When Coyote Starrk sat beside Ulquiorra Cifer during Espada meetings, he thought it was hard being among Aizen Sousuke's favorites.
The others didn't understand why he'd been made Primera, and they mocked Ulquiorra for being teacher's pet.
He wasn't worthy when he'd rather sleep than fight, and Ulquiorra's nose should have been stained brown instead of white.
But he'd discovered why the two of them were uniquely placed in Aizen-sama's regard. Neither he nor Ulquiorra had a care to compete with Aizen's rule. While the others were driven personally, the two of them lacked selfish intention. Ulquiorra believed staunchly in nothingness, and while Starrk had his silent wants the pain that plagued his existence had left him numb to feeling.
He'd been anesthetized by death. Had seen it - and been the cause - so many times that it filled him up and left him dead himself.
The others may have had their enduring pride (Harribel).
Their rooted desire to do harm (Grimmjow).
Rotten despair hidden behind arrogant disdain (Nnoitra).
Voracious curiosity turned to madness (Szayel).
But he only had a solitude so poisoned that it stunned him detached. Had turned him so careless in an effort to preserve just a trace of sanity, that he no longer bothered with anything at all.
It wasn't that he'd become completely indifferent for lack of want.
Just that he'd become completely indifferent because he knew no other way to make it through life in isolation.
So even if he truly wanted (to be with others so he never had to be lonely again), he was still so deadened that it made him more in line with Ulquiorra's nihilism than it did the others' misshapen desires.
And that was the apathy that made them divine, and open to Aizen's absolute autocracy.
He favored them because their hollowness outshone the rest. Because they were devoid, and therefore free to host his greed without individual distraction.
Hollowed so vulnerably to his cruel intent.
Still, there was just one thing Starrk allowed himself that also set him apart from Ulquiorra.
The first time Aizen had approached him he'd been with the other two shinigami. Smirking in the shadow of perpetual night, his warm-colored eyes had been offset by cold cunning. Sharp and calculating, they'd pinned Starrk where he sat and implored him with promise.
Then afterward they'd birthed new promise, the night Aizen had approached him alone. Without the other two shinigami, and after Starrk had left Lilynette behind to protect her from the others.
He'd been smirking again, but for newfangled reasons when his confident advance lead Starrk into a dark corner.
Newfangled or newly-fanged was what he'd wondered when Aizen's mouth met his. As sharp as his eyes, and no less insistent in their pursuit. Commanding, unrelenting, biting.
And Starrk had felt as powerless to resist as he had the moment Aizen first asked him to join their ranks.
So he was taken back to the shinigami's private quarters, and stripped bare in haunting low-light and teasing silence. Aizen's busy mouth had said nothing over his trembling body, but his honey eyes spoke volumes when they met gray sparked like flint. They'd conveyed a silken purr, all warm and rolling to lull Starrk half-awake.
Half-awake from being half-asleep.
But he'd still been silently nervous and frightened beneath his sluggish exterior, because he'd never been with another in a way like this. Not when everyone around him wasted away before true intimacy could take hold - or when the sheer force of his destructive reiatsu during climax had been enough to put him off indefinitely.
And Lilynette. . .
Was too complicated a creation for Starrk to categorize.
But Aizen's searing stroke had been enough to pull him along despite his uncertainties. Even when Aizen spread his legs, that had never been naked and spread for another man. Even when Aizen's fingers touched him in a place he'd never been touched, only to be replaced by something more dangerously solid.
Full.
So full, he'd actually thought Aizen might fuck him complete. Rattle him dismembered and jumbled, then pound him back brand-new. Rework him or simply fill him with come, - a substance that was curiously white and reminiscent - and seal the hole in his chest.
Either way it was done, he'd thought for sure he'd be remade whole and pristine. Fucked back to life, or reborn from Aizen's release.
But it'd only leaked out of him (gone away like everything else), and then he'd realized his hollow hole might have been stretched even wider instead of closed.
Wide open and aching from Aizen's fingers, that played and gripped until Starrk had cringed.
He'd remade nothing. Just made another hole as raw and gaping as the one through Starrk's chest.
Some days after, Starrk would be seated comfortably beside Ulquiorra Cifer. With his jaw in gloved hands, he'd watch the smaller from the corner of his eye. Slowly realize that the Cuatro was neither boy nor man, but a strange creature of in-between.
Straight-backed and stiff, Ulquiorra's expression was something in-between as well. Teetering between solemn and nothing; grim mouth and expressionless eyes.
Far-off, distant, removed. So isolated as to be non-existent.
Or simply so isolated that he himself wasn't non-existent, but existing with nothing.
Starrk would stare, and quietly suggest that Ulquiorra get crazy. That he add just one spoonful of sugar to his tea. . . And he'd even offer (insincerely) to innocently instigate a fight between Grimmjow and Nnoitra, just so the others wouldn't notice.
No one will have to witness your wild side, Ulquiorra-san.
Green eyes had turned slowly, and regarded him stonily. Ulquiorra Cifer had said nothing as he brought his cup to his blackened upper lip (matched his nails), and quietly sipped his unsweetened tea.
Then Aizen had said warmly that it was difficult discussing plans when others were speaking, and his smirking eyes had been warningly penetrating.
Had conveyed silently that later, Starrk would be called to the shinigami's private quarters.
He didn't think the things Aizen did qualified as punishment or even discipline. But neither was it kind nor meaningless, when he abandoned Starrk in darkness. Made him solitary once more in inescapable obscurity - teasing him back to lonesome - before he brought him off.
Brought him back with hands that anchored- caressed, coddled, burned and conquered.
Aizen had a way of making him feel victimized and cherished all at once. Treasured as one of his favorite toys; some precious plaything that made him smile when it gasped.
Actually played back with reactive sound and a responsive touch of its own.
Starrk found he couldn't mind the teasing, even if it was intentionally aimed below the belt.
Not when he knew Aizen was capable of real cruelty, but had the sense not to utilize it here (despite how he may want to), because he still wanted Starrk in the war he waged.
The first time he'd seen Ulquiorra waiting outside Aizen's quarters (as he was leaving; adjusting his uniform and licking the corner of his mouth), he'd thought for sure that the smaller would call him trash. Not because he thought Ulquiorra might disapprove - Ulquiorra didn't care enough to begin with to disapprove, unless Grimmjow was the one involved - but because he thought Ulquiorra had abandoned them.
Left them behind to be with the human girl Aizen had captured. Taken with her unfamiliarity, and bored to indifference when it came to his own kind. The Cuatro thought he already knew it all when it came to them, and that's why Starrk felt he saw the word "trash" in Ulquiorra's gaze when it met his.
He'd been discarded as unimportant. Overlooked and thrown aside.
So he'd just licked a stray drop of white from his thumb. Sucked white from white, and dared Ulquiorra to say it.
Say it just to say something.
Because Ulquiorra's isolation was unbearably familiar; only worse because he chose it rather than it choosing him. He prefered solitude, and while Starrk thought that was something he could have used to make his own life tolerable, it was mostly just something that chilled his unusual mentality.
His damning desire to be with others when hollow weren't meant to be programmed that way.
And that's when he'd finally seen that Ulquiorra wasn't so different from the others, when he kept to himself and paid attention to nothing but his own (the same as they). It didn't have to be that he knew it all when it came to them, and that's why he ignored them in favor of the girl. Starrk had thought Ulquiorra spent too much time trying to figure out what made her tick, when he could have tried figuring out what made his comrades tick (figured out that Starrk had had a life as full of feeling as any human girl).
But then he'd realized - as he stared into Ulquiorra's disinterested eyes - that it wasn't about an arrogant know-all disposition, or misplaced curiosity, or mistaken ignorance.
He'd realized Ulquiorra simply didn't care, and finally Starrk had understood.
Because as hollow, they were predisposed to disregard one another.
Disregard one another as stepping stones, and chase longingly after the souls of humans.
And it finally made Ulquiorra no different from the other Espada who spurned him. Troubled Starrk anew, to think he was the only one left unique in a world of cruel indifference.
The only one left who wanted to care, even after he'd already succumbed to a hollow detachment.
(Or maybe neither of them were as unique as he'd thought, and he was the one suffering mistaken ignorance. . .)
One thing he did come to know with some certainty, - when Ulquiorra didn't call him trash, but remained hurtfully silent and remote all the same as he passed by Starrk to enter Aizen's quarters - was that indulging his sexuality made him no different from the one of Nihilism after all.
Because if Ulquiorra was brown-nosing, then he was deep-throating on the other end.
He'd become bitter like the others. Turned to laconic mocking after playful sarcasm.
The next time he saw Ulquiorra remove his eye, he'd asked him if Lilynette could borrow it. Had ignored the silence that overcame the room, and all the eyes turning towards him (surprised, curious, hungry).
Had stared only at one, that glowed impossibly green and reflected with conflicting vapidness.
And of course Ulquiorra had crushed his own eye in his hand, thrown its remains into the air, and said simply, "Accept that she has nothing there."
Underlying, Starrk had felt Ulquiorra really meant Accept that you have nothing.
That there is nothing here for you to gain, when one green eye stared unflinchingly into his.
He'd gone to Aizen afterward and had himself taken with urgency. Ferocious and wild in his want, and Aizen had seemed more pleased than he ever had before. Had felt truly unleashed against him (inside him), and all he'd been able to do was rock and growl like a rabid animal starved for contact.
Panting and clawing, he'd clung to the only one kind enough to lie.
The next time Ulquiorra caught him leaving, he'd felt strangely removed.
Lost in his inability to relate, reckless in his sorrow, or just dull with dependence.
And that's why he'd boldly told Ulquiorra that he'd show him why he was keeping such company with Aizen. That it wasn't so complicated, and he didn't have to hover outside Aizen's room to figure it out. Had moved closer with his uniform open, and his heavy-eyed stare rapt when telling the smaller that he'd understand so much sooner if he just let himself feel-
But that's when Ulquiorra did call him trash, - made doubly cruel with his emotionless tone, because Starrk still wasn't worth true disdain - and walked away without another word.
Sobriety had never felt so vindictive. Not when he'd gone to escape his brutal fate, just to have it thrown back in his face. Why had he been so wrongfully born to a life like this? Cursed with a sense to care when no one else did? Given the capacity to want and feel companionship, just to be surrounded by those who wanted nothing to do with it?
It was a cruel god that sent him to Hueco Mundo. That burdened him with a power others were sure to covet.
That made him contradict everything he was with a heart that wasn't even supposed to be there.
He'd crouched low to the wall and crossed his arms over his stomach. Bowed his head and felt his chin near his hollow hole, cold and waiting.
And then he'd thought, what of Soul Society and its blessed shinigami, if it could breed the likes of Aizen Sousuke, Ichimaru Gin, and Tousen Kaname?
Had concluded then that mistakes could be made anywhere. With anyone and anything. That gods were cruel even to their own (not just the monsters they warred), and he wasn't alone in torment.
So he'd gone back to Aizen's room and loved him stronger than before.
In cruel power, cruel loneliness, cruel misunderstanding and cruel fate.
Because Aizen was the cruel god who'd made him, and made cruel himself by another.
There was a night not soon after when he awoke to something against his mouth. Soft, and surprisingly warm, but too still to be Aizen's smirking, teasing lips. When he'd opened his eyes his vision swam in green, and slitted pupils made him wonder if that's why Ulquiorra and Grimmjow were so hostile (he'd heard cats were loathe to share territory).
The Cuatro sat leaning against his side; over him on slim arms to support his weight when he pressed their lips together.
And he'd been about to catch that dark upper lip between his own, when Ulquiorra spoke: "It's nothing but trying to fill the emptiness inside you with someone else's emptiness."
He'd wanted to ask why Ulquiorra would say such a thing when he was searching so desperately for something inside the girl. If it was nothing but emptiness, why'd he even bother to look?
He either had to be referencing Starrk's relationship with Aizen, or unaware that he questioned his own beliefs.
Or maybe he was referencing his own experimental exchange of emptiness with the Primera?
But it happened so quietly and quickly that Starrk hadn't the time to find out, and a moment later he was alone.
Thinking that he must have woken from nothing but a dream.
By the time Kurosaki Ichigo arrived in Hueco Mundo, Starrk already knew that Ulquiorra had found another human he was interested in. That according to Grimmjow, he'd even marked this one as his. Had stabbed him through the chest during their first fight to match hole for hole (and again they were fighting for territory).
After Grimmjow had the boy healed just to be defeated (Nnoitra too), Starrk had gone down to retrieve the girl himself. He'd apologized and said he didn't like such tactics, but really he'd just wanted a good look at both humans who'd snared Ulquiorra's attention.
Both ginger-haired and big-eyed, and the kind of stupidly naive that came with the privilege of being human.
He'd thought he may have been the same way, too, if only he'd been so lucky.
But even though he'd said he didn't like such tactics, when he considered what lengths the boy was going to to save his comrade, he thought he didn't really mind stealing her away. Felt he was seeing in shades of green because he was envious of what the humans had, and again felt he'd been dealt the wrong card.
Or maybe he'd already been seeing in shades of green before then, because of Ulquiorra's eyes and his tears everflowing like they were trying to bleed out the color. Make them as white as the rest of him, but strikingly green they remained, and Starrk remained just as envious because he'd never be prey interesting enough to mark. Not only was he not human (nor fiery enough to arouse a reaction like Kuroski Ichigo), but he already had a hollow hole near the spot Ulquiorra favored.
He may have daydreamed that once upon a time - long before he was able to remember - a creature by the name of Ulquiorra Cifer was the cruel god who'd made him hollow.
Stabbed him through when he was still interesting with feeling and naivete, then left him behind when sorrow swallowed his heart.
Left him numb, alone, and hollow for another god who'd appreciate that empty space.
He may have daydreamed, but he knew his hollow hole wasn't in the exact same place.
That it was a little too low on his chest.
But even still he thought about teasing Ulquiorra anyway. Just once more for old time's sake, after he returned the girl.
Considered saying that he suddenly remembered how he came by the hole in his chest, and Ulquiorra really should have asked him first.
(Because he wasn't exactly happy with how things had turned out, and would've preferred staying human.)
But he didn't get to tease - or even get to ask for one last kiss before everything unravelled - because as soon as he returned Orihime Inoue he was told to gather with Baraggan and Harribel.
Aizen announced his plans to the invading shinigami, left the last remaining Espada in charge of Los Noches, then set out for Karakura Town.
And before Starrk stepped through to the Human World, he spared one final glance at the barren desert he'd come to accept as home. He looked to where Grimmjow and Nnoitra had fallen, knew the deaths of Zommari Rureaux and Aporro Granz, then turned his gaze towards the dome.
Where he knew the last would be - waiting for his human - and he wondered,
Ulquiorra-san.
How far will we let him lead us over the edge?
How damaged are we, without hearts, that we haven't protected each other like the humans are trying so hard to do?
But a moment later Lilynette yelled at him from the garganta, and he could stall no more. He followed her through, slowly and silently, while staring at Aizen's envisioned back.
It was either fly or fall, and it always would be as long as they were hollow.
Only he'd rather do neither, so instead he'd do his best to avoid both.