Chapter 11: Into the Night

Warning: May have mature contents

Problem is, he doesn't know what they are. There's no name that can possibly be designated to what they are, if they are indeed something. They don't talk about it; hell, they don't even mention anything related to it among themselves. Outside the four walls of their dormitory room, they simply blend into the whole setting; one's your regular 16-year old freshman and the other is a formidable 18-year old senior who happen to sleep in the same room, eat in the same cafeteria; basically, there's nothing irregular about them, that is, if they are outside dormitory room 408. Inside it, only the four walls have the answer. And walls can't talk.

He painstakingly recalls what Szayel Apollo Grantz relayed to him. Ulquiorra Scheiffer and Grimmjow Jaggerjack were once something. What it poses for him is a clear predicament which does not altogether redirect him to feel something else, but it dissuades him nonetheless. Perhaps the reason why he's getting all these from his dear senior is that the latter is making up for those long lonely nights which were deprived of Ulquiorra. He doesn't only endure these thoughts; he submissively accepts them. Without conviction, he entertains the possibility that the perfect combination of Grimmjow and Ulquiorra strictly belongs to the unfathomably distant past. Chances are, he may be wrong.

It's funny that he's starting to think he might have fallen in love with him. And it has only been a very short time. So short in fact that something inside him eggs him to ask his senior 'who are you?' while 'what am I to you?' is still reserved for a much later phase.

It's all too damn funny. And maybe lamentable.

He's kissing him right now. He kisses back. They take off their clothes, letting go of the world around them, including Ulquiorra Scheiffer, or so Kurosaki Ichigo wishes. They're all over each other; one owns and the other permits being owned. He's offering himself to him; no, he has given himself to him. He's just so goddamn good in bed that it's ridiculous; so goddamn hot he's sure the glaciers are starting to soften down somewhere in the far regions of Antarctica; so indomitably sexy he's blowing his mind by the simple act of feeding on his neck. It's so absurdly ethereal, enchanting, enthralling. It can't be real, it just can't be.

The freshman gasps for air. No sooner than he takes his first breath in a minute does he get engulfed in a wave of fervent snogging and groping. He can't say 'no' to him; he's too inviolable and he tastes too good for anyone to resist, at least for him. And so they do the night away as pieces of them fall apart, as little by little they give themselves away, as persistently the bed creaks like a bastard in a continuous repetition, as time and again, Grimmjow would rub his hard-on against his, as occasionally Ichigo would go down on him and make his senior do the same, as the freshman is bullied into submission, as the night ends unlike all the others before it.

He is indeed in love with him, if not addicted to him.

...

A dull thud is heard.

"Ouch!" Ichigo rubs his orange head just in time to see a whiteboard eraser hit the floor.

Professor Hirako has just made a target of his head using the accursed object.

"What was that for?!" the freshman asks the teacher in fury.

"I have to make sure my students are alive, you know. You look a damn lot like a zombie. I couldn't read your pulse from here. Scared me, I have to admit." Professor Hirako says informingly.

"Bastard."

"As I was saying, class dismissed."

Renji pushes his chair closer to Ichigo when the professor has gone.

"You look as though you need some good thawing." The redhead observes.

"You said that right."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing serious."

"Come on, spill it."

"Maybe later."

"Okay, it's later now; spill it."

"Let's go to the vending machine. I'll tell you there."

At the deserted vending machine area some two floors below,

"Are you my friend?" Ichigo asks Renji out of nowhere.

"Are you stupid?"

"Answer it, dammit."

"Yeah. One of the best rockin' friends you'll ever have. Happy now?"

"Good. Now, swear to me you're not gonna rat on about this to anyone, with perhaps the possible exception of Toushiro, agree?"

"…"

"Perhaps I've changed my mind."

The redhead hurriedly agrees, "No—no, wait. I promise. I won't tell them, and not even Toushiro—"

"—and everyone else—"

"—and everyone else. What is it?"

"Good. Here goes…"

Ichigo informs his redhead pal, who's listening very attentively at the moment, that he's sleeping with his roommate, his teammate, his captain.

It takes quite a long time to take its toll on Renji's head. When it does sink in, he becomes overcharged with every sort of emotion that Ichigo is now brewing over calling for the school nurse or an ambulance.

"A—you too? Like, I was beginning to think you'd be the next school jock next to him—him, your boyfriend—and now you're telling me—he's hot, like, I can tell, but—are you sure he likes you too? I mean, of course he does; he sleeps with you, for crying out loud—the point is, I mean, are you even sure you're not pregnant?"

Ichigo has his hand pressed over his forehead and is left with no other choice but to demonstrate sarcasm. "Yeah, I may be fucking pregnant, Renji, that's just so entirely possible."

"Are you—what exactly are you trying to tell me here, Ichigo?"

Ichigo feels his throat getting all tied up that he fears he won't be able to accomplish real words. He opens his mouth after a good wait,

"I may be in love with the bastard."

Renji looks blankly at the space around them as if enlightenment can be attained by doing such. Also, his eyes are protruding out of their sockets as though someone has occasioned him some serious affliction.

"Ichigo, mate, look at me. Yeah, that's it. Here, come closer, yeah, that's it. What exactly are you trying to tell me here?"

"I just told you. Please don't be a retard."

"Okay, that's it? No editions? I thought I heard that incorrectly, sorry about that. Well, if that seems to be the case, I must say, YOU ARE COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR GODDAMN MIND!" Renji says in a profuse vexation as his cool veers out of him and both his arms clasp his head.

"I'm outta here. Call me again when you've finally managed to be of any help."

"No—wait, Ichigo, will you goddamn give me a moment here?"

Ichigo sighs as he stands there, wrung to his last and final point of tolerance.

Renji speaks again, this time in a more pleasing manner, "How do you say for sure that you're you-know-what with him?"

"I don't know. I call it that because I don't know."

"Ichigo, he's—he's just—"

"—too good for me, is that it?"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's the awful truth." The orange-head replies condescendingly.

"However, we don't know him. We don't know what he wants. For all we know, he may have fallen in love with you too."

"That's wishful thinking. Delusion, Renji, I don't need it."

"I was just allotting some possibilities here; it's not like false hope. But, mate, what's your problem? I mean, he must be in full possession of his wits if he's gone that far with you. He must be really in to you."

"Yeah, but it's also possible that his heart is still gadding somewhere else, where a certain someone is…Ulquiorra Scheiffer, and I may be just a replacement."

Renji doesn't quite know what to say under the circumstances. He speaks anyway, "Are they together?"

"They were together. That's what your roommate told me. And now they have to go to some retreat house and, I dunno, I'm just scared of the thought of them being in the same room with all the possibilities of reunion and rekindling dead flames…" Ichigo trails off with a slight bitterness weighing down every syllable.

"Tell him. Tell him you'd do your nuts and bar his access inside your pants if he so much as looked at that son of a bitch."

"Who am I to demand anything from him? His fuck-buddy? Please."

"Are you sure he only looks at you that way?" Says a foreign voice from somewhere. It's Szayel Apollo Grantz. Renji and Ichigo dart their eyes toward the senior as their expressions shed off to shift to mortification. While Renji is as good as peeing his pants, Ichigo can kill for a fucking grenade at the moment, so he'd be able to blow himself away, together with his secrets.

"Sempai, it's not like you to nose in to other people's business." Renji says firmly, exhausting quite an amount of his courage.

"You're totally right, but it's my business to prevent students from loitering around during class hours. Please go back to your classroom."

Ichigo does not budge. Renji has to lead him on to leave his spot. Szayel speaks again,

"Kurosaki-kun," He pauses to make sure he's gathered the freshman's attention before resuming rather congenially, "I don't know what you're equipped with to vie against someone like Ulquiorra Scheiffer. I don't know if you realize that you are in a sort of an undeclared war against him. I knew it the moment I walked in on you and Jack and Noitora on that ugly episode on the rooftop. I don't know if you are impervious to jealousy, but I must warn you that though Scheiffer has left Jack a long time ago, he hates scavengers- forgive me for the term. He hates it when people get their hands on things he likes or used to like. And he used to love Jack. A lot. This may sound ludicrous, but, having said that, I surmise remnants of that feeling still dwell in his heart, if not in his mind. He still looks at Jack, with that I can give you my full assurance. He may still be living in the past with him. Your roommate is not an easy person to sway, but nevertheless, it's Ulquiorra whom we're talking about here. He's a pusher. He's a competitor, and that's been made repeatedly clear to me firsthand. I'm not asking you to do anything about it. However, it would damn please me to see Ulquiorra not getting what he wants for the first time. It would make me rejoice if he actually were to lose. Perhaps I'm asking you to do something after all. Please win. And go back to your classroom please." He finishes, and upon realizing he has outstayed his welcome, turns to leave.

They watch the gorgeous senior until he disappears in a corner. It takes quite a number of silent minutes for the impression he has left to subside.

"So, Ichigo, how many times do you do it in a day?" Renji asks Ichigo without the slightest trace of embarrassment or reluctance.

"Do what?"

"Go to bed with your roommate?"

"Jesus Christ, Renji, you're such gossip-whore."

"I'm a gossip-whore if I happen to spread it all over town. The thing is, I won't."

"I'm heading back to class." The orange-head says and turns to leave.

"Come on tell me!"

"Once. Twice. Don't ask anymore."

"Thrice?"

"Shut up."

...

Ichigo watches carefully as his roommate packs his things for the trip. He'll be gone for three days, as if it would dispel his worries, he keeps on telling himself.

"That should be it." Grimmjow says, wrapping up the final touch of his activity. "I'll see you in three days, Berry."

"Yah, enjoy. Bon voyage."

"That's all?"

The freshman looks up at his senior, looking mildly perplexed, "Uhm, I'll play nice in the training when captain is away."

Grimmjow puts his fingertips on Ichigo's chin to lift it up a few centimeters, looking vastly amused "Say 'I'll be good and I won't jump into someone else's bed while Jag-sempai is away'."

"I won't screw around." Ichigo says before muttering a very faint 'maybe you would'.

"I didn't catch that?"

"I won't screw around."

"That's my Berry-head." The senior says with such an unbridled and fascinated satisfaction that his set of speck-less, perfectly even teeth is showing. Ichigo suspects Grimmjow's not aware how handsome he gets whenever he wears his malicious grin.

They make out torridly for a good ten minutes until the parked school bus goes crazy with its honking waiting for the seniors who are taking too damn long to get themselves prepared.

...

The night has gained height.

Several miles away from the school, in a certain retreat house, Ulquiorra is leaning on a balustrade with his elbows propped on the railing, feeling the homeless wind with his face. He has just finished playing a brilliant tune in his violin, which now stands abandoned at his foot. Grimmjow is idling vacantly some two meters away, as if reflecting over an unearthly matter.

"What did you call me here for, Ulquiorra?"

"I've been thinking."

"Of what?"

"You asked me if I was looking at you."

This only deepens the teal-haired lad's desire to scram right on the spot. He answers anyway,

"Yeah, and your pompous ass told me there was no use in doing that. Wow. That had to be the loveliest answer I had received in years." Grimmjow stands up to leave after determining that this is all a waste of his time.

"Yes. But I didn't say I wasn't looking at you."

"Your point? I'll answer that. Here goes and catch this: you can't answer correctly and you like deviating from the context. Goodnight." The teal-haired senior says, and this time he's really leaving.

"There's no use in doing it but I do it anyway."

Grimmjow's footsteps die away and do not recommence.

"You said we were over. You might as well have impaled me with a goddamn Katana or something, what with your awesome candidness. You said, 'we're over, Jag'. You even had the guts to call me by that name when it should've expired right then and there when you said all was over."

"You used to like it when I called you that."

Ulquiorra gave him that name, hence it was exclusively for his use, supposedly.

Grimmjow is getting increasingly temperament. He hunches his shoulders and pouts his mouth, taking refuge in his last pint of patience, "What do you want, Ulquiorra?"

The green-eyed senior withdraws his resting hands from the railing.

"Lots of things, and one of them is you."

Grimmjow starts to laugh derisively at this insanely candid proclamation.

"Just when I have picked myself up from the puddle of shit you shoved me into, you come back knocking at my door. This is getting comically cinematic, and I don't want any of this baloney."

"You said you'd change for me. Change you did. Can you even do without me, Jag?"

The teal-haired shakes his head for a lack of proper response to the other's utter audacity and fearless impertinence. He smiles, only because he doesn't know which expression to assume.

"You think the world revolves around you, don't you? And you're this great someone who declares aloud his love for science and Copernicus and Galileo. You truly are bizarre. I suppose they don't call you Pompous Prick for nothing."

"Can you do without me?"

"I can. I just bloody did, if you haven't noticed."

Ulquiorra walks over to where the other senior is, unfazed and determined.

"I don't think you can. I've been with you all along, always. I never left, never intended to, perhaps because I can't. But you're here; I'm here too. We're both here, and I've just awakened from the beauty of it all. Of you, most especially." He says, employing an avid, almost fanatic, thoroughness in his explicit little speech that Grimmjow can't stop suspecting he has it written at the back of his palm.

"You've been watching me. It won't change anything. Don't force meaning into something that's no more than a cheap trick. You and your accursed violin can go to hell together. You think that still works for me?"

The truth is, Ulquiorra Scheiffer is capable of changing the color of everyone's mind whenever he hits the strings. And Grimmjow Jaggerjack used to be his number one fan.

"You call this cheap trick?"

The head of the Council Four looms radiantly pale under the moonlight, and his eyes, no less luminous. Inch by inch, he strides closer and closer to the other until no distance is left to cover. He kisses those unmoving lips which do not back away. In the deeper regions of their hearts, something from the remote past stirs awake.

And somewhere far away, one heart is in danger of devastation.

TBC

A/N: Man! I don't even know why I'm writing shit with cheesiness of this caliber! I hope you won't murder me or Ulquiorra for this. Forgive me anyway and thanks for reading. ;)