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If life immitates art, then Ichigo’s art style is definitely some kind of fucked up Edwardian oil painting where the artist keeps painting stupid vases.
He continues to curse the Soul King in his head while picking up another dark edge piece and putting it in the growing pile of dark edge pieces. He sees a glimmer of hope in the shape of a red smear on the pip of the next piece. Finally, a possibility of change!
He snatches the piece and gleefully reaches for the box. Only to come up empty.
“No cheating, Kurosaki,”says Ichigo’s most recent dark vase painting in life. Grimmjow sits on the opposite side of the table, holding the box as if it were litter on the roadside. His eyebrows knit as he reads the piece count for this particular puzzle.
“It’s not cheating. Using the box is just how to do a puzzle,” Ichigo reaches across the table for the box but again is thwarted, “Give me the box, you overgrown housecat.”
Grimmjow turns a look on Ichigo, it’s moody and judgemental and quite possibly copied from Karin. He sets the box on the counter behind him, even further away from Ichigo. “No. Do this puzzle without cheating or I’ll leave.”
“So, if I don’t do the puzzle, you agree to leave?”
“Fuck off, Kurosaki, you can’t get rid of me that easily.” Grimmjow smirks, kicking his feet onto the chair adjacent, clearly intent on staying.
Ichigo sits back in his chair. He doesn’t have to put up with this. Grimmjow at his most obstinate is like a rock in his shoe; it irritates him as long as he’s walking, and if he tries to take his shoe off and shake it out then the thing just finds a new corner of his foot to irritate. No, antagonizing Grimmjow isn’t the way to get what he wants. He needs to coerce, to swindle, to trick Grimmjow into either giving him the box or helping him with the puzzle.
“Okay. I won’t ‘cheat’,” he uses air quotes around the word, “but that means you have to at least work on the edge pieces for me.”
Grimmjow shrugs. “I’m not going to help you. And I already told you, I’m not letting you cheat in the first place.”
Ichigo smiles. Like putty in warm hands. “Oh? I bet I could finish the center pieces before you finish the edge pieces.”
A fire lit in Grimmjow’s eyes. He is competition personified, any challenge has to be accepted. “You’re going to lose. When you lose, you have to agree to never do a puzzle with the box again.”
Ichigo simply pushes the pile of edge pieces to him. “You get to find the rest. I have a race to win.”
So the stage is set.
Ichigo sits on his side of the table, sipping at a mug of tea. Tonight he indulges in Chamomile with a touch of honey. When he started the day, he intended to have a calm night in and alone. Unfortunately, the world conspires against him. What could have been is crushed under the weight of reality.
Across the table, Grimmjow grudgingly sorts through his new pile of dark pieces. Ichigo spares him a glance only when Grimmjow huffs in annoyance or satisfaction. It annoys him how he can tell the difference between the two. They used to be such strangers, only crossing paths on the battlefield. Nowadays, Ichigo suffers being referred to as his ‘friend.’ It’s not a surprise when the man shows up at his door with nothing to offer except an insult, yet Ichigo’s apartment feels empty without the company.
“When did I get so comfortable with you?” Ichigo whispers to himself. If Grimmjow heard, there is no indication except the soft sound of puzzle pieces being mashed together.
After an hour of sorting and only a few matches being found, Ichigo leans back in his chair and stretches. He visualises the puzzle box in his mind, trying to recall if the blue went next to the yellow flowers or on the vase. Pointlessly, he stares over Grimmjow’s shoulders at the discarded cardboard. The box is facing the wrong way, but Ichigo notices something more important: Grimmjow is asleep. Slumped in his chair, having organized his edge pieces to have the flat sides all in the same direction, mismatched pieces laid atop one another.
Ichigo considers, just for a moment, taking one of the pieces. Yuzu used to do that to him all the time. She would get him a puzzle and take a piece, only to ‘find’ it days later after Ichigo had turned his apartment upside down trying to find the damned thing because it was the last piece to go in. He wouldn’t do that to Grimmjow. Not only would it definitely be cheating, but he would have to suffer Grimmjow’s rage when the deceit was revealed. Instead, Ichigo quietly got up from the table to refill his tea and take a bathroom break.
New tea acquired, Ichigo softly trods back to the table. He stops just before it. Grimmjow is still asleep. The box is unguarded and within his reach.
“Just the blue section. That’s all I need to look at,” he thinks to himself. He sets his mug on the table and stretches his hand to the box. With a delicate touch, he turns the box to face the only light on in the apartment. He can almost see the blue section, it’s on the left side, just under-
“You little cheating brat!” Grimmjow hisses. The box is snatched away yet again. “How long were you going to look at it? Thought I’d let you step out of our agreement so easily and be made the fool?!”
“I didn’t see anything! I just needed to check this one thing!” Ichigo protests.
“Oh fuck off. You were ogling the box like a hot chick on the beach.”
“I don’t ogle.”
Instead of quipping back, Grimmjow holds the box in both hands, showing Ichigo its image. Then, he rips it down the middle. He continues ripping until the box is yet another puzzle of compressed paper fibers. Ichigo steps away, horrified.
Grimmjow smiles and flashes his teeth, dusts off his hands, and starts mashing edge pieces together again. “Cheaters never win, Kurosaki. You probably told me that. Now sit your ass down and finish this.”
Ichigo slumps into his seat. His precious, new, destroyed puzzle box is discarded on the floor.
The night progresses with little conversation. Ichigo grabbed his music player and headphones at one point, under the watchful glare of Grimmjow. The American rock music beating in his ears keeps him awake enough to slam together pieces. He doesn’t know which way the puzzle is facing, where the pieces will connect together, or if he is even putting together the same puzzle anymore. There’s splashes of color on the pips and divots of some pieces, but they refuse to be matched to each other.
Grimmjow leans back in his chair, gruffing and puffing about some stupid accusation or other. During a lull in the music, Ichigo thinks he hears a bit of his mumbles, “... stupid Kurosaki giving me all the odd bits. How the fuck am I supposed to put them together when they’re missing a whole damn side.” He says nothing to clarify, the man can stew in his stupidity.
He gets up from the table and grabs Ichigo’s mug. When he returns, the mug is filled with a new brew of herbal tea - raspberry and a splash of sweet milk.
Ichigo nods his thanks. He doesn’t look at Grimmjow. The pieces are suddenly making sense to him. He sips the tea and smiles at the taste and warmth. Grimmjow huffs and fits a piece together across the table. Ichigo moves things around into new groups, finding for the first time the small differences between the yellow and chartreuse and lime pieces.
There is a faint grain across the picture, brush strokes like a sealant all going in one direction. He finds the nicked corners and toothy edges of each piece, slotting them together at last. Before he knows it, all that remains is a final sip from his mug and a handful of dark pieces that will go at the edge.
A hand slides across the table, and slots one complete edge into place. Ichigo looks up frantically. Grimmjow is grinning with utter triumph. His hair is limp, as if he had been running his hands through it too frequently, and he has a red spot on his jaw line from where he had been resting his head in his hand. But there, in the crook of his mouth, Ichigo recognizes that predatory gleam of teeth about to sink into a kill. Two more edges are put in place. A handful of scattered edge pieces remain on Grimmjow’s side.
Ichigo looks down, there’s five pieces in his hands. He looks up, there’s six empty spaces for center pieces. He jumps to his feet and points at the table. “CHEATER!”
Grimmjow also jumps up and slams his hands on the table. “I did not! I haven’t looked at the box once since we started.”
Ichigo glares at him, feeling heat rise in his chest and his fists clench. “Not the box! The pieces. You stole one so I could never finish before you!”
“That’s a serious accusation, Kurosaki. Do you really consider me to be such a lowly man that I would do something so despicable.” His voice is low and hard as he speaks. His eyes are thin, the blue in them more like chips of winter ice than their usual summer sky.
“Well, it had to be you. I didn’t take my own piece, and no one else was here since we opened the box. Unless Yoruichi snuck in through my window again.” Ichigo retracts his accusing finger. He puts his remaining pieces in their spots and shows his hands to Grimmjow. “See, there’s a piece missing. And you have the motive to hide a piece.”
Grimmjow snarls, slamming his edge pieces into place as well. Oddly, there’s also a hole in the edges. He stands up and looks at Ichigo like a piece of trash in a pristine park, “What now? You gonna say I took my own piece too? Or should I yell at you too about being a dirty, nasty, lying-” he steps toward Ichigo, and slips on the forgotten pile of shredded box.
Grimmjow falls not unlike a deer on the ice. He tries to get his balance, but fails. So, he reaches for something to hold him, but misses. He spreads his legs out to try and gain new grip, and only slips further in the glossy compressed cardboard bits. Finally, he puts his hands out to cushion his fall, landing in a tense spread out pose on all fours.
Ichigo laughs. He can’t help it, what with such a tall man laid so low by a silly thing. Grimmjow glowers while Ichigo gets his chuckling contained, his face puckered like a scolded toddler.
Offering a hand at last, Ichigo helps Grimmjow right himself. He doesn’t think when he does it, it’s a natural movement from years of saving his own friends from thin ledges, and pulls Grimmjow to his chest as he gets up. For a moment, their hands are stuck between them, Ichigo’s eyes closed, feeling warm from his laughter.
“Can I have my hand back now?” Grimmjow says, breaking the peaceful pause in time.
Ichigo quickly drops his hand and looks down. “Sorry, force of habit. I didn’t want you to fall again. Should’ve let go sooner.”
Grimmjow huffs. “You should’ve helped me up before laughing. I looked like an idiot. And what was with that paper? It was like it was greased and set there just to fuck with me.”
Ichigo coughs to hide his chuckle at the comment. He says, “Next time, I promise not to laugh until after I help you.” His eyes are scanning the floor, looking across all the scattered bits of paper. His eyes land on two particularly thick chunks. Gently pushing Grimmjow aside, Ichigo picks up the hidden pieces. “I guess neither of us cheated.”
He hands a piece to Grimmjow, then fits together the final edge.
After a moment’s hesitation, Grimmjow finishes the puzzle. It’s a dark still life portrait of a vase with a variety of flowers on a dark background, likely meant to be a red curtain draped over a table and wall. It’s horrible and Ichigo already wants to break it apart and send it to Karin.
“I still won,” Grimmjow says.
“No, I finished all my pieces first. I won,” Ichigo replies. Even as he says it, he connects where Grimmjow’s logic is. He smacks himself on the forehead. “Shit. Yeah, you won.”
“Exactly. All the edge pieces went in first. You were the center and I was the edge, that’s what we decided at the start.” He puffs his chest out, standing tall in the dim dining room.
Ichigo has little choice but to concede defeat. His own kindness cost him the race. It’s not the first time he has slipped up around Grimmjow. He doubts it will be the last time. His face creases with a grin. “Well played. Thank you for doing this puzzle with me. Next time, I’m going to win though - and I won't use the box.”
For some reason, Grimmjow blushes. He twists his face away and huffs. “Don’t mention it, Kurosaki.”
“Okay, Jaguarjaquez,” Ichigo teases. He chuckles when he sees the faint hint of red crest Grimmjow’s ears.