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"You ain't supposed to be here, princess."
The girl's lower lip quivered; her brows scrunched down. A child's attempt to appear fierce. Grimmjow snorted, leaning his hip on the fancy chest of drawers he'd been saddled with for this farce. Embroidered shit from Hueco Mundo and local kimono were bundled side by side in its velvety depths, gifts he hoped to never have to use again.
"I know. I thought--"
"You thought you'd see me without a chaperone and make double sure we got hitched?"
The twisted tangle of her hands came apart into fists. "No!"
Hooo. Grimmjow tilted his head, regarding her. She had a baby face; he'd have thought her sixteen instead of twenty had he not asked his men to double-check Aizen's reports. Her hands clenched in her high-waisted, pleated skirt and he couldn't help but notice that it had been rigged so the hem was higher, easier to move in; underneath were dress uniform pants and laced-up ankle boots. Probably how she'd managed to climb his balcony -- but for a princess she sure wore some foreign-style underthings.
"No?"
"No," she repeated, anguished, and then breathed in and out to steady herself, eyes closed. "That isn't why. I just -- there hasn't been a moment to talk to you directly, and I think -- you probably don't know. About me."
"Ah. Last-ditch attempt to have me break it off."
"I'm not actually a princess, you know."
She lifted her chin like she expected shock, anger. Grimmjow laughed. "Oh yeah?"
"I'm not!"
"You got the mark of the Soul King. Right? One of his fancy powers."
"Yes, but -- Grimmjow-san, that's not. I'm a commoner, I-- I was legitimized last year. We don't even know what branch I come from for sure." She met his eyes, sad but resolute. "My mother was a prostitute. This marriage alliance -- it's an insult."
... Haa. He reclined against the wall, arms crossed loosely, watching her. Trying to be brave, to be honest and good. She was gonna be devoured alive.
"I'm only a duke as a way to keep my rebellion in check."
"--Ah?"
He snorted. "Don't even got a single drop of blood in common with Aizen or even Barragan, but I had enough support that he needed a way to break my power base in two and put a leash on me. So now the anti-royalty have ditched me and the rest have been fuckin' appeased by thinking I have a chance at the throne whenever he kicks it, but he won't. Guy's fully intending to become immortal somehow."
His voice had gone bitter by the end. He swallowed it; pointless to show too much emotion to someone so ill-suited to court. She would never keep the secret tight enough.
He was gonna have to carry her back home to the royal palace and be saddled with keeping her in one piece, though. Another weight chained to his ankle, disguised as an attempt to make him more palatable, give him a sprinkle of gentle-tameable-husband appeal to the cowards of the capital.
"So he knows..." she whispered, a slow horror rising as she started to understand the implications. "He won't break it off."
"Nah. Gonna wait until we're married and then make a fuss about suddenly discovering it to gain an advantage against your country, probably." Or take Grimmjow down a peg by starting rumors at court. Or both. Aizen was nothing if not efficient.
His fiancée (how fucking alien a word, related to him) pressed both hands against her face and muttered to herself for a bit. Grimmjow left her at it. He probably had letters to read--
"I'll run away," she blurted out.
Grimmjow gave her a nonplussed look. "What the fuck. Who do you think is gonna hunt you down then?"
"You won't find me."
He pushed away from his perch, took a few slow, gliding steps toward the girl. She didn't step back, chin up, feet set, as though a glowing ball of bunion-healing power was gonna keep her safe from him.
... She really thought he wouldn't find her, too.
Grimmjow had never lost a quarry and the whole continent knew it. She didn't seem that stupid.
"I thought you wanted to stay home, but that's not even it, huh," he mused, voice low, looming to see how much pressure she could take. "What's your reason? Can't be your previous fiancé."
Shocked indrawn breath. "You knew about him?"
"Sure. Had to know if you were gonna pop out a really premature baby, didn't I."
The girl flushed, said nothing. He didn't even get the impression that this was why she was so desperate to stay home -- that she had celebrated her previous engagement too early.
"But you can't marry him and live in his back garden, now can you," he kept going, testing, searching. "The fuck are you thinking? Think some bland civilian schmuck would give you a nice little life hidden away in the attic?"
The way her eyelids twitched on certain words needed to be trained out of her at some point.
Her guy, she believed wholeheartedly, could and would hide her -- had the ability, or had the connections; had the determination. Her guy would take the risk of putting the Four Noble Houses on his ass...
Because they were already riding it anyway.
Grimmjow barked out a laugh. She stared at his widening grin, and her hair pins pulsed with glowing gold, like now she was properly wary of him -- of a man from an enemy country who outweighed and out-reached her and of whom everybody would say he had a right to do to her whatever the fuck he wanted.
A pretty girl with a whore mother couldn't possibly ignore what that kind of man might do to her, and yet she was only afraid now.
"You guys are in the rebellion."
He was only barely surprised when the window swung open and a man in battered samurai armor plunged sword-first at him.
He was slightly more surprised when the jilted beau -- some nobody from the cadet branch of a fallen noble house, from the reports -- managed a slash and a swipe at a surprise angle that clanged hard against Grimmjow's not-so-decorative vambrace.
Nice.
Grimmjow drew his blade, and while the man was distracted eyeing it, kicked him solidly in the guts, folding him in two. No armor but two pauldrons to get in his way; the room was large enough to maneuver. He rolled low, swiped his feet out from under him as the guy wobbled back up, lunged --
Got kicked off in a way that sent him crashing through a folding screen. The wood splintered noisy like a gunshot. He rolled to the side, behind the low table, kicked it upright to break the guy's charge and then shouldered it straight onto him. Ahh, noisy, so noisy, Aizen was going to be so pissed off. Grimmjow couldn't stop grinning.
Their swords rang against each other, sliding until they locked at the guard. Grimmjow leaned in to smile. The guy had the same kind of forthright, justice-blind eyes as the girl. Well-matched pair of idiots. He hated it.
He shoved forwards with his superior weight, feinted left, right, punched. Was a little appreciative when his fist was almost blocked, parried enough to lessen the impact.
But the guy's sword was longer than his, so now that Grimmjow was under his guard he was fucked. He aimed the point of his sword--
Golden god-light, impassable. Jarring his arm to the shoulder. He tried to go around the side and it only grew to cut him off again, and then suddenly it was blooming out like a sail catching wind and shoving him back.
His fiancée stepped forward, hands joined at the fingertips before her chest. "Don't fight!"
Ah. Not just a small healing ability, then. The powers inherited straight from the Soul King seemed to be very random when all put next to each other, but also... their recipients usually didn't get more than one. Interesting. Did Aizen know? Was he trying to sneak her out from under the Seireitei's nose? Or had she managed to hide it even from him? Grimmjow pressed a hand to the barrier and while it didn't hurt him, it also didn't yield at all.
"No fighting! Sh-- Kurosaki-kun, we know things about him too. He won't -- he won't sell us out. Right?"
He watched her give soft entreating looks to her old boyfriend, the boyfriend slowly shift to stand before her. "I guess" was the first thing Grimmjow heard in his voice, quiet and roughened by doubt and effort.
"Don't know why you're pretending not to be a Shiba when you could be the clan head's ginger body double."
"Well see, usually when I'm committing treason I wear a mask," Kurosaki-Shiba replied dryly, and discreetly eyed the room for an escape route.
Grimmjow had turned them around during the fight, though; he stepped right in the middle of the wide open window, opening his arms, and crooked his fingers invitingly.
"I... don't suppose you're planning to let us pass through."
"You can come right into my arms, sweetheart." He turned his wrist so the edge of his sword would catch the lamplight.
The next look was toward the door, but the noise they'd made had not been subtle. The corridor was filling up with hotel employees and guards from Grimmjow's country -- who knew better than to barge in without his say-so, but weren't going to disperse without having put eyes on him either.
Shiba's sword stayed up for long seconds of narrow-eyed wary thought before the point flagged down. "Fine. What the fuck do you want."
What did he want... Hm. Shiba had good fighting instincts. Could be better, though, sharper. The princess was a little sneakier and a lot more powerful than she seemed. Their righteous fervor was gonna grate on him something awful very soon...
Aizen had a leash on him, but the only real leash on them would be through Grimmjow, and they didn't like him enough to stay their hands out of fear for his safety.
He dropped his sword, tossing it onto an abandoned sitting pillow. Baffled, the lovebirds stared at him with dumbly blinking eyes.
Grimmjow smiled, slow and languorous, as he undid his waistcoat and tugged loose his shirt laces, letting the cloth slide open over his chest.
A twitch, a yelp, two blushes.
Cackling, Grimmjow tackled them both around the waist and let his momentum carry the three of them right into his bed.
"Whoa whoa what the fuck?!" "Iyaa, wait, wait--" "What are you--"
The mattress bounced under their combined weights. Grimmjow sat up, straddling them both, and wasn't shy about digging in his knees. "Looks like we're all compromised now. Gonna have to marry you both."
The shriek that came out of Shiba was higher than even the princess' voice could reach. He seemed to have switched from trying to punch Grimmjow's nose flat to pressing both hands to his chest to keep him away, as if Grimmjow was even seriously trying to lean close. Virgin bottom behavior. Even the princess was still earnestly trying to knee his balls back inside his body.
"Ahh, shut up, I'll scratch your backs if you scratch mine. Yeah? We can all benefit from this."
And he threw an abandoned book at the door, making it clang obviously enough that the guards would decide it was sufficiently like a knock and check in on him.
As the door creaked open, he decided to indulge his captives' panicked squeakings -- had to start things off on the right foot if he didn't want to have to deal with too many knives in his household, after all. Princess was yammering about how he couldn't marry Kurosaki-kun who wasn't a maiden at all and boys couldn't marry boys and anyway she didn't want him to be just a concubine but you couldn't have two main wives--
"Ah, don't worry, in my country you can marry whoever the fuck you want." All around the bed the room was filling up with rubbernecking guards, come in to stop an assassination attempt and discovering a tryst instead. Ignoring them utterly, he grinned into her wide, wide eyes, her scarlet face. "It's gonna piss everyone off, I can't wait."