voice sounds weak even to her own ears, she swallows thickly and continues, “Okay. I'll come to you, I promise.”