Three weeks later.

Nnoitra creaked up three flights of stairs. A drunk snored along the steps. He gave him a kick on the way by. The man started to shout, saw the dangerous glare, and recognized his sharp visage. He quieted. At the top flight, Nnoitra felt the ripple of heat from the poorly insulated building. All the heat gathered up here. He stripped his jacket and moved down the hall to the room at the end. Mandarin numbers marked the door. The old man who owned the place was an illegal immigrant. No one ever reported him though, because his services were too valuable to the underbelly of society.

A waft of sour smoke greeted him when he opened the door. The ceiling fan whirred on high, stirring the scent of marijuana and washing it over everything. In one corner an IV rack stood, lonely and empty. They'd been able to unhook it from the patient a few days ago. The window was open, sucking in cleaner air. It was the only bright point in the dark den that had been home to the patient since Nnoitra dragged him here.

"That doctor's orders?" Nnoitra dropped his plastic bag of groceries by the door and moved over to the bed.

"Who the fuck cares?" Grimmjow grumbled, sucking back on his joint. "Good fucking painkiller."

He lay on his stomach, body bare save a pair of boxers. Bandages wrapped around his torso, securing the ones around his back. His thigh, as well, was tightly wrapped, protecting the place where skin had been donated to his back.

Nnoitra sat on the edge now and began peeling back the bandages along his spine. Grimmjow stilled, holding his joint and waiting while Nniotra completed his inspection of the wound.

"Looks good. Not going to be too ugly after all," he concluded. Scarring seemed to be his main concern. Pain, had been Grimmjow's. He'd been through a lot of shit in the past few years, but nothing equaled that of his flesh melting under a blowtorch or his nerves attempting to repair themselves in the aftermath.

"I thought you couldn't come today?"

"I couldn't come yesterday," Nnoitra corrected. He had straightened Grimmjow's bandages and now he brushed back sweaty hair from his face. "Do you even remember yesterday?"

Grimmjow shrugged. He finished his smoke. Nnoitra sighed and reached in the drawer.

"You wanna stronger painkiller?" He didn't wait for an answer. There hadn't been a protest to that question in two weeks. Grimmjow let his hand be taken. He watched from where he lay as Nnoitra position the needle between his knuckles and struck the vein.

"Better?" Nnoitra smiled as Grimmjow relaxed on the bed. The tension left his muscles. The pain faded from his features. Nnoitra gave it a moment, to make sure it had really taken hold, before he began to remove his shirt.

Most was a blur to Grimmjow. He couldn't move much, despite all the time since the injury. His flesh needed time to heal, especially since he'd had to donate some from his thigh to his back. The chance for infection had been high, but he'd made it past the worst part. That was why Nnoitra hadn't touched him for so long.

Now though, he leaned in and helped Grimmjow flip over. He still didn't dare put pressure on his back so he sat up and Nnoitra supported his shoulders and they tasted one another, felt one another. Grimmjow was compliant, lax. There was little left in his cerebral cortex uninhibited by the drugs to resist anything Nnoitra presented to him. So they tangled and twisted and Nnoitra kissed him and promised him and eventually settled back for the satisfaction he fully believed he deserved. He took any and every pleasure Grimmjow would give him then held his weakened body against his own and savoured the taste and smell of something he thought he'd never experience again.

Grimmjow let Nnoitra continue to hold, touch and taste. He curled against the pillow and shut his eyes. He tried to forget whatever part of himself had ever decided to leave Nnoitra, the Numeros and the drugs. He let the heat and breeze and high of the drugs lull him back into blissful oblivion, the wicked gangster's heartbeat ever thrumming into his flesh.

"Ichigo, come out here." Renji's fist bounced off wood. Ichigo felt the bathroom door shudder under the blow. "Seriously, Ichigo, what's up?"

What's up? Ichigo sank to the floor. Renji had to know. He had to understand that every day that passed Ichigo knew his future did not lie with his best and oldest friend. He had to know why Ichigo only ever slept on the couch or shrugged away from touches. He couldn't blame Renji for being a little worried when he'd suddenly shoved his roommate away and locked himself in the bathroom. But Renji didn't know that today Ichigo had gone to the garage, had banged on the door and had convinced himself that Grimmjow Jaggerjaques was dead and it was their fault. Just like the deaths of the eleven burnt corpses as Sinclair's Laundromat had been on their heads.

"I'm fine," he tried to yell but it came out as a whisper for only the porcelain and the plaster to hear. He bowed his head into his knees, remembering the night he was grabbed, the terrible cold eyes of the mechanic when he'd seemed unwilling to help, and then his face after—that pain and pallor. The sight and smell of that terrible burn…

"Don't you care?" He wanted to ask, but he knew the answer. Nothing in this universe would be enough to allow Renji to forgive Grimmjow. Renji could never understand why Ichigo could feel anything but hatred for the man.

He'd run ever scenario he could fathom. He'd contemplated every alternative. He understood Grimmjow's reasoning, but he didn't believe for a second that Grimmjow had acted on purely selfish means that night. He couldn't possibly have gone to such lengths to avoid a potential inconvenience. He had to have felt some modicum of guilt about what he'd done to Ichigo, or loyalty to Renji, or maybe a mixture of both.

Ichigo heard fabric slide past wood. Renji had sat back against the door too now.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asked.

Ichigo started to say no but then he stopped himself. The real answer was yes, overwhelmingly yes. Yes, their apartment was far too small for two such people when not getting along. Yes, he missed sleeping in a bed. Yes, sometimes he got tired of making excuses for Renji's failures.

But he didn't say that either. They couldn't afford it. And besides, they had been struggling along together for so long, what else would they do?

"No," he said through the door.

He thought he could hear a sigh of relief.

"Oh…good."

"Can we just be friends again, for now?"

"Yeah, if that's what you want."

"It is."

"Okay."

"Okay." Ichigo stood up. "I'm opening the door."

Renji stood too. When the door was no longer separating them, they faced one another on the threshold, the same half guilty, half sad expressions on their faces as when they'd been kids and had a fight, or gotten into trouble with Urahara.

Ichigo wanted to go home. He suddenly felt gripped by longing for the old creaky boards in the backroom, stuffing his face with candy in storage, even working his ass off stacking goods on shelves or dusting or sweeping. He wished he could go back—not just to that place, but that time, before Renji had ever gone away, gotten addicted to drugs. Before they'd become criminals, he'd slept with another man who somehow managed to kill eleven other people on their behalf.

Ichigo sank into Renji's arms without realizing. He just wanted them to say like this forever, as one, solid unit like they had always been. But that bond was fractured now, and he just didn't know if it could ever be repaired.

In the hot room of the Chinese doctor's house, Grimmjow also dreamt of the past. His drug induced dreams had carried him back years, when he'd been just a kid, when he'd just started running with the Numeros.

He was fifteen when he first had sex for money. Well, it was actually for drugs which he turned around and made a mint on. At first he'd found it surprisingly easy. The guy he did business with was old and really just wanted a good blow job. Then one night it was new man who'd come to make the trade.

It was after that experience that Nnoitra met him. He found him in the back of the club where Grimmjow did his business. He'd been crying—one of the only times in his life. He'd dropped his coat in the dirt and the package inside was open for all to see. Nnoitra had bent down, picked it up and passed it back to Grimmjow.

He understood the situation in one go.

"Going solo is rough, kid." He took his chin and tilted it up. He examined the bruises down Grimmjow's face, the bite marks on his neck. His arms were likewise covered in bruises. "Very rough, apparently."

"Get off," Grimmjow had barked out. He collected himself then, put his coat back on and walked away.

"Let me know if you wanna get out of the solo gig sometime," Nnoitra had yelled.

Grimmjow did not return to that club. He was not going to do that to himself again. The people who had been dealing with him, however, weren't pleased when he stopped showing up. He'd barely survived the night they found him on the streets and decided to teach him how unprofessional he'd been. They, however, did not survive his retribution.

It hadn't been easy cleaning up that mess. But he did it, because he was a survivor. The police never caught him, but rumour did, and it spread around about what he'd done.

Nnoitra came to visit him again, when he was sixteen. Grimmjow had business left and right at this point. He had undercut a lot of crews and was making a mint on what he brought in and sold out again. One of those, groups, happened to be the Numeros.

So Nniotra put a bullet through his shoulder and dragged him back to a warehouse where Grimmjow expected to be killed.

They beat shit out of him instead. He woke up in a hospital two weeks later.

Nnoitra came to visit when his jaw was unwired and he was able to talk again. He said his medical bills had been paid for, and that a car would be waiting the day he was released.

It was. Nnoitra was not inside. He didn't see the tall, slender man again for several weeks. Instead he met the man named Aizen, was given the run-down of what it meant to be a Numeros and put through a gruelling probationary period of six months. He did a lot of shit in those six months that made him into the perfect candidate for their gang. When his trial period was up, Nnoitra was there. He was apparently the tattoo artist in the bunch. He put the six on Grimmjow's back, then gave him a celebratory shot of his own, personal mixture that many of the Numeros took.

That was Grimmjow's first night on the drug. A few days later, Nnoitra gave him some more. When Grimmjow started asking for it, Nnoitra warned him there was a price.

So Grimmjow was seventeen when he went back to having sex for drugs.

That was his life for five years. He kicked ass and broke bones practically on a daily basis. Then he'd succumb to the high and Nnoitra's desires at night. It wasn't bad. Nnoitra liked to experiment, but let Grimmjow take control, let him feel like it was his choice and Nnoitra was his to use and devour instead of the other way around. It was a lie he embraced for years.

One such night melded with the present. Grimmjow wasn't sure if he was still dreaming or not when hands ran down his torso and tugged at his boxers. But when his own hands found his partner fully clothed and began to remove those clothes, he was stopped and shaken back to consciousness.

"Not right now," Nnoitra smiled and Grimmjow realized his own pants had been put back on. Nnoitra was attempting to get him dressed. "Time to go home."

Grimmjow let him go. The room was a haze to him. He was too high to think straight but the thought did cross his mind as to what Nnoitra meant when he said home. There was a reason he hadn't taken Grimmjow back to the Numeros already. It wasn't his place. Aizen would have to welcome Grimmjow back, and before that happened, Grimmjow himself would have to go crawling, begging, to be taken back.

He may have fallen off the wagon, but he had no intention of taking things that far.

"Don't worry." Nnoitra must have seen it on his face. "We're going back to your place."

Nnoitra handed over a giant bundle of cash to the doctor. Then he took Grimmjow's hand and plunked him down on the back of a motorcycle.

He clung to Nniotra. The road blurred past him. Next thing they were in his garage. There was still a blood stain on the floor. It was just like the night Nnoitra had come for him. He staggered, still not used to being vertical, but dragged a box of tools from a shelf.

"What are you doing?" Nnoitra asked, his hand snaking around Grimmjow's waist.

"Here." He pulled out an envelope of cash.

"What's this?"

"For the doc. Take it."

"My treat."

"No, take it. I don't wanna owe you."

Nnoitra wasn't pleased, but he pocketed it. "You sure you can afford it?"

"I'll be fine."

"You know this doesn't settle it though, right?"

Grimmjow nodded. "I know."

"Good." He drew something out of his pocket and set in on the workbench. "For the pain." Grimmjow eyed the syringes. He picked them up and put them into the tool box from which he'd taken the cash. When it was replaced, he turned in Nnoitra's hold and met that wicked grin.

Later, they lay in bed, Grimmjow back on his stomach, half asleep as Nnoitra traced patters over his bare back with one, long finger.

"You remember all your instructions?" he asked.

"Mmhmm," Grimmjow answered.

"Good, 'cause otherwise you're be left with a nasty scar." He would be scarred either way, there was no getting around that, but hopefully with the graph, it would be a much smoother, less noticeable one.

"When you commin' back?" Grimmjow asked when Nnoitra rolled away and began to dress.

"When you need more dope." He moved around the edge of the bed. "Or I get horny." He dangled a key before Grimmjow. "I'll just hang onto this."

There was no arguing with him. Grimmjow knew the cash he'd given Nnoitra would never satisfy the Numeros member. He'd be collecting on his debt for a long time—and if Grimmjow kept using—he'd keep coming well after debts were paid…

"Okay." He shut his eyes, already for sleep, but felt the bed dip beside him once more and his hand was taken. He barely felt the prick of the needle or the lips that touched his own before Nnoitra departed.

He sighed long once he was alone again, and stared at the pin sized red dot between his knuckles until sleep took hold.

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