Disclaimer: So, yeah. I still don't own a single thing here. And I'm still living just at the poverty line, so if you'll kindly move along and find someone with more money to be the recipient of your lawsuit...

Summary: It's now two days after all of Las Noches has been put under quarantine, and if Szayel thought he had his hands full with just Grimmjow... well. It's bleak times in Las Noches, and Ulquiorra's soda habit has come to haunt him and his unwilling roommate.

Escalation

Grimmjow stared up at the ceiling. The white ceiling. The white ceiling that matched every single fucking object in this room except for himself. The quarantine was now two days old, and in the three days he'd been here, he and Ulquiorra had come to an understanding, one reached only after many long hours of verbal sniping, deadpan threats, and a few thrown books. Neither of them was pleased with their current living arrangement, and so they would stay out of each other's way as far as was possible considering that neither of them could actually leave. It was a policy of non-interference, as Ulquiorra put it. The divide between the two rooms would make up the divide between the two Espada. Ulquiorra, after relocating two dozen books and a small handful of odds and ends from the shelves to the bedroom, was free to do whatever he wanted without Grimmjow sending verbal barbs in his direction, and Grimmjow, provided he didn't destroy any property, was left to his own devices in the front room, which so far amounted to trying to sleep and staring at the vast and empty expanse of white.

Scowling, he rolled over to face the back of the couch instead. The goddamned white couch. It was inescapable. It was everywhere. And just like that vaguely sterile but largely unidentifiable scent that was Ulquiorra, it felt like the white was crowding in, permeating everything, almost. Getting closer even as it stayed so coldly in place. He closed his eyes, but while that eliminated the white, it did nothing to get rid of the scent, or the other main problem with this exile to Ulquiorra's room.

And there that main problem was again: the cleared throat that over the last two days he'd come to depend on like clockwork to keep him awake when he wanted so desperately to just fall asleep. This time, as had become usual in the evenings, it was followed by a soft cough, and the sound of water being poured into a glass. After a moment, the glass clicked down onto a table and fabric shifted as Ulquiorra tried to get comfortable.

Grimmjow sighed, having given up on getting comfortable himself. His cats were less bothersome during the nights, and those little fuckers were always busy chasing each other around both rooms and across the bed and the couch and any other horizontal surfaces he didn't want them on. At least Ulquiorra was having as hard a time sleeping as he was. He winced at the next set of coughs, which was followed by a low moan. He knew what that felt like. It wasn't pleasant. At least, it wasn't pleasant if it was the same thing he'd had.

He sat up and let the blanket pool around his waist. Surprisingly, the part of him that wanted to take a peek into the bedroom and gleefully observe his enemy in this moment of misery was a teeny-tiny part to begin with and getting smaller every time Ulquiorra coughed or cleared his throat. Instead, there was this other feeling, which he didn't quite understand and wasn't entirely comfortable with, despite nearly a day of dealing with it. Probably, if this were Nnoitra in the other room, the gloating part would win over this other part hands down. But as it was...

For the fifth time that night, Grimmjow stood up and walked over to the theoretical line they'd drawn in the short hallway that separated the two rooms. He wasn't sure what he was planning to do, anyway. It wasn't like there was much he could do, even if he did want to help somehow. Unlike the other times, he stayed there a moment, and finally stepped over the mutually-imagined barrier to tap on the door frame. "You want some more water?" Given how often Ulquiorra had filled that water glass tonight, he had to be running out or near to it.

Instead of an answer, there was an itchy mumble that not even his ears could pick out, and Grimmjow frowned. "Come again?"

"I said I have some," Ulquiorra rasped, holding his throat with one hand and shooing him away with the other. "Get out of my room."

"Yeah, well fuck you, too, Ulquiorra." He made the appropriate gesture. "Fuck you, too." So much for trying to be nice for once. Grimmjow rolled his eyes as he retreated to the main room, where he glanced around at the white books, the white candlesticks, the white furniture and rug and walls and ceiling and... He missed his own room. He'd barely settled back onto the couch when the throat clearing started again, and was followed, once again, by coughing. Grimmjow toyed with the idea of pulling his hair out at the roots or going back in there and smothering Ulquiorra with one of his own white pillows, and instead pulled the blanket up over his ears. How he was supposed to regain any strength at all when he couldn't catch more than ten minutes of near-sleep at a time was beyond him. At this point, he would swear the bags under his eyes had bags underneath them.

Grimmjow had known it was going to be another long night, but after an additional three hours during which Ulquiorra cleared his throat less and less and coughed more and more, Grimmjow found himself sitting up again. It was irritating, to be sure. But somehow, he found it more irritating that he wasn't deliriously pleased about Ulquiorra's suffering, especially considering the brushoff his offer of help had received. Instead there was that... other thing. The one that wouldn't go away. The one that was confusing. The one that went against every other instinct he possessed. That thing almost thought Ulquiorra didn't deserve to be sick, and that he ought to do something about it whether the Cuarta wanted him to or not.

It was that ...thing... that finally demanded he get up and pull on his boots and go find Szayel, regardless of the quarantine. As he clomped down the hall--and fuck these boots that made him clomp when he should be stalking--Grimmjow told himself that all this was really just impatience and a desire for a good night's sleep. That it bore no resemblance to compassion, because arrancar were glorified hollows, and hollows didn't feel stupid shit like "compassion." No, it was nothing as soft as that shit. This was purely practical. He wanted sleep. He'd wanted it for three days now, to include that first day before the quarantine had been called. To put it simply, Ulquiorra was getting in the way of that sleep. So Ulquiorra needed to be dealt with. And Szayel was the go-to guy for dealing with this kind of thing. That was all there was to it. Fuck compassion.

He got to the central courtyard where all the main wings connected, and plopped himself down on a bench. Shit. Walking was not supposed to be this hard. He'd only made it halfway before needing to stop, and this after two solid days of forced rest under the quarantine. At this rate he'd never get back to his old self. Grimmjow leaned back and considered the positives. With the quarantine in effect and extended to cover the entirety of Las Noches, there was no one to see him sprawled on this bench practically oozing pathetic exhaustion. That was good. And there was no one in the hallways to play pranks on, so Ichimaru wasn't likely to be rearranging things. Also good. He wouldn't waste any energy getting caught in a sudden dead end.

After about a half hour, Grimmjow took a deep breath and dragged himself upright, momentarily holding onto the back of the bench for balance. Onward. He prepared a mental to-do list. 1. Find Szayel. 2. Get Szayel to come shut up Ulquiorra's coughing. 3. Go to sleep for the first time since he first woke up on Ulquiorra's white fucking couch. It was a good list. He congratulated himself on its streamline nature as he broke all quarantine regulations to enter the forbidden East wing and complete the first task.

Here, there was also coughing. Mostly it came from Halibel's room, though if he remembered right, Yammi was sick also, and he thought he heard retching from Stark's room. Szayel's room was central to those three, so Grimmjow assumed that was the best place to find the Octava. He mashed a fist against the eight on the door and peeked in. The light was on, but he didn't immediately see Szayel.

He decided to go in instead of calling the Octava's name, on the chance that the other Espada was in the back room. There was no sense at all in waking up anyone he didn't have to. If he only got Szayel's attention and no one else's, he wouldn't have to answer to Aizen. It wasn't the prospect of being reprimanded for breaking quarantine that had him wary, either. No, that would be fine. Normal, even. He was more than a little afraid, though, that the man would thank him for going out of his way to help a colleague, and the notion of being thanked for more shit was enough to make him want to stay under the radar.

"Szayel?" he asked softly, stepping around the couch and the table, both piled with what looked like medical charts and precariously balanced beakers of something thick and pink. It was galling to be sneaking around Las Noches like he didn't belong here. But if Ulquiorra's room was sterile in its whiteness, this one was just plain creepy. It looked almost as if the Octava had relocated part of his laboratory for easier access. Grimmjow was half afraid to touch anything, and that included the floor.

Grimmjow poked his head around the doorway to look into the back room, where there were even more elaborate chemical setups and the bed was propped upright against one wall to make more space. "Pink," he called. "Are you in here?"

"What is it, Aaroneiro!" came an impatient voice from the far back of the room, behind a rack of equipment Grimmjow didn't recognize. "Who's vomiting now?" The familiar head of pink hair appeared around the side of the rack, and Szayel pushed his goggles up over his mask to rest on his forehead. "Oh, it's you. What you want?"

Seeing the Octava in full-on lab gear, including splattered smock and elbow-length rubber gloves, Grimmjow found himself without words for a moment, which was just as well since Szayel did a double-take and starting screaming at him.

"Wait-- What are you doing here, you idiot? Are you insane!?" Szayel demanded, holding up a tube of something green and gesturing wildly with his free hand.

Grimmjow took a step back. "I just--"

"Cover your mouth!" Szayel interrupted him, and made a frantic motion towards his jacket.

"What? I--"

"Cover it!"

Grimmjow obeyed, jerking the edge of his jacket up over the bottom part of his face. He'd known the Octava was frazzled from dealing with him all this time, but he hadn't thought the man had snapped. He looked downright crazed at the moment, and the mad scientist getup wasn't helping the image.

Szayel took a deep breath and put the test tube in a holder to one side before looking back at him, exhaustion overtaking crazy for the moment. "What is it, Grimmjow? Why are you here?"

He hesitated for a moment, thinking this whole trip had been a terrible mistake. "Ulquiorra's coughing a lot. I think he's sick, and I figured you needed to check on him." Grimmjow frowned. He'd meant to say he needed Szayel to shut Ulquiorra up so he could sleep, but there was that ...thing... again getting in the way. He didn't think kindness was a likely side effect of being sick for over a month, but he couldn't think of any other explanations, either. Probably it was just some residual weakness, some lingering problem that would go away as soon as he was fully recovered. Maybe it was just that Ulquiorra was so damn pathetic sounding when he moaned after a coughing spell. He hoped it was something like that, anyway. He had an image to maintain.

"Coughing, how?" Szayel asked, his eyes narrowed.

Grimmjow shrugged. "I don't know. Coughing."

"Productive or not?"

"What the fuck does that mean? No it's not 'productive.' It's keeping us both awake. How is that productive?"

Szayel sighed. "Okay. Get out of here. I just need to finish this formula for Charlotte and I'll be by to check on Ulquiorra."

Grimmjow nodded, getting out as quickly as he could without tripping on piles of research or knocking over weird-shaped machinery. He was all the way to the bench again--such a lovely bench, and not white! Why had he never stopped to appreciate it before?--when he thought to wonder about what Szayel would be making for Coolhorn, and why he'd assumed Grimmjow was Aaroneiro. And what in the world could be so much worse than just Grimmjow himself and the pneumonia that would inspire Szayel to set up a lab in his own room? Grimmjow had been in that room before, and while it had been a little on the dusty side and there'd been a few stacks of research, it had always been relatively normal.

Ulquiorra was still coughing when he finally got back to the room, and hadn't seemed to notice his absence at all. Grimmjow pulled off his boots and sat down on the couch, leaning his head back and staring once again at the ceiling. Two weeks of this shit? He didn't know how Szayel or the others had done it when he was coughing. It occurred to him that it might actually be just as miserable being around a sick person as it was being the sick person.

He'd barely settled in for another attempt at sleep when the door opened and Szayel walked in, carrying a small bag and dressed once more in his usual uniform. Grimmjow got up and followed him to the back room, curious. In under a minute, Szayel had the lights on and a flashlight in one hand, with Ulquiorra sitting up and eying Grimmjow as though he'd been betrayed.

"Okay, Ulquiorra," Szayel said calmly, all traces of his earlier mania gone. "Open your mouth so I can see what's going on in there." He shined the light into the back of Ulquiorra's throat and adjusted the angle until he had a good view, paused a long moment, and then stood back looking intrigued. "Whoa."

"That is not a promising reaction," Ulquiorra rasped, grimacing as he tried to swallow.

Grimmjow had to agree with the shorter Espada on that count. If it was enough to get a response like that from Szayel, it was bad news. Very bad news. He had a feeling he'd be relocated again before the night was out, and hoped it wasn't somewhere white. He leaned against the wall and shared a look of commiseration with Ulquiorra before both realized what they were doing and looked away with matching scowls.

Szayel reached into the bag he'd brought and produced a small bottle of dark red liquid. He unscrewed the cap and poured the medicine into the cap, which he handed to Ulquiorra. "Drink this."

Ulquiorra stared at the cap in his hand for a long moment before looking up at Szayel and clearing his throat. "Is this what you gave Grimmjow several weeks ago?"

"No," Szayel said, perhaps a little more loudly than he'd intended. "I've thrown that out. This is new, and it has a somnolent in it so even if it does make you crazy, you'll sleep right through it."

After a moment's debate, Ulquiorra put the cap to his lips and downed the medicine in a single gulp. He handed the cap back to Szayel, who wiped it out with a cloth and re-screwed it onto the bottle. Both the bottle and the cloth disappeared into the bag, to be replaced by a second, larger bottle of pale blue liquid.

"That first medicine will keep your coughing to a minimum tonight. This other will temporarily keep any infection you have from spreading when you breathe. I haven't normally been using this if it can be avoided, but given that Grimmjow is staying in your main room, we don't have that option. Here." He handed Ulquiorra a second cup.

"It's empty," Ulquiorra said, looking at it blearily.

Szayel nodded briskly, and then put the bottle of blue medicine into Ulquiorra's free hand, keeping his own hands on it. "Take a mouthful of this, and gargle it for a count of thirty. Do. Not. Swallow. This. Just--"

"What happens if I swallow it?" Ulquiorra interrupted, now looking a touch nervous.

"I lost three fraccion during my trials with this," Szayel replied without losing a beat. He shrugged. "Their deaths were fascinating, but not pretty. So," he continued cheerfully, "just gargle. When you're done, spit it into the cup." He released the bottle and took a step back. "I'll keep count."

Ulquiorra frowned, but put the bottle to his lips and took a swig. He tipped his head back, but half a second into the gargle he choked painfully and only barely managed to spit it into the cup as he succumbed to a coughing fit that left him gasping in a tightly curled ball. "That... burns," he managed to whisper.

Szayel sighed, and held the bottle he'd rescued when Ulquiorra doubled over. "It's good for you," he ground out, the line as well-rehearsed as Ulquiorra's earlier one about force-feeding. "And since there is nowhere else in Las Noches to put Grimmjow, it's absolutely necessary that we do this. We'll try it again. You didn't make a single count."

Ulquiorra picked himself up from the pillows and gave Grimmjow a long, considering look before turning his attention back to Szayel and the bottle the Octava held out with a grim smile. "I begin to understand Grimmjow's reluctance to be under your care," he whispered hoarsely.

"That was a pathetic first attempt," was the only response he got from Szayel. "Stark did better, and so did Tesla. Though I had to use the second method with Sun Sun. Take another swig."

"Oh, come on," Grimmjow muttered, insanely glad he was no longer in need of medicine of any kind, whether it was a poison from the human doctors or an implement of torture from the resident medic of Las Noches, who seemed to have lost or abandoned whatever bedside manner he'd started out with. "Give him a few minutes to recover, huh?"

Szayel turned the bottle toward him, and Grimmjow took a hasty step back. "You stay out of this, Grimmjow, unless you want to catch whatever it is he has. Over two-thirds of Las Noches has the flu or a cold or something intestinal. I've got limited time and even less patience, and no one can afford for you to get sick again, so he's going to get a dose of this by gargling for a count of thirty, or I'm going to inject that dose into the flesh at the back of his throat via this big, pointy syringe."

"Shit!" Grimmjow yelped, throwing up both hands defensively and eying the device that had appeared in Szayel's hand. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry! Ignore me." He started slinking backwards out of the room, still working his hands in front of him as a shield. "I didn't mean anything by it. I'll just--" He sucked in a panicked breath as he backpedaled. "G-g-go lay down ov-over there..." He trailed off as he got out of eyesight and wrapped the blanket tightly around himself, being sure it covered him completely and especially covered his ears. With any luck at all, Szayel would forget he was even there on the way out.

He tried not to listen to the repeated attempts at gargling, the whimpers, the impatient counting or, in fact, anything else that might be going on in that room. At the very least, he thought it probable that the voice of "compassion" or whatever would finally curl up and die, given the decidedly unkind results that had come from his trying to help. Regardless, even if Ulquiorra didn't cough for the rest of the night, Grimmjow knew he wasn't going to sleep well. He'd never seen Ulquiorra's eyes go as wide as they had when Szayel had brandished the syringe, and he didn't blame the Cuarta one bit. He wouldn't be getting that image out of his mind for a while. It was almost as bad as his nightmares about hands.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Grimmjow."

The voice wasn't a hoarse rasp, so it wasn't Ulquiorra. And the combination of that and the quarantine meant the only voice that could be pulling him from the first decent sleep he'd had in--

"Grimmjow, I don't have time for this." A hand grabbed his shoulder and shook.

"Don't pet me!" he yelped, rolling over and rubbing at his eyes. Pink hair swam into focus, and Grimmjow sat up straight and pushed his back as far into the couch as he could. "Oh, fuck no," he said, looking up at the Octava. "I said I was sorry! What more do you want?"

Szayel looked back down at him blankly. "What?"

Grimmjow shook his head, wondering if he had the energy to push past Szayel and bolt for the door. "I don't want a needle in my throat, Pink. I really, really don't."

"That isn't why I'm here," Szayel replied, pulling up one of the chairs and sitting in just such a way to trap Grimmjow at that end of the couch.

"It isn't?"

Szayel pushed his fingers against his temples as though he had a headache. "No. As far as I can tell, you're one of maybe three dozen arrancar who aren't sick."

Grimmjow did a rough mental tally of the arrancar Aizen had collected or created over the years, and decided to stop when he got near the end of the two-digit numbers, leaving out those so insignificant as to not even get a number. That figure didn't make sense. He'd been the only one sick until Halibel and Yammi, but he couldn't see how three could become over sixty in a matter of days. "But the quarantine--"

"Doesn't take the incubation period into consideration." Szayel waved a gloved hand at him, shaking his head impatiently. "It doesn't matter. You don't care about the details anyway. The point is this. Aaroneiro and I have our hands full with over one hundred sick arrancar and counting." He stopped for a moment, and fixed Grimmjow with a stare he didn't like one bit. "That leaves you to take Ulquiorra to the walk-in clinic today."

Grimmjow blinked. He turned that idea over in his mind a few times, and considered all the angles and potentials of the experience before finally responding. "No. Hell no. Absolutely fucking not."

"I wasn't asking, Grimmjow. I was tell--"

"You remember that place! Probably better than I do. It was crawling with sick people. I'm not getting anywhere near there." Grimmjow folded his arms over his chest. "And why's he even got to go, anyway? Just dose him like all the others. That's what you moved your lab for, right?"

Szayel sighed. "I'm not sure what he has, but after some study, it looks bacterial. It's something new, anyway. I checked my entire stock, and nothing I have is a close enough match to risk it."

"So take him yourself."

"Two. Of. Us," Szayel growled. "One. Hundred. Of. Them. And that doesn't even count time away from all of this to bring meals to the prisoner, since quarantine ensures that only Aaroneiro and myself are allowed into the hallways. You're taking him, and that's final."

Grimmjow was about to protest that he didn't want to get sick again, and that Szayel was practically guaranteeing that he did get sick again just by sending him into that cesspool of humanity, but the other Espada cut him off.

"So far, your pneumonia has been far and beyond the worst thing any arrancar has developed in this whole outbreak, Grimmjow. Your reaction to the medicine only made it that much more dangerous. I think we're all in agreement that you can't get sick like that again, and so I've redesigned your gigai in preparation for this trip. It took me all of what remained of last night, but it's perfect. You'll be fine."

Grimmjow frowned. "What do you mean by perfect?" He seemed to recall "perfect" being the trigger to Szayel's downfall with Captain Caterpillar, and wasn't terribly pleased to hear it applied to a gigai he'd have to wear.

Szayel grinned, excitement overtaking exhaustion. "I've designed it to repel any and every human-borne illness. This gigai is immunologically indestructible!" He stood and dug around in a pocket, finally withdrawing several slips of paper. "So, here's what you need to know. I've written up a medical history for Ulquiorra--he'll be Cory Shipper, your cousin, also from Australia--and a card with insurance numbers, mailing address..."

He continued talking, something about street addresses, instructions, systems of currency, and the like. Grimmjow found himself lost in the wall of rapid speech and numbly accepted random pieces of paper from the pile in Szayel's hands. He wondered if Szayel realized he still hadn't agreed to any of this. And he wouldn't. That much he was perfectly clear on. He was finished being nice. It hadn't been worth it, and now that that weird feeling had gone away he wasn't about to invite it back. He heard Aizen's name in the babble and held up a hand.

"What was that last bit?"

Szayel stopped. "Oh," he said, waving at the topmost paper in Grimmjow's hands. "Aizen wants you to pick up that package at the post office while you're there. That's the receipt you'll need. And here," he started counting out money, "is enough money for you two to eat, pay the doctor, buy the medicine, and call a cab between stops. I don't want you walking all over town like last time, since you are still recovering. If you overdo it, you're going to risk a relapse."

Grimmjow stared. "Call a what?"

"A cab."

"Define 'cab.'"

Szayel sighed, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. "It's a vehicle that will pick you up at one spot and take you to another spot, for money. You just tell the driver where to go."

"Oh." Grimmjow nodded, his eyes falling to the nearly translucent paper Szayel had called a receipt. That made sense. It sounded doable--convenient, even. And that's when he realized that by sitting there listening, he had somehow unofficially agreed to this nonsense. By the time he looked up to correct the mistake, Szayel had the door open and was halfway out, telling him that he'd be back in a few minutes with their gigais.

The door closed again before he'd even decided on how to get out of this task. He looked down at the papers. He knew which one was the receipt. He knew the rest of the pile contained medical things, addresses, lists of instructions, and a wad of paper money. And most importantly, he knew he had no idea what to do with any of this.

OMAKE: Deliberations

Aizen drummed the eraser end of his pencil against the arm of his chair, glancing once more through the list of arrancar who had succumbed to various human illnesses. At this rate, the entirety of Las Noches would be out of commission in under a week, save Aaroneiro, Szayel, and--improbably--Grimmjow. He was pleased that Aaroneiro, with his unique head configuration, was basically guaranteed immunity from most ailments, and surprised that Szayel had yet to show the slightest signs of illness, despite being in the thick of the infections from quite literally day one. And Grimmjow...

The pencil-tapping picked up its tempo. Reading between the lines of Szayel's report, he saw that Grimmjow had risked infection to bring the Octava to Ulquiorra, and had even agreed to take Ulquiorra to the clinic. There was the chance, of course, that this was motivated from a desire to sleep better and that stubbornly rebellious streak of Grimmjow's that treated the rules as applying to everyone else. But Aizen would need to make a point of paying the West wing a visit to follow up on his experiment with well-placed praise, and to pick up the food encyclopedia and new parenting books he'd ordered. Yes. If this strategy worked on his unarguably most troublesome Espada, it would surely work on the others. Nnoitra, for instance, would make a good second target once Grimmjow had come around.

"Aizen-sama," Tousen murmured at his side. "May I ask why you don't simply have the woman undo all this sickness and return things to normal around Las Noches? Is there even a purpose to this?"

"Does their suffering bother you, Kaname?"

"It seems impractical, and a touch malicious." The man shifted in his seat, obviously uncomfortable voicing the opinion.

Aizen sighed. He'd considered that very solution many times over the last few days. "If our arrancar are going to be dealing more closely with both humans and shinigami, Kaname, then they will have to build up some sort of immune system." He sketched a small square in the margins of his list, and then doodled around it as he continued. "Undoing this outbreak would defeat that purpose, really. In a way, the timing of this is excellent, since we're still under the truce and not likely to need a fully functional arrancar army any time this year."

Tousen shook his head. "If this were a just illness, it would strike down only those in need of correction. As it is..."

"Grimmjow will come around," Aizen interrupted, knowing where his colleague was taking the argument. "This will work. You remember the meeting, of course. As soon as I thanked him, he sat up straighter. That's an immediate cause and effect. It's just that with the quarantine, there haven't been any new opportunities to move the project ahead, so it's taking longer."

"Immediate cause and effect? He was just confused. As were the rest of them."

Aizen shrugged. "It's only been four days now, and we've already seen some improvement."

"We've seen his blatant disregard for the quarantine, you mean."

Aizen held up the pencil. "Ah, but in order to help Ulquiorra. The motivation must be considered, Kaname."

Tousen grunted, clearly unconvinced. "You are engaging in wishful thinking, Aizen-sama. I believe Gin is correct, and when you lift the quarantine three weeks from now, you will find yourself needing two new Espada."