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“Join me, and I will remake you,” Aizen said, in a voice of poisoned honey. “I will burn out every weakness in you, and give you a rebirth deserving of your ambition.”
Grimmjow thought it a gift at the time. Cut out every bit of human frailty. Let nothing hold him down until he stood atop all worlds, where no tooth or claw could ever reach him.
Now, after two wars and a foolishly stubborn shinigami who just wouldn't let him die, he knows it to be a curse.
***
Ichigo’s eyes fall to Grimmjow’s mouth, where a red petal curls at the corner of his lips. He tries to place the familiar shape, and comes up blank. There’s a roaring in his ears, drowning out his thoughts.
“Are you even fucking listening?” Grimmjow snaps. He wipes his face with a clenched fist and smears the petal into an indistinct streak of red.
Ichigo starts. He raises his eyes to meet Grimmjow’s furious gaze.
“You’re joking, aren’t you?” He says, tilting his mouth up in a smile that doesn't feel right. “Haha, very funny. But we sparred last week and you were fine. And now you tell me you’re dying—” the word catches in his throat.
“Fuck you Kurosaki,” Grimmjow says, bristling, “you think I’d make something like this up?”
From the window, moonlight throws Grimmjow’s face into stark relief; white bone mask against the deep shadows of his eye sockets. With Pantera slung across his knees, his shoulders hunched, he reminds Ichigo of the wounded stray he’d found once behind the clinic, hackles raised and hissing. It had disappeared before he could take it back with a bowl of tuna and a clean towel. He'd never seen it again.
“What am I supposed to think?” Ichigo says, “I’ve never even heard of something like this.”
“Lucky you. Guess I’m one of a fucking kind.” Grimmjow turns his head sharply as a cough bursts up out of his throat.
A petal floats out on a puff of his breath. Grimmjow snatches it out of the air and glares.
“Will you listen or not?” His voice holds an undertone of desperation that makes Ichigo’s chest ache. Grimmjow is always so sure, the way he moves with such conviction, like the world had no choice but to part around him. This uncertainty isn’t like him. But neither is lying about something like this.
“Fine,” Ichigo says, “I’ll listen.”
Grimmjow straightens. “It’s—
***
“A fundamental incompatibility of the soul,” Urahara says, fan over his mouth.
“The fuck does that mean?” Grimmjow resists the urge to snatch that stupid fan out of the shopkeeper’s hands and break it over his head.
“Put simply, your soul—or, rather, your heart is missing a foundational piece. Quite fascinating, if not for the, ah, symptoms. Quite fascinating. No natural evolutionary process should be able to cut so precisely,” Urahara peers at him with shameless curiosity.
Grimmjow stills. A long-buried memory surfaces— burn out every weakness in you —and he scowls. “Get to the point.”
“The fact that it hasn’t been an issue up until now suggests an inciting incident lately. An emotional shift, or change of heart, something that has elicited a new feeling in you, that just happens to run up against that missing part of your heart.” Urahara’s words are glib but his eyes are knowing. “As a result, your body is attempting to resolve this conflict of nature by manifesting the emotion in physical form.”
“As flowers,” Grimmjow says flatly. A foreboding rises in his gullet like spoiled meat, and bursts out of him in a harsh cough and a flutter of red that lands on Urahara’s sleeve.
Urahara picks up a petal, tapered and thin, curled up at one end. “Chrysanthemum,” he murmurs, as if that means anything to Grimmjow. A sudden brittle look passes through his eyes, swift as shifting cloud.
“Flowers can hold great significance to humans you know,” Urahara says, with an exaggerated shrug, “and some mysteries of the soul are beyond even me, as hard as that is to believe. What I can tell you is that without intervention, your long term prospects are rather grim.”
Grimmjow curls his hands into white-knuckled fists at his side.
“Fortunately,” Urahara says, “I have a solution.”
Grimmjow hears him out, though he knows his answer before the explanation is done. “Fuck no.” he says.
“If you keep the feelings that are causing the growth, then there’s only one way this can end,” Urahara says, shoulders slumping incrementally. “I’m not a miracle worker.”
Grimmjow sneers. “I ain’t naive enough to believe in miracles anyways.”
He rises to leave. There’s a seed of a plan forming, something ridiculous and insane, but it’s better than the bullshit Urahara suggested. He heads for the door, already planning a route to Kurosaki’s place, towards the reiatsu that he uses as a beacon in all three worlds. Urahra's voice stops him.
“Grimmjow.” Urahara stands in the doorway, hat pulled low, face in shadow. “If you’re going to ask this of him, then at least spare him the root cause.”
Grimmjow regards him coolly. Urahara’s a cold-blooded bastard, but he’s not stupid. He probably knows exactly what Grimmjow is planning to do, even before he made his offer.
But Grimmjow owes him enough to at least consider it.
What he plans to ask Kurosaki is a lot. He's planning to disgorge parts of himself, muscle and gristle, scar-pocked, blood-swollen, then ask Kurosaki to choke it down, bones and all. What’s an omission or two if it makes the whole thing a bit easier to swallow?
“Fine,” he says, “not like it makes much difference to me.”
Urahara nods, and plasters on his smile again, seamless as his stitch work. “Thank you. And remember, if you ever change your mind—”
“Not fucking likely.” Grimmjow scowls and turns away. It’s as good a farewell as Urahara deserves.
***
Ichigo’s head reels. “Wait, back up. What do you mean your heart's missing a piece? How is that even possible?”
Grimmjow doesn't reply immediately, weighing something behind the mirror of his eyes.
“Do you know about Wonderweiss,” he asks at last.
Ichigo remembers telling war stories with the captains after Yamamoto's death, sitting in the dark halls with nothing to do but wait for the next barrage of bad news, time blurred by weariness and the bottle of eye-watering liquor that Ikkaku had brought. He remembers the flush on Toshiro's young face, Yumichika's declaration that if they're old enough to fight, they're old enough to drink, the shake of Shuuhei's hands that he blamed on the alcohol.
“Yeah,” he says, “the Arrancar made specifically to seal Yamamoto's flames.”
“And he lost everything for it,” Grimmjow says, “memories, intellect, personality— gone. Aizen erased it to make room for the flames.”
Ichigo shivers. A creeping dread grows in his gut. “What does that have to do with this?”
“We thought he was the exception,” Grimmjow says, curling a lip, “but Aizen did that to all of us. Every Arrancar that went under the Hōgyoku, he shaped to his will. Made tweaks, cut out parts, ground down the edges. Gave us what we wanted.” His throat spasms, and he wipes at the corner of his mouth. “What we thought we wanted.”
Ichigo's stomach sinks.
“I thought it was a gift,” Grimmjow continues, “I wanted to be untouchable. A heart that couldn't be held back by anything. So when he offered to take out the part of me that made me weak, I—”
“You didn't ask for any of this,” Ichigo says firmly, grabbing his hand. He's familiar with self-doubt, and the futility of following that path. “You couldn't have known what it meant.”
He can't parse the next look Grimmjow gives him, something between a grimace and a grin. He squeezes back.
“But why now?” Ichigo asks, “you were fine up until now.”
Grimmjow turns his face towards the window. “Fuck if I know. Just my shit luck, probably.”
Ichigo takes a breath, letting it go. It doesn't matter why, so long as they can fix it. “And what did Urahara say about solutions?”
Grimmjow scoffs. “Nothing useful. Told him to shove it.”
“He must have some idea!” Ichigo says, “If he had more information, or time— Or Inoue! She can—”
“No!” Grimmjow jerks back, defensive. His hand slips out of Ichigo’s grip.
Ichigo is still grasping for purchase. “Then what about—”
“Just— fucking listen,” Grimmjow interrupts, moving forward. This close, Ichigo can see the whites of his eyes, shot through with red, burst vessels. His lip curls up in a snarl, and his breath ruffles the hair on Ichigo's forehead. A sudden impulse crosses his mind— that if he leaned just a bit closer, he could press his lips to that snarl, feel it vibrate down to the back of his throat.
Before he can do anything, though, Grimmjow shifts back and coughs, wet and wracking.
Ichigo reaches out before he realizes what he’s doing. He slings an arm over Grimmjow’s shoulder, rubbing his hand in circles at the center of Grimmjow’s back, an instinctual movement, ingrained from years of nursing his sisters through nights of childhood fevers. He guides Grimmjow over to his desk chair, murmuring soft, comforting words.
When Grimmjow brings his hand away from his lips, there’s a perfectly formed flower in his palm, marred only by flecks of blood among its petals. Ichigo recognizes it at last: red camellia, the flower they used to put on the graves of samurai. Grimmjow clenches his hand into a fist and it shatters, dusting the floor with reishi particles that evaporate like mist beneath the sun.
The blood remains.
Grimmjow speaks again, hoarser, softer. “There’s nothing anyone can do, not Urahara, not the healer girl. I didn't come to you for dumbass suggestions you think I'm too stupid to consider.”
“Then why come to me?” Ichigo counters. Why come here, if Ichigo can do nothing but watch? To throw another person he can’t save back in Ichigo’s face? He looks back down at the pool of red on Grimmjow's palm: red camellia for noble death. The sick feeling in his gut deepens.
Grimmjow looks up, meeting Ichigo’s gaze. “In Hueco Mundo, existence is its own form of witness. Even if you’re eaten, that’s another way of existing.” He raises a fist to his chest. “If I'm dying, I need someone to remember me. To remember Grimmjow fucking Jaegerjaquez. Not just some Hollow or Arrancar, not just one of Aizen’s Espada.”
Ichigo’s gut clenches. “I don’t understand,” he says.
“Remembering is a way of consuming too,” Grimmjow says.
“It’s not the same.”
“It’s good enough,” Grimmjow sighs. His eyes flutter shut, as if he can’t quite muster up the energy to keep them open. In the moment between the rise and fall of his lashes, Ichigo realizes just how tired he looks.
Ichigo doesn’t understand, not quite, but he knows when someone is asking for help. So he nods. He ignores the way his skin pulls taut across his bones, like a net spinning ever tighter.
“Alright,” he says, “I can do that.”
***
Grimmjow knows when it happened.
He fights Kurosaki often these days, and tells himself he’s only collecting on a promise. Just sharpening his teeth, preparing for one final bite to rip out Kurosaki's throat. He tells himself he holds back for pride, or to repay the debt of saving Hueco Mundo.
He's a shit liar, though, especially to himself.
Kurosaki wins this fight, knocks him out of the air with a well-timed Gestuga Tensho. He stands over Grimmjow, sunk in the sand, and holds out a hand. He's done it a thousand times since the first time, when Grimmjow well and truly lost to him. A hand and a promise that had thrown the world on its axis, that Grimmjow hated, and wanted, and knew he could never have. Not him, not this.
Now, two wars and a hundred sparring matches later, Grimmjow's still losing, and Kurosaki's still holding out a hand to him, grinning like the sun.
This time, Grimmjow takes it.
Kurosaki pulls him up, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Fingers brush the inside of his wrist. He grins, pats Grimmjow’s shoulder, and says: good fight, and better luck next time, and he's got a study session with his friends after this but he'll be back next week, promise.
Grimmjow stands, rubbing the knob of his wrist and the thin skin below his palm where Kurosaki’s touch still burns. He hadn’t even thought to put up his hierro. The last time he had something so close to the vulnerable flesh of him had been Shawlong’s blood beneath his tongue, Edrad’s bones between his teeth, Nakeem’s flesh sliding down his gullet.
He doesn’t have a name for this as an Arrancar, this hunger that isn't hunger, this need to be devoured, while he devours.
If he were human, perhaps he'd call it love.
As he holds his wrist, lingering warmth dissipating into his skin, something splits open in his chest, like the first ray of light in an eon piercing the solitude of a long-buried tomb.
In that dark and secret place, red lilies bloom.
***
Ichigo has always tried to understand as much as he can; about the world, his enemies, his blade, himself. Now, with Grimmjow, he struggles.
Sure he's been fighting Grimmjow for years, as an enemy, as a tentative ally, now every week or so in Hueco Mundo as something closer to a friend. But he doesn't know Grimmjow's past, not his reasons for fighting, or joining Aizen, or throwing that all away for one final showdown with Ichigo. Honor, or pride, or impulsiveness, or revenge, it never feels right.
Now, as Grimmjow tries to sketch out the broad strokes of his life in curt, stilted words, Ichigo tries to sear it into his memory, and knows it's not enough. As if memorizing a series of events would be enough to recall the vivid, living person. As if knowing the bare bones of Grimmjow's past is enough to know him fully. It’s nothing compared to knowing the way Grimmjow holds his sword and bares his teeth when the spar turns from warm-up to full-on fighting, knowing the solid flesh and hardened bone of him.
But Grimmjow's in no shape for a fight these days. His cough worsens, and Ichigo empties the trash can of rust-stained tissues with increasing frequency.
Ichigo tries to bring up Urahara again, or Inoue's healing ability, but each time Grimmjow wrenches the topic away, or sulks on the roof until Ichigo drops it. Every time Ichigo thinks about pushing harder, he remembers the cat behind the clinic, how it shrank back when he'd tried to approach it, how good intentions can still break things beyond repair.
So he listens.
The responsibility of his promise grows heavier on him with each cough that punctuates a sentence, each petal that bursts out on Grimmjow's breath like a blood beading from a wound.
He should be used to the burden now; he's held the whole of Soul Society on his shoulders before. What's this single life compared to all that? But it's Grimmjow, who's always loomed so large in Ichigo's mind. As enemy, as tentative ally, as someone who might even be a friend, as—
He tries not to let the weight of it crush him.
He knows he's not hiding it as well as he thinks. Karin and Yuzu give him sad-eyed and concerned looks over dinner when they think he's not looking, that makes his conscience flare up before he ruthlessly tamps it down. His dad takes him aside one day and pats his shoulder awkwardly, a half-guilty look on his face that Ichigo's come to recognize as an admission that he'd already heard most of it from Urahara.
One evening, he stumbles across Karin kneeling at the bottom of the stairs, frowning. His heart leaps to his throat as he sees a small red flower on her palm, petals sheer as frost, stem broken off near the tip.
“Begonia,” she says, looking up at him, “thinking of taking up flower arrangement?”
He forces a smile. “Yeah, something like that.”
“You know you can tell us anything, right Ichi-nii?” she says, abruptly.
“Yeah,” he says, lips dry, like a liar. “But I'm fine, really. Nothing world-ending, just— I just need some time.”
Her gaze is knowing, and it pins his tongue to the roof of his mouth. His pain has always been a prey animal, hiding away from the world to lick its own wounds. Even from the ones who might help it.
He brushes past her, and she doesn't hold him back. As he reaches the top of the stairs though, Karin speaks up again.
“Begonia is for love. I don't know if that's any help, but,” she shrugs, twisting the broken-stemmed flower in her fingers, “just thought you might want to know.”
He doesn’t reply, but when he reaches his door, his heart is pounding loud in his chest.
***
It all comes back to words, and how insufficient they are.
As a Hollow, eating is the consummate form of understanding. It's simple to crawl into someone else, let the edges of you fray into another. Dissolve until the boundaries between you and your devourer disintegrate into a singular, perfect understanding.
Sometimes Grimmjow wants to just. Open a vein. Shove it in Kurosaki’s face and tell him to drink it down, watch the red seep out from the corners of his lips, drip down his chin and chest.
But Kurosaki is no Hollow, no matter the mask and the horn, or the hungry reiatsu that lashes acid-hot against Grimmjow's in the heat of a fight. He doesn't have the same kind of hunger, the need to drink straight from the essence of a thing and have it become part of his flesh and blood and bones.
He is so painfully human. It shows in his face, how easily his lips slant into a smile, his eyes tilt down tenderly, in the way he smooths his hand down Grimmjow's back, unconscious of how much danger and trust exist together in that movement.
Humans know only one way to take a whole self and nestle it within another, forehead to the wet insides of ribs, fingers brushing the leaves of lungs, knees against lobes of liver, lips pressed to heart’s beating chambers.
So. Grimmjow talks.
He tries to fit his whole being into words, fit untold decades of rage and grief and turmoil into sounds spoken by an all too unsuitable tongue into the stagnant air of Kurosaki's bedroom.
Kurosaki listens with a crease between his brows that deepens slowly. Sometimes, his eyes go wet and red-rimmed, and he squeezes Grimmjow’s arm or shoulder white-knuckled. Sometimes, Grimmjow feels the vegetative growth swell in his throat and spends the afternoon coughing instead, and Kurosaki's hand circles his back for so long he thinks it'll wear grooves there. He almost hopes it does. And sometimes Kurosaki will make a small comment, something inane about the future as if it were not a sharp cliff with a sudden stop, and Grimmjow will despair that he'll never get his intention across.
Almost better to let the flowers do the talking. Let him read Grimmjow's meaning in the spill of red petals across his palms: roll my blood beneath your tongue; swallow down mouthfuls of my flesh, gristle still prickling your throat; hollow your cheeks around my bones, tongue the marrow out lick by lick.
Eat me. Eat me, eat me, eat me—
Remember—
—me.
***
Ichigo tries to hoard the memories of the present.
These are the things that burn into Ichigo's sense memory: the faint metallic tinge to the air, the smoothness of hierro just below body temperature, the sharp cough cracking through the air. Whenever he runs his fingers over good leather, or polished marble, he will always think of the interminable minutes running his hand down between Grimmjow's shoulder blades, feeling the shudder and hitch beneath his palm.
Other fleeting glimpses of memory: the fall of blue hair in his eyes after a long day, against the vulnerable line of his cheek. The way he leans into Ichigo's touch on his back, even as a cough shudders through him.
But the petals keep coming, like stubbornly rooted weeds.
Things finally come to a head one day, when Grimmjow's starts coughing and doesn't stop. It's nothing unusual— coughing fits have been coming and going, often enough that they feel almost rote by now. Ichigo moves, as he always does, to try and ease it. It's only when the coughs turn to high, breathless wheezing that Ichigo grows worried.
“Grimmjow, hey, are you—” He leaps forward as Grimmjow doubles over.
Grimmjow's next exhale fills the air with the sharp scent of blood. A flower head splatters onto the ground. Spider lily, red petals in pink froth. Grimmjow's lips are tinged blue.
“Shit,” Ichigo says. The simmering fear in his chest ignites into panic. “Hold on, I'll call someone. Just— breathe!”
Grimmjow gives one last hacking cough, dribbling something wet and raw and red down his chin. He looks up at Ichigo, mouth moving, trying to say something— then his eyes roll up and he goes limp.
Ichigo catches him. He looks dead, eyes closed, face grey and still. Every instinct in Ichigo's body screams in denial. He does the only thing he can think of— he gathers Grimmjow in his arms, head cradled against his chest, and runs.
***
Grimmjow floats somewhere below consciousness, above the radiating pain in his chest. Kurosaki's voice echoes distantly, words indistinct, desperate. Something warm presses against his face.
He thinks he might understand. Might have been able to understand, once, if fate were kinder, if the world hadn't caged him in— if things had been different.
But when he reaches down, trying to grasp that elusive thing called heart, he finds only a barren earth. In the negative space, flowers grow like ghosts haunting their own body.
He wants—
— he laughs, that's the whole problem, isn't it? —
He wants.
***
Grimmjow's eyes flutter open. His gaze lands on Urahara, sitting by the bed with a glowing hand over his chest. Confusion turns to recognition, turns to anger. He pushes himself up and swipes at Urahara, claws out.
“Hey!” Ichigo tries to shove himself between them, but Urahara is already moving back. The green glow of kidō, the only thing keeping Grimmjow breathing, disappears like a blown candle.
“You had a collapsed lung,” Urahara explains calmly, “I healed that, and nothing else, I assure you. But if you want to reconsider my offer—”
Grimmjow glares, panting even with the minimal amount of exertion. His lips are tinged blue, curled up over his teeth. “Get out,” he says, uncompromising.
Urahara's hands are still raised. He gives Ichigo an apologetic smile, and looks to Grimmjow. “As you wish.”
Ichigo watches him leave, incomprehension turning to anger. “What the hell is your problem with him?”
Grimmjow turns his glower on Ichigo. “He's a useless hack,” he says, chin set stubbornly.
“He can help!” Ichigo says, shoving himself out of his chair, hands clenched at his sides, “He healed your lung, he's delivered miracles! If you just let him help, he can—”
“No,” Grimmjow snarls, a furious, animal sound, and Ichigo stops. He remembers the cat, remembers Urahara's apologetic look.
“I just want to help,” Ichigo says, helplessly. His chest feels hollow, empty. He doesn't know what else he can do.
Grimmjow's fury dissipates on the wavebreak of Ichigo's soft plea. He slumps back against the headboard.
“Either way, too late. I took the bargain, gave up the part of me that feels— love.” He says the word with a bitter twist, like swallowing glass, “But just 'cause I cut it out, doesn't mean stuff doesn't try to grow there. Never thought I'd feel this way about someone though, stronger than the need to survive.”
“Someone,” Ichigo said, dully. Someone Grimmjow feels so strongly for, who changed him so fundamentally, he's tearing himself apart. Ichigo's chest clenches, aching with bitter jealousy.
“And Urahara's offer?”
Grimmjow can't quite look him in the eye. “ He wants to rip it out by the roots, reset things to the point before I felt— like this. And I’d rather die than let another fucking shinigami who thinks he knows better rearrange my soul.”
Ichigo wonders who it is, Nel or Harribel, perhaps. He takes a calming breath. It doesn't matter. Whoever it is, Grimmjow's willing to risk his entire existence for them, and Ichigo is left holding the pieces.
“You should do it,” he says firmly. Grimmjow jerks up, betrayed.
“You told me once that living is its own form of witness,” Ichigo says, almost shouting, “Even if you lose whoever it is you love, as long as you keep living—”
“It's you!” Grimmjow snaps. “It's you I'd forget, Kurosaki.”
Ichigo freezes. His hands start to shake. Urahara's look makes sense. Grimmjow's reluctance. It's all because of him. He's the reason for Grimmjow's—
“I don't care,” he says ruthlessly, “if it means you live, then forget me, never see me again, I don't care.”
“Why can’t you just fucking let it go?” Grimmjow snarls.
“Because you can’t die!” Ichigo shouts, “Not for me. Because I’m supposed to save you!”
Grimmjow laughs, a hoarse harsh sound that breaks down into a cough. He hacks up something large and wet, like a gob of flesh. A spider lily, so red it's almost black. Ichigo doesn't need anyone to tell him what it means: death.
Grimmjow spits, and wipes his mouth, and leans into Ichigo’s space, close enough to fill the air between them with the tang of iron underwritten by a subtle floral sweetness.
“I’ll tell you what saved me, Kurosaki Ichigo.” He bites out each word like a mouthful of meat, the way it tears into Ichigo. “When I died, it tore my heart out. I don’t even fucking remember what it was that I wanted or feared or hated so badly that I turned Hollow, just that it hurt like hell and I’d do anything to make it stop.”
Ichigo can't look away. There is a chasm between his tongue and the turbulent thoughts churning in his mind.
“And if it weren’t for you, I’d still be stuck down in the dark, reaching for the sun.” Grimmjow leans in closer, and Ichigo can see the whites of his eyes, the black of his pupils, the thin line of blue between, like the line between truth and understanding.
Ichigo's stomach swoops;he's standing on the edge of a cliff, a push away from going over. He's being pulled in too many directions by guilt, fear, yearning. When he promised to fight Grimmjow, he never thought that Grimmjow would slide into his life so quickly, so completely, like a piece he never knew he'd been missing. He can't let it go, he can't—
Grimmjow kisses him. He kisses with a ravenous, greedy hunger, like he's trying to devour Ichigo whole. Ichigo's mouth fills with the taste of salt and lighting, and the bitter, cloying sweetness.
He freezes. He knows there’s only one way this ends, and it’s in blood and red lilies, and it’s hard, so fucking hard he doesn’t know if he can stand it. Grimmjow pulls back, and he’s grinning, satisfied, smug, as if he knows just how deep he's dug himself into Ichigo's life, his memory.
The taste of him is burned onto Ichigo's lips.
That’s what Grimmjow wants, Ichigo realizes. He wants to crawl into Ichigo’s chest, his guts. He wants to carve out a space there and fill it with himself, with his razor grin and his shattered-glass laugh, with the glint of moonlight off his blade. He wants to fill it up so full and so deep, it’ll never scab over, and when he’s gone and dead and dust, red flowers will keep blooming in the furrows where his claws had dug.
“If that ain’t salvation, I don’t know what the fuck is,” Grimmjow says. It's a goodbye. Ichigo, still reeling, only realizes when Grimmjow reaches back and rips the air open in a Descorrer.
“Wait!” he lunges, but it's too late. His hand brushes the receding edge of Grimmjow's jacket. Then he's stumbling through empty air, face wet, heart pounding, but alone.
***
Grimmjow doesn't know when survival became less of a priority than seeing Kurosaki's stubborn scowl, his bright grin. Maybe since Kurosaki planted that seed in his chest, where his heart might have been. Maybe earlier, when Kurosaki's glare ignited a fire inside him that couldn’t be put out save if he crushed those eyes between his jaws, to hell with the cost. Maybe before even that, when he'd swallowed down his fracción – the only Hollows he'd ever loved, as much as a Hollow could love anything – then spit them back out again at Aizen's will.
Love. Heh. Kurosaki says that so easily. He wants to say it back and have it turn to blood and flowers on his own tongue.
And if he can't have that—
Then a place in Kurosaki's memory is enough.
It has to be.
***
Ichigo sits on the roof for a long time.He doesn't know if it's grief, or love, or rage that the world just can't be fair, just this once. It's all mixed up like lightning in a storm cloud, expanding in his chest until he's afraid that he'll burst. That it will all seep out of him in oozes and spurts and torrents and rivers, from his mouth, his eyes, his pores, and that it'll never end.
He doesn't know what to do with it all.
What the hell is he supposed to do with this?
He presses his face to his knees until he sees spots. The first drops of rain land on his head. He doesn't even look up when the sky, always so accommodating, opens up at last, soaking him down to the bone.
He doesn't react to the sound of footsteps on the rooftop beside him. He hears the swish of an umbrella opening , and the rain stops falling.
“Ichigo,” his father says, “it’s cold out. Your sisters are getting worried. If there’s anything we can do…”
Ichigo lets out a shaky breath. “When you started dating mom, did you ever think about how little time you’d have together?”
Isshin is silent for a long time. Finally, the click of a lighter breaks the silence, and a whiff of cigarette smoke floats over.
“I chose,” Isshin says, “between what my head thought unwise and what my heart could not bear to lose. It wasn't really a choice at all.”
Ichigo digs fingers into his knees. “How did you bear it?”
His dad sighs. “Kurosaki Isshin can never go back to being Shiba Isshin. I’ve made my peace with that. But even if I’d chosen differently, something – someone – always comes along to change you. To love is to break yourself down, build something new from the ruin, and laugh the whole while.”
Ichigo makes a shattered sound. Isshin's hand falls heavily over his shoulders, rubbing a soothing circle against his spine with the pad of his thumb.
“And besides, I got two beautiful, amazing, lovely daughters out of it,” he says, “And a no good son who thinks it’s okay to ask his Papa difficult questions before morning coffee.”
Ichigo laughs wetly. Water drips onto the back of his hands.
“Whatever choice you make, make sure you can live with it,” Isshin says.
The words spear through him like lightning. Ichigo stands.
“Take care of this for me for a bit,” he says. He presses his shinigami badge against his chest and leaps out of his body. It falls into Isshin’s waiting arms, but Ichigo’s already moving in the direction of Urahara’s shop. At the edge of the roof, he pauses and turns to see Isshin smiling, a wide, proud smile. Ichigo feels his throat spasm.
“Thank you,” he says, and in the next moment, he’s gone.
***
Grimmjow stares up at the crescent moon, half-buried in the sand. Something crackles in his chest with each breath, and he tastes blood at the back of his throat. It won't be long now.
A familiar reiatsu bursts into the world in the distance. It pauses for a brief moment, then heads straight for him. He laughs, dry and crackling. Of all the times for that idiot not to give up—
“Grimmjow!”
Someone lifts him up, brushing sand off his chest and face. He squints up and sees Kurosaki leaned over him, Zangetsu slung over his shoulder. Kurosaki's eyes are clear, polished to diamond certainty. It's those eyes that Grimmjow had wanted so much at the beginning, though he hadn't known if he'd wanted to eat them or to have them follow him forever.
“Fuck you,” Kurosaki says, leveraging Grimmjow up against him, “you don't get to tell me something like that and run.”
Grimmjow's entire vision is filled with Kurosaki's face. The movement jostles something in his chest and sets off another round of coughing; Kurosaki's hand is rubbing familiar circles into his chest. Even now the touch relaxes him instinctively.
“What— d'you want,” Grimmjow finally squeezes the words out with a slow trickle of red. He can't tell what's blood and what's petals at this point. Kurosaki wipes the corner of Grimmjow's lips with the end of his sleeve.
“I want you to eat me,” he says, simple and straightforward.
Grimmjow blinks slowly. He's not sure this isn't some deathbed hallucination after all.
“You told me once that remembering was a way of consuming,” Ichigo presses the inside of his wrist to Grimmjow's mouth as if he can shove himself down there, “I don't care if you die the next second. Hollows live through consuming, right? I want that, I want you to live with some of me. However long, whatever bit you can.”
Something wet drips onto Grimmjow's face.
“Please,” Kurosaki croaks.
It's a defiance of instinct, a study in futility, an opposition to every fundamental thing in Hollow nature. Only Kurosaki, the crazy bastard that he is, would even think of something so useless, so fucking human. And yet—
Grimmjow wraps his teeth around the flesh offered up to him. The grip on his shoulder tightens as he presses his tongue against the thin skin of Kurosaki's inner wrist, tastes salt and metal. He bites down.
Flesh tears, and Kurosaki's blood coats the inside of his mouth, sweet and hot. He swallows it, and it's like swallowing fire, burning all the way down his gullet. In his stomach, it blooms. Like a wildfire razing through him, it burns the flowers – root and stem and blossom – to ash.
Grimmjow turns his head to the side, heaving, spitting up black dust, the color of ash and dried blood. He pulls in one breath, then two, fast and steady.
Kurosaki brushes his hair out of his face. “Hey,” he says, “It's alright, I've got you. I'm here till the end.”
Grimmjow pushes him away. Hurt flashes across his face, but Grimmjow's stumbling to his feet with renewed strength.
“It's gone,” Grimmjow says, touching his throat. The air is cold in his sore lungs, and his voice is hoarse, but clear.
Kurosaki's eyes widen, and he leaps to his feet. “Gone? You mean—”
Then realization blooms, followed by joy. Kurosaki tackles him into the sand, laughing, shouting, babbling, touching all over, never mind that he's still bleeding, leaving red fingerprints on Grimmjow’s skin, like imprints of petals. Grimmjow's grinning too, a brightness rising in his chest, like a clear, clean flame.
Like—
Kurosaki's kissing him, all tongue and desperation. There's water on his cheeks, salt in the back of his throat. He doesn't know if the tears are his or Kurosaki's, just that he's laughing too, kissing back as if trying to pour all of himself into it.
—like love.
He doesn't know why it worked – Urahara can probably explain it later – but he doesn't care. He's got Kurosaki's mouth on his, Kurosaki's warm chest pressed against him, strong arms around his shoulders.
Ever since the first petal floated down from his lips, he’s longed, hungered, and ached for it.
Now he has it, and it’s more than he ever thought it could be.
It is enough, he realizes. It’s perfect.