Summary: AU She looks at him and can't feel that they could be any further apart. But under the same sun, she begins to understand looks can be deceiving. Two-shot
Author Notes: The timeline in this story's a bit tricky. This was originally intended to be a one-shot, but my stupid mind keeps telling me I can't leave this piece as it is.
You were the prince
Sixteen and she's still a foolish girl.
She has known him since they were children, so she continues to wonder why Grimmjow Jeagerjaques does not consider her a friend anymore.
He is a bit of a rebel, wild and uncontrollable. Inoue Orihime is a benevolent girl who never gets in trouble and instead is praised for her acts of kindness. She is the near opposite of him. Of course he wouldn't care to think of her as a friend. They have both grown apart.
But it doesn't stop her from trailing the blue-haired boy after school.
"What do you want, princess?" he asks, the palms of his hands resting on the cool hard surface of the desk as he leans back against the edge of its wooden surface. The corner of his shirt is wrinkled, but Grimmjow has never been one to care for appearances.
"What do you think of me?" When she asks, her voice is so vivid and soft, a stark contrast from his deep and low tone.
He stares at her as if she was an idiot, but quickly descends to chuckles and amused looks. "Why do you care?"
Orihime cannot find the words to answer.
Grimmjow breaks the silence, sighing. He stands from where he was leaning, walks towards the orange-haired girl and rubs her hair till it is slightly messy near the bangs. She jolts at the sudden contact, but there is little time to ponder. His hands are slipped into his jean's pockets and she can sense his want to leave.
"Stay safe, princess. The streets aren't good for goody-girls like you after dark." Then he walks off, in that sauntering manner of his. He was never one for pleasantries.
"You too…" she almost whispers, but keeps the word sealed in her mouth, picks up her bag, and steps out into the cold streetlights and hurling winds. She resists the urge to wrap her arms around her chest as the wind whips her cheeks until they are a pale pink.
It snows around this time of the year, and secretly, she has these hidden urges to simply fall back against the snow to wave her arms up and down like she used to as a child. She fills her head with the possibility, but hesitates when her noses begins running like there's no tomorrow. Cursing silently, she realizes that she has forgotten her coat at home when she was running to school late.
And, it was much too dark anyway.
Before she can turn any further, she feels the back of a hand pressed against her cheek.
"Wear this idiot," and she knows who it is before even turning her head to see Grimmjow's dark jacket thrust in front of her face. Snow is falling on his hair, and in the cold light of the moonlight, he looks normal.
"Thanks," she stutters, "but what about you?"
He looks at her as if she's a weird alien. And she knows even the moonlight cannot hide Grimmjow's blunt personality. "Whatever. If you don't get your ass home, you're going to feel a hell of a cold tomorrow princess." And just like that, he disappears into the distance.
She wraps herself around the jacket, her only barrier against the cruel breeze. Orihime realizes that Grimmjow calls her princess, but cannot remember the instance when it started. The walk back home is not as scary as Grimmjow claims, but Orihime was never one to be cowardly. She remembers being scared of the dark, once upon a time.
Now there are other, much scarier, things in the world.
A year later Orihime is rushing across the snow, her boots barely protecting her from the harshness of winter. She is almost late and she'd rather if she wasn't. The wind is still there, and she swears it's going the opposite direction of her.
She is almost at the school. But as she loosens the red scarf across her neck, she catches Grimmjow with a female standing near the side of the school. Orihime quickly notes that it is a pretty female, with a cute face and a wonderful body. They are very close in distance and Grimmjow's stare has never been stronger. It feels as if the two of them are enclosed in their own world, one where Orihime can never enter.
Riiiinnnnnnggg!
Half-heartedly, Orihime walks back to her classroom, the second time she's been late this week.
She sits down with a flustered smile, waves to Ishida who is always concerned about her. It's okay, he can't tell. When she reaches her desk, she feels a finger poke her shoulder. She turns and sees Ichigo, looking at her silently. Orihime smiles again, but his worried gaze does not change. The girl faces the front again and for the rest of the period she does not dare stare at the orange-haired boy sitting behind her.
When the lunch bell rings, Orihime lets out a huge sigh. She's done with half of the day, and only has half left to deal with. With lunch box snug in her hands, she walks down the long tiled path of the school café.
Kuchiki Rukia waves her hands and Orihime finds herself waving her own hands as well and soon, she's laughing, frantic smiles are flashed, and sloppy exchanges are made before she makes her way to the dark-haired female's table. Rukia has only been here for a month, but Orihime feels as if she has made another special friend.
Her eyes catch of his blue hair as he stalks across the café and she can't help but wonder if she has lost a friend in exchange.
"Are you okay, Orihime-san?" asks Rukia, her language always layered with modesty and manners. The black-haired girl picks up a piece of bread with her delicate fingers and takes a bite, slowly.
"Yes," says Orihime, even if it is not the truth. But that is not Inoue Orihime's personality and so for the remaining time that she has for lunch, Orihime proceeds to talk about bizarre machines and monsters she thinks will take over the world in the next ten years.
She sees him sleeping under the tree's embrace, safe from the sun's sharp rays. His eyes are closed in silent serenity and it almost feels as if they are children again. But before she can find the courage to close the distance between the two of them, his eyes flutter open.
They narrow, the light blue turning a shade darker. No that's nonsense, she tells herself, eyes don't change color. Her words do nothing to help stable that cold fear she feels snaking through her chest.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, his words dripping with venomous sarcasm. Her heart burns, wishing he would use that relaxed tone with her instead. Anything but—
"Going away yet?" he taunts.
She wants to open her mouth and protest, but when she finally tries to speak, she finds herself silenced by the look of his eyes. Orihime sees the bitterness of blue.
"Go away," he says, so nonchalant that in a corner of her heart, a little orange-haired girl begins to cry.
Orihime was eight when she first seen hair that blue, or that spiky for that matter. When she confronted the owner of said hair, he proceeded to yell in front of her face and threaten to tell her mommy that she was actually an alien if she didn't shut her mouth.
She cried a bucket of tears that day.
And he being a boy of only nine that didn't know how to comfort a little girl felt really guilty. He proceeded to tell her that it was embarrassing to cry and that if she didn't stop crying hollowed monsters would come out and swallow her soul.
Poor Orihime was both sad and terrified.
The blue-haired child scratched his head in frustration, never in life having to deal with such a nuisance, which at the time, was caused by his own loud mouth. From walking up and down the little sand hill in the sandbox to hanging upside down with his hands, he finally conceded to leading the orange-haired girl to rest against the trunk of the willow tree.
"Rest there. I'll keep watch if the hollow monsters come out. My brother tells me that they come out around this time," he says.
And he did do that, even when she was tired of crying and slept for a good two hours. The boy's shoulders sagged and his eyes threatened to close, but he never did stop with his foolish watch for imaginary monsters. His brother came to pick up him. He said his good-byes grudging, only after making sure she was no longer crying.
It was only when the clock ticked five that Orihime's brother had arrived to pick up her that she released she forgot to ask for the boy's name.
But it still happened. She met Grimmjow in that little kiddy's playground.
-----
Five red ladybugs flew in the air that morning, fluttering their polka-dotted wings in the summer heat. She could feel the mist of the hose sticking to her cheeks and she gladly welcomed the cool feel of the water against her skin. Her toes sank in the wet earth and the twelve-year old her waved her arms on the grass.
"What are you doing?" asked an indignant voice.
When she willed herself to wake from her half-state of sleep, Orihime saw the soft blue of Grimmjow's eyes looking down upon her in amused disgust. Strapped in his karate clothes, she realized that he'd just come back. His brother takes him down to his karate classes every Sunday where he sparred with his rival, some orange-haired boy (she would later know as Kurosaki Ichigo).
"Just thinking," she says and when she sits up and moves so he can sit down, he doesn't reject her offer only state that his brother will kill him if his clothes get dirtied. It was only a matter of minutes before Orihime successfully convinced the boy to step into the mud.
And that day, Grimmjow was smiling so brightly she wondered if he could have outshone the sun.
------
The numbers pass by quickly and Orihime's soon reached her fifteenth birthday. The balloons are filling the room, so much that all she can see are bright red, blue, and yellow. The cake sits idly in the center of the maroon table, the icing a gleaming white.
Grimmjow's sitting idly on the couch, lazily flipping the channels through the remote. "So when are the people coming?" When a balloon crawls over to his vicinity, he uses his index finger to swat it away. "Goddam, what's with the balloons when you're turning fifteen?"
"Language. And, my brother wanted to put them there for me," she says, holding onto the end of a balloon, "They're not that bad, right?"
His hand lingers on the top of a bright blue balloon, the static of the television irritably loud in her ears. She realizes that she isn't looking at his face, but eventually, the silence shatters when he laughs. Orihime tilts her head and stares into those icy blue eyes. They aren't mocking her. A smile makes its way to his mouth, a rare instance for the moody teenager.
"No, they aren't."
Though, for the rest of the birthday party, Grimmjow is silently alone and while she noticed that, she hadn't dared approach him.
Spring burns in her cheeks a bitterness she's never known. The seventeen year Orihime is still frozen at Grimmjow's words.
"W-What?" she chokes out, nearly incomprehensible. He looks at her, but turns away his head so she can't see that non-caring look in his face.
"Grimmjow?" she asks, hesitant and different from her usual outgoing self. Her eyes soften as she remembers the first flakes of snow falling last winter. "Are you okay?"
He doesn't respond for a long time and when she gathers the courage to walk up to an angle where she can see his face, she sees his eyes closed in quiet serenity. A feeling in her chest pushes her to sit beside him under the tree, and she does. It's almost as if she was guarding him now, as he slept, their roles reversed.
He wakes up soon enough and when he sees the close proximity of them, he is not amused.
"I'm going," he says, a slow drawl, walking away in a steady pace.
"I miss you," she says sadly.
Grimmjow freezes in his walk, but he doesn't turn back to face her melancholy face. She watches until his back fades into the background of the old building.
Their interests had long diverged. She figures it was natural, that they'd drift apart.
Summer cruises by. She's going to college so this is the last summer she has at her hometown before, as her friends like to say "get the hell out of here."
The cicadas drone in her ears in as she sits along the wet grass, anticipating the loud of firecrackers bursting into the air. She hugs her knees tightly, feeling the cool air of autumn threatening to roll by.
"One more week before you're going, right?" says Rukia, placing a cool can of soda against her cheeks. The orange-haired girl nods her head, accepting the drink. The soda tab is snapped open and before she knows it, the fireworks are at their loudest. She plugs her fingers in her ears, hating the loud noise. But the sight is so beautiful she knows it was worth it.
Before she knows it, the suitcases are packed. Her room is an empty representation of her life. Everything that feels of her is packed away. Her brother's sad, but she'll be back. Ishida, Chad, and Rukia are leaving next week. They'll be there to see her leave at the airport, though.
The car ride there is long and strenuous, but somehow she's feeling more nervous than she did in her whole life. College is a whole new experience that she willing stepped out of her world to feel.
"We'll have yearly meets," concludes Ishida, tilting his glasses just at the right angle so that people could never see his expression. But she hasn't been friends with the black-haired male for nothing.
Ichigo stares at her softly, his gaze speaking depths. "Have fun." She realizes the sadness layered in the depth of his voice so she grabs his hand, heaves a light breath, and simply smiles.
Because that's all she can do.
Chad and Orihime have promised to talk regularly. It won't be too much of a difficulty anyway, for both were in a volunteer group that helped homeless animals.
Rukia's clinging onto her shoulder and crying. She was always so petite and delicate, but always acting strong even when everything was against her. Knowing that, Orihime can't help but cry with her. They promise to talk and write, always.
They say their good-byes and she can still feel their eyes on her back as she walks into the terminal.
Good-bye Grimmjow.