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THIS ONCE, IN THIS DIM ROOM
In hindsight they shouldn’t have gone hunting for prey in the dark alleys behind the city’s clubs on New Year’s Eve.
The thing about being a denizen of the night though, was that picking up and knocking back a couple of bottles of vodka didn’t ready do much, and, after having to deal with humans and Christmas, and the late night parties and after hours shopping for weeks they needed something to take off the edge. Because, honestly, the last time they let a bad mood fester they took it out on each other, and everything and everyone around them, which, while objectively fun, was a hell of a mess to clean up. Ichigo didn’t want to be forced into moving again, and it wasn’t worth giving Grimmjow the opportunity to play around with the local population of earth’s most widespread invasive species.
They needed to get all the frustration out, let go a little, and the only way that was going to happen came filtered through the contents of one of those annoying living, breathing, talking, blood bags.
So, they grabbed a few smashed clubbers, dragged them down a shadowed alleyway and made them feel all nice while they snacked on their necks. Afterwards, they let them stumble away with hazy thoughts that, by morning, would be nothing more than the memory of being black out drunk.
Now, back in the loft they’d taken as their own with the dim light lava lamps pulsing over the pitted walls, they lay on the floor, revelling in the after effects of their own intoxication.
“I gotta tell ya something,” Ichigo said, his voice coming out a loud attempt at a whisper. “Ya can’t tell though. It’s a secret.”
Grimmjow spread his arms wide and stared up at the dancing colours on the ceiling. “Like a secret secret?”
“Yeah.”
Grimmjow turned his head to meet Ichigo’s gaze. “Isit an embarrassing one? Like when you said —”
“No. No,” Ichigo said, patting and uncoordinated palm against Grimmjow’s face, laughing when the other man growled and caught his fingers between sharp teeth. “Just listen.” Ichigo frowned, staring into Grimmjow’s eyes. “Are ya listenin’?”
Grimmjow let the fingers go. “I’m listening.”
Ichigo took a deep breath, the dramatic bastard that he was. He didn’t need to breathe. “You’re, like, blue.”
“Blue?”
Ichigo nodded. “Yeah.”
They stared at each other for a moment, letting the silence blanket them. Ichigo shuffled against the floorboards, wriggling closer and getting right up into Grimmjow’s face.
“Like really blue,” he said, aiming a finger towards one of Grimmjow’s eyes.
Grimmjow batted him away before he could touch.
“If I’m blue, then you’re fuckin’ orange,” Grimmjow pushed himself up onto his side and grabbed a strand of Ichigo’s hair.
Ichigo nodded, humming as he tracked the movement of the strand of hair still caught in the other’s grip.
“Like, I can see that. I can see my hair and,” he held his hands up in front of his face, almost smacking Grimmjow again, “hands, an’ like my legs, right? And sometimes my body, I can see, but not properly, you know? Or my face. Can’t look at that.”
Ichigo frowned, his mouth downturned and his eyes narrowed in thought.
He locked his gaze with Grimmjow’s.
“Tell me,” he said.
“What?”
Grinning, Ichigo grabbed Grimmjow’s wrist and pulled it away from his head, leaning in close until they’re almost nose to nose. “Tell me how I look? Cuz I forgot. Been a long time since I saw.”
Grimmjow glared at him. “What’re you mumbling about?”
“Mirrors. I can’t see what I look like in one, so you have to tell me.”
Scoffing, Grimmjow turned away. “The fuck I do.”
But he still saw the way Ichigo was watching him, saw the way he pouted just a little.
It was…well… Grimmjow couldn’t quite find the right word. They’d known each other a long time, and Grimmjow had seen it all. A man who tears apart pursuing mobs of hunters with nothing more than their fingers and fangs to keep a relative stranger safe when they’re injured couldn’t be called cute. And after enduring those three decades of the man’s sullen, distant mood after the last remaining link to his mortal life passed, Grimmjow had experienced the worst, the most inhospitable version of Ichigo Kurosaki the world had ever had the misfortune to see. No one had been allowed near, even the animals in the forest that he’d retreated to had fled, frightened away by the aura of death and violence which permeated the ground in the territory Ichigo had carved out for himself.
None of that stopped Grimmjow seeking him out though. Time and time again as the years went by he made the pilgrimage to that lonely place. It probably said more about Grimmjow’s stubbornness and self righteous attitude than anything else that it was he who stuck around even after Ichigo had driven everyone else away in his grief. At the time, Ichigo had owed him one thing or another. A duel, money, some arcane knowledge he processed — what it had been didn’t matter now, almost a century later — and Grimmjow wasn’t going to let him out of their deal quite so easily.
There was so much that had happened between them that it had been a long time since Grimmjow tried to assign a word to how he felt about Ichigo Kurosaki or put a label on what they were. The man was infuriating and headstrong. The things he did didn’t make sense. He went out of his way for people he didn’t know, gave more of himself to others than anyone, ever, deserved. Even Grimmjow had fallen fowl of his ability to weasel his way into the lives of those around him. They had gone from strangers to rivals to reluctant allies to friends. Though friends wasn’t quite right, it didn’t feel quite right. Didn’t encapture the way they’d drifted together and somehow stuck. It had become common knowledge that when there was one, the other couldn’t be far behind. Common enough that it caused a significant degree of nervousness and behind the back whisperings amongst the attendees at clan gatherings on the rare occasion they weren’t together. Apparently past experience had made many of their mutuals wary of accidentally getting caught up in one of their falling outs.
Grimmjow loved it.
And honestly, looking back over it, he wasn’t convinced that he would have handled all those years of immortality with quite so much grace if he had never met the red-headed man. He made forever seem that bit more interesting.
That was why, when Ichigo looked at him with that small pout and an upset frown, that Grimmjow found himself, annoyingly, wanting to do exactly what he asked of him.
So, when Ichigo said, “Please, Grimmjow?”
Grimmjow said, “Fuck you. Fine.”
He rolled over to face Ichigo, laying flat out on his back so he could look up at the other man and study him by the dim light of the streetlamps outside their window.
Ichigo knelt on the wooden floorboards beside him, watching him back, waiting.
“So?” he said, swaying slightly where he sat, leaning right in close. “How’d I look, Grimm?”
Jus’ like you always have, Grimmjow thought as he took a moment longer to figure out where to start. He took in the way the shadows moved across Ichigo’s face, the way his hair stood up because he could never wrangle it down. He saw the strength in his body and could sense the dorment righteousness and determination that simmered beneath the surface drove him to act anytime he saw something he thought was unjust.
You’re no different than you did all them centuries ago.
Powerful, dangerous, captivating...
No.
Grimmjow shook his head, pulling himself away from that line of thought. That wasn’t how it was, how it would ever be. The want for that had come and gone and he’d done all he could to leave those feelings in the past where they belonged. They were as they were and as they always had been and Grimmjow had leant the hard way not to poke and prod in the hopes he wouldn’t be ignored.
“I already told you, you’re orange,” Grimmjow said, putting his hands behind his head and turning his gaze to the ceiling to avoid staring right into Ichigo’s intense golden eyes. “Kinda like a carrot, if you need specifics. And you’re kinda pale, but you can see that for yourself and it comes with the territory, I guess. But because of that, your freckles show, did you know that?”
He felt more than saw Ichigo shake his head.
Grimmjow shrugged. “Yeah,well, you got a bunch right across your cheekbones and over the bridge of your nose, like this.” He demonstrated with his finger, tracing a line on his own face from the blue tattoo under his right eye all the way over to the one under his left. “They remind me of the stars you see up on the mountain when it’s clear, so if you remember those, then you’ll know what they look like.”
Grimmjow closed his eyes and let out an unneeded breath, the habit sill ingrained deep inside his soul. His thoughts raced as his mind conjured up more and more things he could say. The effects of the alcohol infused blood still running through his veins urged him on, and he couldn’t seem to dredge up the motivation to stop now that he had started.
“You’re sharp,” he said. “Pointed. Your face has all these angles to it and sometimes, in the dark, your eyes are shadowed and you get this look about you, like you’re far away. People notice it, you know, that aura you have, that desire for violence, you try to hide away. It interests them. I see the way the prey stares at you, whispering amongst themselves and giving you these glances they have no right giving.”
Frustrated and caught up in it all, Grimmjow let out a growl. “They don’t see what I see and they can’t understand what it’s like. I just… ”
He stopped, his words falling into silence. For a long moment, neither of the moved. Neither of them spoke.
Sounds from outside drifted in to their small, empty room. People singing, people laughing. Distant music from the clubs a few streets down. It all melded together into a mass of mortality and life, humanity celebrating the coming of another year and the ending of the last.
It wouldn’t be long now, Grimmjow realised, until the night reached its peak.
Did it matter? Should it? What was a year in the face of decades and centuries? What worth was it celebrating a section of the finite when infinity became reality?
“Grimmjow?”
The sound of his name broke though his thoughts. It was loud against the hum of the bustling city. His ears and mind were attuned to always take notice of that voice when it spoke, to alway hear it above all else.
“Give me a minute,” he said, tapping his fingers against the floorboards for something to fill the sudden absence of his thoughts. “I’m thinking. ”
He heard Ichigo shuffle closer, felt the warmth of his leg press against his arm. “That’s… that’s not it.
“What then?”
“How did you know that?” Ichigo asked, his words small and unsure, his usual confident front weathered away by too much alcohol.
Grimmjow stilled, stopped tapping and took long, deep breath. A moment and he started up again, drumming some long forgotten song into wood beneath him.
“What do you mean?” He asked, purposely ignoring the way Ichigo hovered over him.
He was so close.
“How can you tell me what I look like when you aren’t even looking.”
Grimmjow did look then, opening his eyes to meeting the intense brown gaze which, when the light was right, would reflect in the darkness and glow like molten gold.
“I don’t need to look to see you,” he said.
“Oh.” The sound was so quiet that Grimmjow almost missed it. “Grimm…”
Grimmjow shook his head and, making a dismissive sound, rolled over to face the window, watching as the shadows moved across the walls of the building opposite.
“Did you want me to finish or not?”
“There’s more?”
“Well, I could always go on about how ridiculous your hair is a bit more. And I didn’t get around to mentioning your eyes because you interrupted, and I did think so very hard about what to say about those. So yes, if you’re still insistent on me describing you, there’s more.”
“Grimm, stop.” Ichigo pressed against his back and reached over to place his hand on the floor by Grimmjow’s elbow. He lent right over, catching Grimmjow’s gaze as he hung there upside down. “I don’t need you to do that.”
It was hard to avoid a person when they were everything, when they were so near they filled an entity of someone’s vision and there was no choice but see them. Grimmjow thought it should be claustrophobic, to be caged in between a body and and arm, but it wasn’t. If it had been anyone else they’d already be dead, but Ichigo had always been different, had always made him react in ways no one else could, in ways he didn’t understand. Grimmjow didn’t want to admit he liked the other man being near, it was too close to acknowledging things he’d rather not consider.
Though it seemed, that night, his brain refused to let things like that go.
“Then what do you want from me?” Grimmjow asked.
“Nothing,” Ichigo said, disappearing from view.
A second later Grimmjow had a knee to his back and a full grow adult clambering over him.
“Careful!”
“Sorry!”
Ichigo settled down before Grimmjow and lay down on the floor with him, shifting himself around until they were face to face, their arms almost touching.
“I don’t want anything from you, Grimmjow,” Ichigo said. “Only what you already give.”
His expression was serious and held in it was a carful hope that Grimmjow would understand. Grimmjow had only seen that expression a handful of times before, and only when it came to something that mattered to Ichigo, something he would fight for until had nothing left to give.
It was…
“Why?” Grimmjow said. “You could have anyone you wanted. So many people would jump at the chance to be by your side. All you’d have to do is ask.”
Ichigo stared at him, unblinking, eyes reflecting the dim light coming in through the window behind him and shining brightly with yellow and gold.
“I’m not asking. I won’t. I’ve never wanted to and I never will.”
He reached out then, bridged the narrow gap between them to take Grimmjow’s hand in his own.
“It’s not the same as if we were human,” he said. “And I didn’t, when I was. But…”
He looked down at their joined hands, used his other hand to pull on Grimmjow’s fingers.
“I like things as they are. I don’t need anything more. For us, for forever, I think I’ll be alright if you just stay.”
Meeting Grimmjow’s gaze once more, he gave a small smile.
“I see you too, you know. I always have, ever since that day I found you.”
Me too, Grimmjow thought, but couldn’t find the words to say. Always.
“Is that…all alright?” Ichigo asked, squeezing Grimmjow’s hand, held on tight. “Is this?”
Grimmjow nodded, his thoughts still catching up, half way to thinking maybe there had been something a little extra in the blood he had consumed.
But no. He knew there hadn’t been.
“Yeah,” Grimmjow said, his voice not quite his own. He squeezed Ichigo’s hand back. “Yeah. Me too. I like us just like this, for however long we have.”
“We’re immortal, Grimm. We have a long, long time.”
“Then it won’t matter if we stay here, just for a while.”
Ichigo’s smile turned blinding and he nudged Grimmjow over, encouraging him to lay on this back so he could rest his head on his shoulder, their fingers still entwined.
“Just for a bit,” Ichigo agreed.
So that is what they did. As the crowds outside grew louder and the sky became a vision of colours and light when the New Years fireworks started to dance amongst the stars, they held onto each other.
And when the time came, and the countdown rang out to usher in something fresh and new, they listened, just this once, for this one New Year, because, although nothing had really changed, it was the start of something for them too.
They’d known each other for centuries, who knew what could happen given a few centuries more.