It's not that I want them to be miserable together, I just can't see it any other way.
Either my understanding of Ichigo as a character just completely sucks and he's flat and boring where I thought him complicated and interesting, or Kubo has chosen very badly for him. For him, and for Orihime.
Generally, Ichigo, those freudian impulses are the ones you should try to resist. (Anyone else think Orihime and young Masaki are basically the same character only Masaki is a little cooler?)
Here's something Ichigo doesn't know: When she heals him, rejecting the damage that has been done him, she can sense every wound and injury on his body.
Every cut.
Every bruise.
Every tear.
The first time he comes home from a visit to Hueco Mundo for one of the sparring sessions he insists he needs to stay sharp with more injuries than he tells her about, she is so horrified she can't breathe. He is… It isn't much but he is bleeding… there. He is torn. His hips are bruised, fingerprint-wise. His neck is bruised, choked one-handed, and under his clothes there are these bruises and reddened arcs that she quickly realizes are bites.
Protective rage floods her, and she promises herself that as soon as Ichigo is safe and sleeping, she will gather up a group of Ichigo's friends and they will kill Grimmjow Jaegerjaques for laying a hand on her husband, a good man, protector of them all.
But then she looks at his face. She sees the shame there that she expects, poorly concealed, and she sees the pain of his battered body, but there is something in him that strikes her breathless again, uncomprehending, then, worse, comprehending all too well. Ichigo looks satisfied. Ichigo looks relaxed. Ichigo looks happier than she'd seen him in months.
The moment she realizes that Ichigo hasn't been raped is the moment that her heart stops breaking for him and starts breaking for herself. She feels sick, immediately, for wishing that he had been. That's not the kind of thing she would ever wish on anybody, and it was a fate that only Ulquiorra's protection had kept her from, once, long ago.
But… If Ichigo hadn't had a choice, it wouldn't be a betrayal of the vows he'd sworn. It wouldn't be a betrayal of everything they had together. If Ichigo didn't look like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, it wouldn't be so achingly clear that she can't give him everything he needs.
She almost calls him on it, right then and there, but he has been in so much pain lately. It's been worrying her that she can't help him more. He's been anxious, unsleeping, irritable, pacing their apartment like an animal in a cage. She'd chalked it up to work stress, not understanding it for what it was, for a need unsatisfied. Work has been stressing him, that much is true, but the real problem is that she could not provide him with the release he craved.
Ichigo would not betray her lightly, and her heart breaks a little for him despite herself—how much this must have cost him, to see to his own needs at the cost of his vow. Ichigo is good and he is loyal, almost to a fault. He must hate himself right now. Possibly he hates her, too, but he certainly he must hate himself.
"So how was it?" she asks, keeping her tone dry (not wet with a flood of tears) like the only subtext is 'stupid boys.'
"Great," Ichigo replies, honestly. He is a terrible liar, and she knows that it is true. "Grimmjow's gotten a lot stronger, and I'm a little out of practice. I haven't had a workout like that in ages."
"Did he… did win?" Her voice breaks in something she hates to call hope, but that's what it is and she hates herself for it.
Ichigo grins at her, dopey. "Nah. Neither of us did, really—we both fought until we were exhausted, but I was still holding back some. Just a little though."
Right.
She swallows hard.
That's good, then. Ichigo wasn't harmed against his will. Despite her unkind, selfish thoughts, she is glad of that.
She doesn't want to picture it, the two of them, but she does, Grimmjow's hands in Ichigo's hair, not tentative like hers, not tugging only lightly the way she does but harder even than he dares ask her for. Grimmjow's body and Ichigo's touching all over. His Arrancar hierro skin touching the same places her soft human skin had.
They are healed now but there had been bruises on Ichigo's lips. They had kissed. Why? Couldn't they have done it without kissing
Ichigo always kisses her so sweetly. He doesn't bruise her lips the way Grimmjow bruised his. God, it hurts. It hurts more than she would have expected had she ever expected something like this.
Kazui's father just got… fucked by an Arrancar and all signs point to him having loved it.
Maybe it was the only time.
Just this once, an itch that needed scratching.
Something he'd needed to work out.
That's what she'd thought the first time.