Note: I'm reading Bleach again. I always forget how superior it is to literally all its peers. Don't fight me, I'm right.
Few things please him more than a perfectly polished bar. He loves the gentle ripples of an angel step grain, the complex knots of burl, and the unpredictable web of spalting. This particular bar is a long stretch of deep crimson cherry. It glows under the recessed lighting above and when those are flipped off for the night, he has a fleeting moment alone in the darkness to watch the flickering fluorescents on the outside window ricochet off the varnish. The entire place smells of the bleach he uses to mop the floors and bathrooms but the bar is a vision. A goddess.
Tonight he is uneasy. Restless. It's Tuesday. The knot of anxiety in his gut is both delicious and terrible. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays always leave him on the very edge of sanity. He supposes this doesn't leave much time for rational thought but he is past rational thought and burns through an entire pack of cigarettes before midnight.
Rational thought was left on the blacktop along with shards of her skull. Rational thought was but a remnant on the bottom of his boots whose rubber soles denied her blood a seeping presence. He'd seen the bloody boot prints mopped from the linoleum floor of the hospital and wondered if they used bleach.
The man on the barstool watches him closely. His bright ginger hair clashes with the yellow halogens in the recesses. He adjusts the napkin under his whiskey neat. Even if he'd ordered ice, Grimmjow thinks he'd serve him neat anyway. Just because.
"It's Tuesday," the man says.
"And?" he snaps exactly as harsh as he means to. The ginger man watches him idly before downing the remainder of his whiskey.
"Nothin'," he mutters. The ginger man has a gold band on his hand and it pisses Grimjoww off. He leaves and the door swings shut behind him ushering in a blast of cold, wet air.
Her boots leave tracks across the floor. Mostly rainwater and oil from the road. She's always been one for dramatics and the silver buckles and hardware shine even in the low lighting. Her pants are tight-fitting utilitarian ballistic nylon. He knows they're perfectly suited to what she spends all day doing but damn if they don't look great on her. Everything looks good on Neliel. And she knows it.
Her glossy green curls are pinned back in a tight braid that doesn't budge an inch when she pulls her helmet – that helmet – off her head. He wants to beg her to buy another. Anything other than the helmet with the airbrushed rams skull on it – the one that didn't protect her from a goddamn thing. But if he brings up the helmet he'll have to go through everything all over again and he doesn't want to fuck with any of that. Not on a Tuesday. Sunday, he tells himself. Always Sunday.
"Vodka," she says, setting the helmet he hates on the bar he loves. He purses his lips but brings her the vodka in a clean glass. She doesn't move to drink it – she never does. She can't. This is one thing she never forgets in the long string of days that is the rest of her life. Sometimes he wonders what her bedroom must look like now. Was it covered in a thousand sticky notes telling her what she can and can't do? Was his name scrawled on any of them?
Most days the answer to that question was no. Because if Nel ever bothers to put his name on one of her reminders, he knows that will be the last day he ever sees her. Sometimes he wishes she would. Most often he hates himself for being grateful she doesn't.
Grateful? What a funny word.
Greedy.
She comes into his bar because she remembers The Before. Her memories of him are of the years they spent in love. She remembers the way he took his time and chased after her even when they both knew she was better than him. The disparity is worse for him now, of course. He carries all of the weight alone.
Greedy.
Grimmjow leaves her to her glass of vodka and wipes down the bar. The rag leaves everything perfect. He stares hard at the grain and frowns at the angel steps. When he glances back up Neliel is still at the other end of the bar watching him. Her gaze is electrifying and he doesn't speed up his closing routine at all. He likes it when she watches.
When everything shines and smells of bleach and lemon oil, Nel leaves her untouched glass of vodka on the bar and slides off her stool. Her boots have dried and leave no marks on the polished concrete floor. He absolutely cannot help the way he watches her go until the door swings shut behind her.
She leaves the helmet on his couch and is naked from the waist up by the time they reach the edge of his bed. Her bare breasts press against his chest and his hands finally get the handful of her ass in the nylon pants he's been wanting since she walked into the bar. Curls of her hair stick to her neck and his lips.
Getting her boots off is a chore. So many eyelets and buckles. She watches him struggle with cruel amusement. Her skin is smooth and smells of sweat and her hands vaguely carry the scent of oil. Neliel's bike had always been an extension of her person. After the accident he'd expected her to give it up but no. She bought a new bike but kept the helmet.
She is warm and he can't get enough. An army of words fight for life. I love you. I'm sorry.
This is all my fault.
I can't take it back and I'm sorry.
Nel lets him take her on her back. She doesn't push at his shoulders or make a show of dominance. Tonight she's passive and lets him take more than he deserves. When she kisses him it's sweet in the way only something rarely tasted can be. Like raw honeycomb she fills his mouth and chest with a stickiness that threatens to choke and consume. He loves it.
When he shoves off her, she follows him and rolls to her side. He peels the hair from her shoulder and she smiles. Gods she is beautiful. The scar that mars her face from hairline to cheek has done nothing to dim her beauty. He traces the lines of her body with the tips of his fingers. Her skin reacts and he's reminded of the angel step grain of his bar. She is flawless.
Grimmjow opens his mouth and ruins it.
"I fucked someone else," he blurts.
Neliel blinks. "What?"
"I don't even know her name." He watches her watching him and recognizes the shadow that falls over their bed like a suffocating blanket of smoke. He's seen it before and he is relieved.
Her mouth opens and then closes. She rises from the bed in a silent rage and throws her clothes back onto her body. He halfheartedly follows her to the door only to lose his breath when she spins around to pummel him in the gut with her boots. The next thing he feels is the sting of a slap on his face.
"Fuck you, Grimm," she hisses. Nobody slams a door like Nel.
Grimmjow stares at the door for a long moment before realizing she's left her helmet on his couch. A full three minutes passes before she storms back through the door – fully dressed, buckled, and zipped – and snatches the helmet up. The door slams a second time and only seconds later he hears her bike roar to life.
This is good. He's done the right thing. She deserves to know. He deserves more than a slap. If she one day wants to draw and quarter him, he will let her and with a final gasp of air, he'll thank her.
He doesn't always do the right thing, though. Some days he never says a word about the nameless woman he fucked in the bar after a particularly ugly fight. Instead, he tells Neliel how much he loves her and how lucky he is that she spares him three nights out of the week. She smiles and kisses him and tells him he's an idiot and she'd give him more if she had the time.
Sometimes it's too hard to think of that day at all. The one where they fought and he left and found another woman who demanded less of him. The day when it rained and rained and she lost control of her bike and left her blood and ability to make new memories smeared all over the blacktop.
She doesn't remember that part, though. Nel doesn't have any memories of the hours just before the accident. She only remembers the years before. The ones they spent in recklessly in love and only fought about silly things. Never about anything that mattered.
On the days he tells her he feels halfway decent about himself – ignoring the bits where he always fucks her and kisses her first – and tells himself he's done the right thing.
He isn't sure how much bad karma he's building up knowing that when she shows up in his bar on Thursday he'll serve her vodka she won't drink before bringing her back here for sex and whispered words between lovers. He won't tell her on Thursday. He never tells her twice in one week.
Maybe Neliel would do them both a favor and write herself a sticky note this time. Maybe that would be an end to his delicious misery.
Or maybe Nel was like him. Maybe she was at home with a pen in her hand and a sticky note on her wall ready to tell herself the truth but can't. Maybe she still loves him too much to take this small thing away from herself.
Maybe Grimmjow and Neliel enjoy hell.