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There’s something oddly peaceful in coming back home after a whole day of work, exhausted and in a mood to do nothing but sit down for an hour and rest, and not have to duck under an unwelcome dropkick aimed at his face with prejudice, meant to ‘train his reflexes’ via a badly broken nose if he’s too exhausted to dodge in time. It astonishes Ichigo still, sometimes.
But it’s so nice, especially when he comes back utterly exhausted after getting ran through the paces several times over at college—sometimes it’s so hectic, he almost misses all the life-threatening world-saving shenanigans of his high school years.
Almost.
The peace at home doesn’t mean it’s quiet, though. He doesn’t think he could deal with quiet, after everything. The insidious kind of exhaustion connected with the sheer amount of work his university throws at him on the daily basis is uncomfortably familiar, too. It was so powerful, once upon a never, that it drowned out the deepest of despair, and its prickle brings back those memories.
Sometimes, especially on days like these, he still doesn’t feel quite right enough. Quite real enough. Sometimes, the ghosts of the past haunt him more persistently than others. Sometimes he wakes up screaming, and others he silently drowns in cold sweat, too haunted to make a sound.
Sometimes he can’t even force himself out of bed, but days that bad have become mercifully few.
He toes off his shoes on autopilot, hangs his coat; walks into the localized chaos of Grimmjow and Karin arguing over the TV remote just in time to witness Yuzu snatch the remote from under their noses. Karin uses the distraction to put Grimmjow in a headlock and he lets her, flailing in faux-defeat.
Ichigo says his hellos, gives Grimmjow a quick kiss to soothe his not-really-but-let’s-pretend-it-was-bruised pride, and leaves them to continue bickering as he makes his way to the kitchen. Kisuke is there, hat off and a headband keeping his fluffy hair off his face as he turns a chunk of meat into very thin slices with surgical precision. The kitchen counters are strewn with bowls of noodles, tofu, cut vegetables and meat, and soup bubbles on the stove in the big pot.
Sukiyaki today, then.
“Welcome back, Ichigo-kun,” Kisuke says without looking up. Ichigo walks up to him for a brief kiss before he’s shooed away. “Be a dear and go refresh yourself. And tell Grimmjow to come help me instead of courting collateral damage on your way.”
Ichigo chuckles. “I will, I just wanted to say hello.”
“Hello,” Kisuke says. “Dinner will be ready soon. Ah, and Ichigo-kun?”
Ichigo turns around briefly. “Yeah?”
“If Yuzu volunteers to go instead, don’t let her.”
Ichigo chuckles and shakes his head. “Very adamant about it I see.”
Kisuke merely nods. “She’s a like you, after all. She forgets girls her age should worry about school and boys and not at all housekeeping.”
“I don’t worry about boys,” Ichigo says with a small grin. “I know mine can handle themselves.”
Kisuke’s laughter sees him off as he passes the living room again, sends Grimmjow to the kitchen to help and tells Yuzu to stay, because ultimately he understands both what Kisuke implies and that he’s correct. That for years Ichigo wasn’t a brother to his sisters, but a father, mother, and the housekeep, while their actual father lazed about outside his work and occasionally used him as a punching bag under the guise of training, and that was tame compared to all the supernatural goings-on.
It's been years and sometimes it still haunts him—more than on a regular day, anyway.
Sometimes, he still wakes up terrified that everything around is dead—
“Ichi-nii,” Yuzu calls, and he snaps out of it to look at her. Her smile is almost genuine when she looks at him, but she’s never been that good at masking her worry. “Are you okay?”
“Tired,” he says instead, opting for the middle of the road, a half-truth and not-quite-lie. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
And off he goes to wash his face and change into homewear while he’s at it, and maybe it takes longer than he initially assumes because by the time he’s out, everything is already set up and the soup is already boiling away with fresh ingredients in it.
He goes to sit down between Kisuke and Grimmjow, across from the twins, and feels a little less like death warmed over when Grimmjow puts his head on Ichigo’s shoulder.
“How was the project?” Grimmjow asks, passing Ichigo the plate. He’s referring to the one he spent freaking out over whole last week.
“I pulled through,” Ichigo says, taking the plate so he can put some dishes on it, and then in the pot. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought, actually. Got a good grade so on we move.”
“I knew you’d do it.”
“Oh shush, you always say that,” Ichigo snorts. “But having done both I’ll tell you, university is more stressful than fighting someone like Aizen, or the other peanut gallery.”
“Really?” Karin asks.
“Really.”
“Why?”
Ichigo shrugs. “Because fighting is much more straightforward, and in-the-moment. Right now I’m working on something that I hope lasts me a lifetime.”
“Should’ve joined me at the fight club,” Grimmjow complains. “You’d make a good coach.”
“Maybe,” Ichigo agrees. “But I’ve done enough fighting. I don’t want to keep doing it.”
“Boring asshole.”
“If I was boring, you wouldn’t still be here.”
“Fuck off,” Grimmjow snorts. “You may be boring, but you’re mine.”
Ichigo hides a smile behind a mouthful of noodles.
He’s not allowed to help clean after dinner either, Kisuke does all that. Grimmjow keeps him grounded by using his lap as a pillow and refusing to move; dozes off as soon as Ichigo starts running his hand through Grimmjow’s hair and Ichigo doesn’t have it in him to push him off. Karin and Yuzu set up with homework, so from his spot he helps them with biology, and when Kisuke returns from the kitchen, he helps them with math. Grimmjow has an iron grip around his waist, curled around his lap, and he turns on the TV to watch some anime to the background chatter of his sisters doing their homework, and he’s starting to thaw and feel alive again.
Of course, this is when the doorbell rings, and it’s Ichigo who goes when the sudden noise jolts Grimmjow into wakefulness and cussing as he sits up and frees him.
It’s Inoue behind the door, paper bag full of fresh buns and pastries in hand on her usual bi-weekly visit on her way from work. That, in itself, is normal, and often welcome.
The person behind her makes Ichigo freeze, though; shining green eyes peering at him over Inoue’s shoulder and suddenly all he can think about looking at Ulquiorra, all he can remember, is the man before him, terrifying and moonlit and turning to ash dying, and it’s all Ichigo’s doing—
It didn’t happen like this, not in everyone else’s memory. But it did in Ichigo’s, and it left a mark imprinted somewhere deep in his chest, and it flares on days like this, knocks him right off balance just as he was finding his footing.
They notice, of course. It’s not the first time he gets weird around Ulquiorra either, and they get it, so Inoue pushes the bag of goodies in his arms, tells him to rest and to pass the hellos to the others and she’ll drop by for tea some other time. Ulquiorra gives Ichigo a polite nod and he manages to return it, and then they’re going, and Ichigo can close the door and blink away the memory of the first time he’s ever killed a person.
He hates days like these.
He puts the paper bag on the table, and steals a melon bread.
“I’m going to bed,” he declares, and it’s really early, but at this point he doesn’t care anymore. Kisuke and Grimmjow exchange worried glances he doesn’t miss. He ruffles Kisuke’s hair, because he’s the closest. “Don’t hurry for my sake, I just need to lay down.”
And he does. Changes into his pajamas and flops face-first in the pillow, and just lays there for who-knows-how-long. It smells a little like him, and a little like them and a lot like the fabric softener brand they use.
Grimmjow comes back first, smelling faintly of dish soap—Kisuke cooked, and so it was his turn to wash the dishes—and carelessly changes into his pajamas in full view of Ichigo. He sure appreciates the show, and he appreciates it even more when Grimmjow crawls under the sheets and wraps tightly around him. Ichigo almost goes fully limp when his muscles finally relax, because here, in this room that nobody but the three of them can enter, there’s a sense of safety that doesn’t exist anywhere else.
Kisuke comes by shortly after, already changed into his sleeping yukata. He burrows under the comforter, moves Ichigo’s arms around him this and that way until he’d decided that this is comfortable enough for him.
It’s a cool, light sensation, for a soul to touch human body, but it’s familiar in a way that’s since brought comfort to Ichigo, Ichigo’s body is living flesh and bone and blood and he can’t set it aside.
“Bad day after all?” Kisuke says more than asks, and Ichigo only nods. “Want to talk about it?”
“It’s the usual, really,” he promises. “Too tired to brush the memories off. Seeing Ulquiorra—”
He huffs, frustrated, and buries his face in Kisuke’s hair. Grimmjow pats his side.
“Nobody even remembers that.”
“You do remember that,” Kisuke says. “It doesn’t make it any less real if it’s just you. It happened and it haunts, and I loathe that you must shoulder more than you should have, but it was real, Ichigo. It was real, and you saved us.”
“Then why do I feel like it’s not enough?”
“Because it takes time to recover from the wounds on the heart and mind,” Kisuke tells him. “Years from then and years from now.”
“Don’t forget what you did,” Grimmjow grumbles into Ichigo’s neck, pressing himself more comfortably against his back. “Fucking throwing miracles left and right like it was the obvious thing to do and did the impossible like three different times.”
“I did what I had to—”
“Greater men would’ve failed,” Kisuke tells him. “Greater men had failed.”
“I know,” Ichigo says.
“Good,” Grimmjow tells him, and bites his neck sending shivers down his spine. “Because you’re neat.”
“Neat?!” he squawks. “Is ‘neat’ the best you got?!”
He feels Grimmjow grin against his skin. “I said what I said.”
“You are quite neat indeed,” Kisuke, the little shit, agrees. Ichigo groans.
“You’re incorrigible, both of you.”
“We love you, is all,” Kisuke says breezily, a cheeky twinkle in his eyes barely visible in what streetlight manages to pass through the curtains.
“ Incorrigible .”
“And you wouldn’t have us any other way,” Grimmjow says.
“No, I wouldn’t,” Ichigo agrees. “But you know what?”
“What?”
“I love you, too. Both of you.”
And he does.
It makes his heart feel so full, it makes him feel like he could do anything. He always fought for people he loved, after all. Felled gods, shattered time, been through hell and back more times than he could count. Been fighting the demons that took root in his own mind one at a time for years, ever forward. And he’s not okay, he knows it. The nightmares persist—but so does he. Day after day he’s learning to live, learning to be happy and reap the rewards of his deeds.
Part of him still looks over his shoulder every time, still in disbelief that it’s all over, that it’s been over twice and for years. Part of him is still expecting doom around every corner, in disbelief that all he now ever worries about are things someone like him should worry about, and nothing more; anniversaries and dates with his boyfriends and grocery and tests and work practice and if Yuzu’s new boyfriend really is shady or is Ichigo just overthinking.
And moments like these most of all; Grimmjow pressed against his back, face buried in his shoulder, hollow mask digging into his skin when he turns; Kisuke nestles in his arms relaxed in a way that seemed impossible before, a genuine little smile on his lips. Karin and Yuzu in the other bedroom safely asleep. The memory of his mother, avenged and honored. Everyone else he’s grown to care for through the course of all this.
It was worth it, for them. For this.
And tomorrow he’ll wake up, and keep fighting and loving, and he will not be alone.