Pairing: Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez x Ichigo Kurosaki
Music: Follow You Down, by the Gin Blossoms
Word count: ~ 1300
Rating: T
Prompt 47: Every You, Every Me
Ever since he was young, Ichigo has always been able to feel possibilities. Not in the way that most people would think, keeping his options open and thinking ahead. Rather, his way of feeling possibilities is to know when they split.
It happened for the first time when he was little more than a toddler, playing on the street in front of his house with a shiny red ball his father had given him. It rolled into the street, and Ichigo went after it.
The car had good brakes, and he returned to the sidewalk none the worse for wear.
Somewhere else, somewhen else, the car's brakes hadn't been quite as good, and Ichigo Kurosaki never lived beyond the age of four.
From then on, that feeling of possibilities was a constant companion. Whenever Ichigo turned right, somewhere else he turned left. A thousand different universes, a thousand different choices in a single day, and Ichigo could trace them all. It was like a constant, low-level buzz in the back of his mind, choices made and changed, different words leading to different outcomes and a million separate lives all coexisting in his head.
Somewhere, Ichigo Kurosaki recognized a ghost and saved his mother.
Somewhere, Ichigo Kurosaki couldn't break a spirit binding, and never gained Rukia's powers.
Somewhere, Ichigo Kurosaki chose to protect the humans and no one else, and fought side by side with Aizen.
Somewhere, Ichigo Kurosaki met Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez months before the first invasion.
Somewhere, Ichigo Kurosaki never met Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez until the end.
Everywhere that it was possible, Ichigo Kurosaki fell in love with a blue-haired Espada, and the universes trembled.
The first time they fight, there are three outcomes.
In the first, Grimmjow grows tired of playing around with the humans and kills Ichigo, then lays waste to the other shinigami before they can be warned. Aizen wins the war because Soul Society is still reeling from the loss.
In the second, Ichigo loses control of his Hollow completely and kills Grimmjow. Aizen's plans are set back and Soul Society wins, imprisoning Aizen and Ichigo both, as they are too dangerous to allow free.
In the third, where Ichigo can feel all of these possibilities in his head, Grimmjow is called away before their fight can finish, but all Ichigo can see for months on end is blue, blue eyes and a feral grin. He goes out at night, haunts the area where they had their battle, and meets the Sexta in the ruins of the shattered street.
They shout insults at each other for a while, both too battered to truly fight but not about to let that stop them, and somehow end up sitting on the roof of a building overlooking the river.
Ichigo doesn't even want to think about all of the possibilities that will come out of this.
But, somehow, it's all right. Ichigo's not always a hothead. He can listen, and talk, and he does with Grimmjow, who is like a strange, battered reflection of himself, if he had had to shape himself without anyone around to protect. Grimmjow seems to feel it, too, because after the initial hostilities, he's actually rather mellow, if in a bitingly sarcastic way. That's fine, too, because Ichigo can counter and parry with the best of them, and Grimmjow actually appreciates the fact that everyone in Ichigo's immediate vicinity is completely insane—probably because he feels the same.
In one universe, the night ends on a sour note, an offhand comment re-sparking the flames of enmity that were just dying down.
In this one, Ichigo feels that fire change into something a little different, and kisses Grimmjow while the river stretches like a shard of midnight sky below them.
They're not quite enemies but not quite friends, lovers to make Romeo and Juliet's courtship look straightforward and simple. Grimmjow still hates shinigami—from whose ranks he quite clearly excludes Ichigo, on the grounds that there's a Hollow living in his head and he used to be human—and Ichigo still has to stop Aizen, but they get on well enough.
Well.
Mostly.
It's a little bit more than that, actually, but Ichigo's keeping that part to himself.
And then he isn't, because Aizen launches a preemptive strike against Karakura with Grimmjow and Ichigo caught directly in the middle.
Somewhere, Grimmjow flees.
Somewhere, Grimmjow stands with the Espada.
Somewhere, he fights Ichigo in a last-ditch attempt to keep them both out of the battle, and Aizen wins.
Somewhere, Soul Society wins and Grimmjow is captured.
Somewhere, he escapes.
And in a thousand universes, in this one, in far more than Ichigo can really keep track of, Grimmjow stands shoulder-to-shoulder with him and they bring Aizen down.
And in a thousand universes, in this one, in far more than Ichigo can really keep track of, Grimmjow is struck down, and falls amidst the broken buildings even as Ichigo delivers the fatal blow to Aizen.
Ichigo is at his side before Aizen can even hit the ground. In so many possibilities, he kneels next to the Espada, his lover, his everything, and holds him. They call to him, all of this Ichigos to all of the Grimmjows, begging for him to hold on, to come back.
There are possibilities, and Ichigo knows that Grimmjow will die in every one of them.
But Ichigo in this universe is who he is because of his choices, choices that the other versions of him have not had to make. Some are softer, some are harder, but none of them are this Ichigo, and this Ichigo is the one who will save Grimmjow from his fate.
It's simple, really. He takes a hold of all those other flickering possibilities, those universes on the verge of collapse, and he drags. All those traces of power, all those dregs of energy, all those Grimmjows, are separately not enough for any Grimmjow to live.
But together, combined into one and shaped by this Ichigo, they are. He drags them to him, pours them through a press of lips straight into this Grimmjow's soul, and recreates him from a thousand shattered possibilities.
That's the part that's not so simple, because Ichigo feels it when those others die. He feels his own anguish at losing Grimmjow reflected back at him countless times from countless universes, but it's worth it.
This Grimmjow is still alive, and he'd suffer any amount of pain for that.
When it's over—when Ichigo has collapsed, panting, over Grimmjow's battered body, his own form just as soundly beaten—when that's done, there are no words of love between them, even though they both feel it.
There's no need.
"I felt that," Grimmjow tells him instead, wheezing slightly. His mouth tastes like blood, but Ichigo's become far too used to that taste lately to let it stop him from kissing the Sexta again. When they part, Grimmjow looks at him with strange seriousness and asks, "What was it?"
There's too much to explain, and not enough time to do it in when there are still rebels to hunt down and there's still cleanup to oversee. So instead, Ichigo leans down to brush another copper-flavored kiss across Grimmjow's lips, and whispers, "Every you, every me."
Grimmjow stares for a second, but Ichigo's pretty sure he understands, because his mouth tips into a crooked grin.
"Every?" he repeats. "They all—?"
He doesn't have to say it. Ichigo knows.
"Yes," he affirms. "All the ones that matter."