Ha I should have done my homework better than I did today instead of writing. >> OH WELL.
453.
Title: Commiserating
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Character/s: Shuuhei, Renji (light ShuuheixYumichika)
Word Count: 485
Warning/s: Minor spoilers for the SS arc. Silliness.
Summary: Renji lends a sympathetic ear. Or at least, a bottle or two.
Dedication:
chibify- thanks for mending my broken heart some last night. ^^
A/N: Ahaha I dunno. I totally did this for the last few lines I guess.
“He drives me crazy,” Shuuhei murmurs, and tosses back a shot of vodka like it's water. “He won’t stop following me around.”
“Huh,” Renji responds, and isn’t sure if it sounds absent or sympathetic on account of the fact that he isn’t sure which of the two he was going for when he said it, really.
“He makes me carry stuff for him. Calls me names and I always end up buying him candy just so he’ll shut up for a while.”
“Huh,” Renji says again, and motions to the barkeep to keep the alcohol coming to the both of them. Best sort of comfort a guy like him can offer. Ain’t like he’s good with words, anyway.
Hisagi groans and rubs his forehead like he’s trying to smooth out the permanent furrow that’s been there over the last couple of weeks. “I can’t believe he beat me.”
“Mmm,” Renji says, switching it up for some variation as he throws back tequila and chews on lime.
“You know what really pisses me off?”
“Huh?”
“The fact that he thinks it’s the most normal thing in the world. Beat me and then he smiles like he smiles and has nothin’ to say ‘bout it but laughin’ at me, really.”
“Hmm.”
A fist hits the bar, a little more forcefully than it ought to have, maybe. “What the hell is up with those feathers, anyway?”
“Uh…”
“And who the hell can take themselves seriously as a shinigami goin’ ‘round smellin’ like flowers?”
Renji blinks. “So…”
“Exactly!” Shuuhei finishes for him. “Flowers. Fuckin’ ridiculous, right? Not even perfume. ‘S expensive soap. Can you believe it?”
Renji doesn’t really think he can.
“And the way he walks… with the hips and… fuck. No goddamned shame, the little bastard.”
Renji decides not to say anything for a moment, lost in some strangely deep, fuzzy thought as he pours Shuuhei more alcohol. He’s missing something here, he is.
“The fuck does Ikkaku put up with him? I’ll never understand it. Man like that… there’s something wrong with him.”
The redhead blinks again. “Huh….” he says, and it’s more to himself than in response to Shuuhei this time.
“That all you got to say?” Shuuhei grunts, and sounds absolutely, one-hundred-percent miserable.
Renji tries to remember the last thing that made him sound that miserable to himself.
Motions for the barkeep to leave the whole damned bottle of vodka when he remembers what it was a moment or two later, wincing to himself because there are suddenly pixy smiles and big blue eyes flashing in the back of his mind.
“So,” Renji asks, and fills Hisagi’s glass, right up to the brim, “When didja figure out you were in love with the guy?”
Hisagi sighs. “I dunno. Yesterday, maybe.”
“Yesterday, huh?”
“Mmmm. I cut myself shaving.”
“Huh. Well… congrats, I guess.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Between them, they finish the whole damn bottle of vodka.
END
454.
Title: Love You’ll Never Know
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Character/s: Grimmjow, Tousen (lightly, vaguely, maybe GrimmjowxIl Forte)
Word Count: 794
Warning/s: Spoilers for the early parts of the current Arrankar arc.
Summary: Grimmjow doesn’t understand.
Dedication:
kino_scythe- You totally made me all sad with your fic and now I need to try and make myself feel better. >> TOO BAD IT DIDN’T WORK.
A/N: This totally doesn’t even make sense. I know, I know. I shouldn’t try and wax philosophical. Ever.
Love is an abstract entity in Hueco Mundo-Aizen-sama speaks of it like it’s an old, familiar friend and Gin declares it for just about everyone who can keep his attention for more than a minute-- but to the Arrankar themselves, it doesn’t really mean anything, doesn’t really attach itself to something concrete in their world.
They might have known it once-maybe-a long time ago in a mortal life, but death and transformation into a Hollow followed by rebirth from Hougyoku as an Arrankar wipes the majority of that distant past away, and so when Aizen-sama speaks of love, each Arrankar can only conjure up an image from his or her own imagination and wonder as to the holes on their bodies that suggest something is missing from them.
On the other hand, pain is something they understand much more-the physical torment of turning from Hollow to Arrankar is a reminder, the numerous fights they get into amongst one another a lesson in it, and Aizen-sama and Gin-sama’s punishments a familiar blend of ache and pleasure unto themselves. All hurt in varying degrees, all cause some sort of burning, bleeding, aching pain that’s sharp and hot.
Like the loss of an arm being severed perhaps. A familiar hurt.
Nothing novel, nothing abstract-Pain is something Grimmjow understands completely for all its straightforwardness, its simplicity.
What once was there is no more. It hurt to lose, but hurts no longer. A definite beginning and an end, a cause and an effect.
What the former Espada doesn’t understand is the dull ache of something else that lingers with him long after the day of his misdeeds, the strange feeling that’s a mix of familiarity (it hurts like the stub of his shoulder did in the days immediately following the severing of his limb), through the ache itself is strange in that it’s brought on by something as abstract as thought rather than something solid, like contact.
“We’ll follow you,” Il Forte had said in the moments before their departure, when he’d looked at those gathered around him one last time, assured of the flawless victories yet to come.
“We’re gonna have fun!” Di had added loudly, bouncing on the balls of his feet in an overtly anticipatory manner.
Shawlong had cuffed the brat for being noisy and Forte had winked at Grimmjow then, a smile only half-sinister on his pretty face as they’d made their way into the mortal world.
“We’re gonna get in trouble,” Grimmjow had murmured under his breath with something like a smirk, and Forte had tossed his hair over his shoulder at that, had let the backs of his fingers brush absently against the jut of Grimmjow’s hip.
“We’ll follow you,” he’d said again, and that had been that.
When Grimmjow looks back on that moment now, he frowns and wonders why the hell it feels like his arm being rended from his body all over again, a thousand times in a row.
“Leading your comrades to ignoble, pointless death is the greatest sin,” Tousen had said one day, finding Grimmjow alone in one of Hueco Mundo’s many winding halls, nursing his pride rather than his wound at that moment.
The Arrankar hadn’t understood what the taciturn bastard meant when he’d said it, because like love, sin is just as foreign a concept to the likes of Grimmjow and his brethren.
“I don’t get it!” he’d shouted after Kaname, a half-snarl that in reality had almost seemed like a student asking teacher a question. “I don’t fuckin’ understand what it means!”
“Pain,” Tousen had said simply, putting it terms Grimmjow would know. “You understand that, don’t you?”
Grimmjow hadn’t answered.
“Every time you remember the faces, the voices of those who believed in you, it will hurt,” Tousen had murmured, sounding far, far away. “Perhaps you’ll atone for your sins then, by experiencing love and loss in such a manner, Grimmjow. Perhaps you’ll learn from it.”
To this day Grimmjow still doesn’t understand any of the long-winded nonsense Tousen had spouted, because concepts like love and sin and atonement don’t mean anything-will never mean anything-- to the Arrankar. But he supposes he can understand that last part a little. Grimmjow understands loss if nothing else, he thinks, looking at the place where an arm used to be.
And when he closes his eyes and sees Forte’s face, when he hears, “We’ll follow you,” over and over and over again in his head and feels ghostly fingers brushing past the jut of his hip, it hurts just like a limb being carved from his body a hundred thousand times.
The Arrankar don’t understand love, but Grimmjow is beginning to think that maybe pain isn’t so far removed from it.
END
EDITS PLZ.