Disclaimer: Sadly, I do not own Bleach. If I did, things would be a little bit... different.

Author's Note: It's chapter two and the emergence of PLOT! And Szayel's cameo. He really wanted one, guys. He confronted me in a dream and was like, "LAURA. WHY AM I NOT IN YOUR FIC." And I was like, "Chill, Szayel, seriously. Your hair's gonna frizz." (Lies, all of it lies.) This chapter has a super-duper-special extra warning, too!

Warning: Really Terribly Written Sex ahead.

Enjoy!

Chapter 2

The days dragged and the nights flew in an aggravating pattern, day after day after day. Every minute without Ulquiorra was a minute wasted. Every moment I spent pretending to hate him was a century of torture. Every second I touched him was fleeting, disappearing far too quickly. I felt as though I needed to keep him close to me while I still could, as though he was going to be ripped away from me when I needed him most. I was desperately afraid of losing him. I wouldn't survive losing him.

When Szayel approached me, I was unprepared. He was wearing a smirk, but it was nothing special. There was nothing overtly strange or threatening about him. In fact, I'd thought he would walk right past me. I was shocked when he held up his hand, motioning for me to stop.

His smirk grew as he took in my confused expression. "Aizen-sama knows," he said evenly. The threat of his words took a moment to sink in before anxiety flooded my being.

"Knows what?" I demanded, feigning ignorance.

"Don't play coy with me, Grimmjow," he sneered. "We all know."

"Why don't you tell me what you're talking about, Szayel?" I growled impatiently, hoping that I could hide my unease enough to fool him.

"You and Ulquiorra, of course," he said as though it was common knowledge. Perhaps it was. His mocking smile was infuriatingly persistent and only tried my nerves further. He took one confident step forward; he knew he had the upper hand here, and he was eager to take advantage of it. I was his superior any other day, but right now he had me cornered.

"Yeah?" I spat viciously. "What's your point?" My fists clenched compulsively at my sides, and I fought the urge to attack him on the spot. I didn't want Aizen to be any angrier with me than he already was – and I was sure he was furious.

Szayel's smirk relaxed, but he still looked amused by my disconcerted reaction. "I'd watch out if I were you, Grimmjow," he warned lightly. "For your little lover-boy, too. Wouldn't want him to get hurt, would you? After all, he's so important to you," he scoffed.

I couldn't stop myself from lashing out at him; he barely dodged my tightly clenched fist, and I sent it hurling into the wall instead. "Shut up," I snarled at him.

"Did I hit a nerve there?" he teased. I jerked my fist back, readying to strike at him again.

"Hey now," he said, watching me prepare to attack him, seemingly without a care. "I was trying to warn you. Don't shoot the messenger, right?"

I dropped my fist slowly, my fingers uncurling reluctantly. "Get out of my sight," I spat at him.

He shrugged and turned unhurriedly away from me, retreating leisurely. I glared angrily as he walked, my fists clenching and unclenching spastically at my sides until my fingernails drew blood from my palms. I was torn as to how to deal with this "warning" of his; my instincts all cried out to attack Szayel, to fight him right then and there and take a little revenge, but my better judgment held me back. Since when had I had better judgment, I wondered? The answer was immediately obvious: since Ulquiorra's life had been more important than mine. And somehow that made me even angrier.

I slammed my fist against the wall again, regretting that I had let the chance to really fight someone get away. Szayel was long gone by now. So my preferred course of action had escaped me – now what was I going to do? I walked as I considered the situation we'd landed ourselves in.

So, Aizen knew. It wasn't a huge shock. Aizen had eyes everywhere. It had always been a matter of time. The biggest shock was how devastated I was. I wouldn't be able to see him anymore. I wouldn't be able to touch him, or kiss him, or fuck him. I'd be left with nothing but dull, unsatisfactory memories.

But that might not be the worst of it, something whispered in the back of my mind. I quickly shook that thought away. Aizen wouldn't hurt his precious cuatro espada, would he? After that I didn't have room to think about our predicament; all my thoughts were focused on pushing away the gruesome scenes playing on the edge of my consciousness. I wouldn't see them. I wouldn't.

I shouldn't have been surprised when I found that my feet had carried me unconsciously to his door. I shouldn't have been angry when my hand rose of its own accord and knocked. And I definitely shouldn't have felt my stomach twist into a knot when he opened the door the way he always did.

"Grimmjow," he said, and I could have sworn that his voice lifted just a tiny bit in surprise. "You're a bit early, don't you think?" Still, he stepped aside to let me in, and closed the door behind me.

I thought about telling him. I really did. I thought about telling him about the whole conversation with Szayel, and how I'd wanted to kill the bastard, and how I wasn't going to let Aizen so much as breathe on him, because I wouldn't stand to watch him get hurt.

But I didn't tell him.

I kissed him instead. I kissed him harder than I'd ever kissed him before, and deeper and longer. If we had to stop – if this had to be the last night we could be together – then I was sure as hell going to make this the best time we'd ever had, and I wanted him to be thinking about me, not about Aizen or Szayel or anything else.

He pulled back after a few minutes, gasping shallowly for air. "Grimmjow…" he said with a small, questioning look.

"We can talk later," I growled, and kissed him again before he could answer. He didn't protest, instead throwing himself into our kiss with more force than before.

Before long I tasted something on his lips that was not usually there, a warm metallic flavor that I would recognize anywhere. Blood.

I pulled back to investigate. Bright red lines, short, shallow cuts, were dripping blood onto his pale cheek. "You're bleeding…" I murmured, touching the shallow scratches with my fingertips.

He sighed softly and lifted his own hand, running it swiftly along my broken hollow mask. The contact made a thumping noise in my inner ear. He showed me his fingers, a thin sheen of red coloring his grey fingertips. "I bled on your mask," he said.

I felt my stomach twist into an even tighter knot as I realized it was my mask that had cut him. "I…" I stammered, at a loss for words. "I'm sorry." I swallowed the guilty lump that was growing in my throat, sending it down to join the knot of guilt in my abdomen.

The corner of his mouth lifted in his small, cold smile. "This is nothing," he said. Before I could protest or apologize further, he was kissing me again and leading me towards his room.

I hardly even realized that we'd undressed until we were naked on his bed, his body underneath mine. I kissed him feverishly, my hands traveling all over his body. I had to remind myself to slow down. If I wasn't careful I'd hurt him again, and the blood I could still taste on his lips was more of his blood than I'd ever wanted to see.

I paused for a moment, pulling away from him slowly to examine his features. I thought for a moment that I could see some of the desperate urgency I felt reflected in his face, but it disappeared before I could really believe I'd seen it. His expression was always the same – no emotion at all, not even when I was about to fuck him. Sometimes I resented him for it; why couldn't he show me what he was thinking? Was he really so heartless that he never felt anything? But other times, like tonight, I was glad that he wasn't an open book, like me. I didn't want to see what he was feeling – just an observer from the outside. I wanted to feel it. I wanted him to share his every thought with me, every tiny flicker of his consciousness, so that I could understand him better. Because as of right then, I was fully aware that I knew nothing at all about him.

He watched me with impassive eyes, panting shallowly, pinned on his back as I straddled him. His hand snuck up to my chest, then slid under my arm to wrap around my back. "What are you waiting for?" he demanded.

I forced myself to sneer at him halfheartedly. "Impatient, Ulquiorra?" I teased him, though I was sure he could not possibly be more impatient than I was for what we both knew was coming.

"Yes," he agreed. "I've been waiting for you for longer than you know, Grimmjow," he murmured breathlessly.

I gave one humorless laugh, the knot in my stomach growing even larger at the sound of my name on his lips. "Well, I'm here now," I said in reply, and leaned in to kiss him again.

I didn't need to take it slow at all, I realized as he answered my kiss forcefully. He needed this as much as I did – either that or he was an excellent actor.

But soon it didn't matter whether he needed it or wanted it or anything, because I was fucking him then, and I wasn't going to stop. It was what sex was always intended to be – he and I; moving together in an endlessly repeating pattern that never got boring, never turned bitter or cold; in and out; the friction of our bodies against each other; the joyous sensation of being inside him; believing myself to be a part of him, an extension of his body. The completion of his soul.

The only sounds were those of us – my sharp breaths, the creak of bed springs, his muffled noises. He always held back his little sounds – his wonderful deep-throated moans, the grunts and whispers I loved to hear – smothered them, almost, as if he were hiding them from me. As if he were embarrassed to get as much pleasure out of being fucked as he did.

But tonight I wasn't going to let him hold back. Tonight I was going to make him cry out the way his body wanted him to. Tonight I was going to make him call my name so that every soul of Hueco Mundo could hear just how much he liked having me inside him.

"Come on, Ulquiorra," I hissed as I thrust into him again. Every muscle in his body tensed, his back arching beneath me. I gasped sharply, fighting the urge to let it all go. I leaned forward, whispered in his ear. "Let me hear you."

"Grimmjow," he groaned through clenched teeth as I retreated, readying to dive in again.

"Louder," I demanded as my hips rocked against his, his body straining beneath mine again.

"No," he refused, his fists grabbing at the sheets. His usually calm features were twisted in mingled pain and ecstasy – I couldn't separate the two in my mind, any more.

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"No," he repeated, louder and with more force as I pressed into him again. And then, as if he couldn't help it, he cried out again. "Grimmjow," he moaned.

"Grimmjow," he said, again and again.

"Grimmjow." Each time, different. Sometimes loud, sometimes soft, always soliciting a shiver down my spine.

"Grimmjow." Each time I moved inside him; as it ended in sweet release; even as I collapsed on top of him, too exhausted, too comfortable to move away.

"Grimmjow," he murmured. I let my head lie against his bare chest as my breathing slowly calmed, my hands and arms resting on either side of his body.

This was something different. We didn't ever just lie like this – with the exception of sex, our physical contact was usually limited to fingertips on faces, palms against cheeks. Small. Here, with my ear against his heart, here was new and unusual and strange and different. My eyes saw a desert, an ocean, so close to his body; a vast plain of grayish skin. Looking up I could see his hollow hole, a black chasm in the desert, a puddle of oil staining the land. His skin felt cool against my flushed cheek. He had a very faint smell – almost like lake water, something that smelled clean, but at the same time you knew it was scummy and dirty.

"Grimmjow," he whispered again, a thrill of pleasure briefly flooding my senses. I listened to his labored breathing as it slowed, the sound rhythmic and soothing. And yet there was something off about it. Something missing, I realized.

"Ulquiorra," I said suddenly, pushing myself up to lean over him. A spark of panic shot through my veins. "You don't have a heartbeat."

"What?" he asked, momentarily thrown. If I hadn't been so shaken and frightened I would have congratulated myself; it took more than a lot to shock him. "I have a heartbeat, Grimmjow," he said, still slightly out of breath, his eyes wider than usual.

"I can't hear it," I insisted. I pressed two fingers into his neck, feeling for the pulse I knew should be there, but couldn't find. "I can't feel it either. What the fuck, Ulquiorra!"

"Listen closer," he suggested, one of his hands reaching up around my own neck, pulling my head again to his chest, and I pressed my ear against heart again, desperate to hear it. I heard one heartbeat, but I could feel that in my inner ear, so I knew it was my own. I could hear him breathing. I could hear me breathing. But that was all.

"I…" I swallowed the lump growing in my throat again. "I can't…"

"Perhaps it really is dead, then," he murmured.

I raised my head to look him in the eye, wondering what he meant. "Ulquiorra…" I muttered.

His eyes constricted slightly. "Is it repulsive, Grimmjow?" he asked bitterly. "My dead heart?"

"No," I answered quickly. "It isn't dead. You aren't dead."

"Really?" he asked. "I'm a hollow, aren't I? Aren't we all dead?" He spat the last word contemptuously.

"I don't think of it that way," I told him.

"Nor do I," he replied.

I paused a moment, watching him carefully, my fingers still pressed against his throat. I marveled a bit at the way he'd opened up to me over time. Most arrancar wouldn't ever expose their neck, such a vulnerable target, so openly the way he did.

"God, Ulquiorra," I breathed, my head falling until my forehead rested against the sharp edge of his mask. In the way, again.

"What?" he asked, just humoring me, I could tell.

"You're fucked up. Do you know that?"

The corner of his mouth twitched in another shadow of a smile. "That's one way of putting it, I suppose," he agreed.

"Ulquiorra, I…" I began, then hesitated. I lifted my head a bit, moving so that my lips hovered only centimeters above his. My hand wandered up to touch his cheek, tracing the tear track there almost subconsciously.

"Yes, Grimmjow?" he encouraged quietly, and even his breath felt cool on my skin. His eyes were so close, and so vast I thought I would fall right into them. But even then, I couldn't read them. Not a bit.

"I…" I stumbled again, and then screwed my eyes shut and gritted my teeth as a flood of grief hit me – hit me like a running into a wall – big and solid and so very there that I couldn't possibly ignore it. I was going to lose him. If I told him what I knew, I was going to lose him for certain, and I wouldn't live through that. But if I didn't tell him, that was as good as lying, and I couldn't deceive him. He'd never lied to me, as far as I knew – though I doubted I'd know it if he had – and I had never lied to him in return. I didn't want to start now, when we were so close to losing each other. But I'd already let it go too far. I had to end it.

"Grimmjow…" he murmured, the tiniest flicker of disbelief in his voice. "Are you crying?"

"I don't know," I gasped, choking on air. "Maybe." Another struggle for breath. "No."

"Just tell me," he sighed.

I let one desperate, dry sob escape my throat, traitorous and terrible. "Give me a moment," I requested, sitting up and away from him. I slung my legs over the side of the bed, supporting my head in my hands. I was messing this up. Any second now I was going to lose him, and I was wasting what precious time we had left.

"Grimmjow," I heard him whisper. I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter, trying to ignore the ache his voice caused. I didn't want to need him so desperately. I just did.

I thought back to the first time I ever heard him say my name: "Stand up, Grimmjow," he'd said. "You're not a coward. Quit acting like one."

But I was a coward, and I hadn't even seen it until I'd heard him say I wasn't. I'd been frightened of being without him, so I went searching for him, rather than braving loneliness. I was terrified of losing him, so I hid from retribution. Even now, when separating myself from him would be the wisest thing to do, the one thing that would keep him far more safe than I could, I was too afraid to leave. A coward was exactly what I was.

It had been selfish of me to not break away from him, but that hadn't made me leave him alone. I would have gone mad if I'd even tried. Life without him wasn't life at all. So I hadn't tried. I'd condemned both of us to whatever punishment Aizen could inflict on us. I might have confirmed our death wishes, simply by deciding that I wanted to stay with him. He'd never questioned my judgment once, if he could see the struggle within my mind – and I was certain he could. He didn't complain, didn't seem to blame me at all. Or if he did, he didn't show it. I wouldn't have been surprised if he did blame me. It was, after all, my fault.

"I'm sorry about all this, Ulquiorra," I moaned dreadfully.

"Sorry?" he repeated softly. "What for?"

"If it wasn't for me," I choked, "you wouldn't be in this mess." I buried my face deeper in my hands, hoping vainly to sink through the floor and simply disappear.

I felt one cold finger touch the back of my neck, trailing half-way down my spine and leaving an echoing shiver in its wake.

"If it wasn't for you," he murmured, repeating my words, "I'd still be a mindless puppet."

"You'd be safe, at least."

He waited silently for me to continue, his hand still resting on my back.

"I… heard something, today," I began hesitantly.

"Oh?" he asked, his wonderful whisper gone, his voice void of emotions once again.

"He knows," I revealed breathlessly. "Aizen knows."

I felt him pause behind my back, tense, and then relax again. "I know," he said.

"You… what?" I asked, confused.

"Come now, Grimmjow," he said, the slightest touch of sarcasm in his tone. "Have you forgotten that Aizen still favors me over you? I was informed before you, of course, on the chance that I wished to give you his message myself."

"You knew?" I demanded, exasperated, and turned sharply to glare at him. "Why the fuck didn't you tell me?"

"It appears I didn't need to."

"That's beside the point!" I spat. "You knew that Aizen," I spat his name, "knew about us, and you still…?" I gestured broadly at the unmade bed.

"Why didn't you tell me, then?" he returned coldly.

"Well… that's…" I spluttered. I felt my face flush as my reasons flew to the forefront of my mind.

"Tell me, Grimmjow," he demanded. "You've made me curious, now."

"I just…" I muttered. "I just wanted to make our last time the best, you know?"

He paused briefly. "Last?" he asked.

"Well, yeah."

"What makes you think this is the last time we're going to have sex, Grimmjow?" he inquired smugly.

"It… what?"

"I have no intention of stopping, and unless you're as spineless as you look, I doubt you do, either."

I paused a moment, my mouth hanging open slightly in surprise. "But…" I stammered. "He knows, Ulquiorra."

"I am aware."

"And you're just fine with that?"

"The damage has already been done, Grimmjow. Do you think Aizen will just forget if we stop this now?" he reasoned.

"But-"

"Are you really so eager for this to end?" he demanded, a touch of anger on his features now.

"No," I admitted. "No, of course not."

"Then listen to me," he said firmly. "You and I are going to pretend like this doesn't matter. Because it doesn't. Not to me, at least, and I'd like to think it doesn't matter to you, either."

"So you're just going to disobey his orders?" I demanded incredulously.

"What orders?" he asked. "Has he given us orders to disobey, Grimmjow?"

"No, but-"

"But what?"

"Well," I spluttered angrily. He was talking me into a corner here, I could see it. "Fuck, Ulquiorra! I thought his little warning made things pretty clear, didn't it?"

He smirked, and it was more of a smile on his face than I'd ever seen before. And it was damn creepy. I felt an involuntary shiver run down my back in fear. I was glad I was on his good side; I wondered how I'd ever survived him hating me.

"I'm willing to break rules for you," he said, edging closer, that manic smirk still on his lips. "What will you break for me?"

"I've-" I began, but he cut me off by placing his hand over my mouth.

"No," he said sharply. His features fell sharply from his frightening smile to his typical blank mask, and farther, into a miniscule frown. "Don't answer that. Don't break anything for me."

I grabbed his wrist, cool and smooth in my fingers, and gently pulled his hand away from my mouth. "I've already broken things for you, Ulquiorra. More than rules."

"Don't say it," he urged in his breathtaking whisper.

"We both knew we weren't coming out of this whole."

"Don't."

I smiled sadly at him, watching his blank, lifeless eyes. There was nothing there. But if I stared at them long enough, I could fool myself into thinking I saw something: some flicker of pain or longing hidden away.

"Are you afraid of being broken?" I asked quietly.

"No," he answered softly. "But I won't watch you be hurt again."

"Me?"

He fell silent, my hand still clamped around his wrist. I waited for him to say something, even though I knew he wouldn't. And when I got tired of waiting, I kissed him. I felt his lips conform to mine, felt his skin, cool and smooth under my tongue. We moved slowly, softly, not really taking it anywhere at all. It was just contact. Communication, telling each other things we couldn't ever say.

He reclined slowly until he was flat on his back, pulling me with him, and then I broke away reluctantly.

"Am I at least allowed to break rules?" I asked quietly as I laid down next to him.

"Would it really make a difference if I said no?" he inquired.

"No."

"Then break as many rules as you see fit," he answered, then closed his eyes and promptly fell asleep.