He was being stared at. Not an unusual thing, at least not since he’d joined ShinRa. Cloud ignored them. He gathered his tray and proceeded through the crowded cafeteria without a word. Several eyes followed him as he crossed the room to sit at an isolated table in the corner.

No one tried to join him this time. He ate in silence and didn’t question his sudden good luck. Normally he couldn’t eat at the cafeteria without someone, be they guard, Soldier, or even the occasional Turk, trying to either challenge him or hit on him. As the weeks passed, he tended to get more of the latter rather than the former. He really didn’t understand the attention. He was not overly attractive, particularly with people like Sephiroth and the Turks walking around, and while he was strong, he still had a lot of improving to do if he wanted to make it into ShinRa.

Perhaps they just didn’t get a lot of new recruits in ShinRa. He couldn’t remember seeing too many new faces after he’d first arrived.

A few of the eyes diverted away from him as someone new entered the cafeteria.

“Hey there, gorgeous.”

Chairs scraped nearby as those wise enough moved out of range of the fight that normally followed such comments.

Zack’s tongue traced the curve of Cloud’s ear as he moved forward to settle himself between Cloud’s thighs. Hands slipped under Cloud’s ass, squeezing once, possessively, before lifting Cloud by the hips. He could feel Zack pressing against him. Cloud had one brief moment to exhale and relax before Zack was inside of him. It burned, stretching muscles that weren’t used to being so abused.

Another pair of hands reached around to rub slow circles over Cloud’s stomach, relaxing him as much as the solid pressure against his back. Zack leaned back and smirked. His eyes raked over Cloud’s naked body. “Gorgeous.”

Cloud blushed. People were staring again. “Zack,” he greeted without looking up from his plate.

At least now he wouldn’t have to worry about getting hit on every day.

A tray appeared opposite him, followed by the swing of long silver hair. Zack looked up expectantly. “Where’s mine?”

“Get it yourself.”

Cloud took a careful sip from his glass to conceal his grin. Zack stood and grumbled all the way to the buffet line. Fingers suddenly brushed against Cloud’s collar, startling him. He slowly set his cup down before he dropped it. Sephiroth was smiling at him.

The guards nearby were starting to whisper to each other as Sephiroth adjusted Cloud’s collar. A self-satisfied smirk lingered at the edge of Sephiroth’s lips as he spoke. “You have a kiss mark on your neck. Pay attention to your uniform unless you want it showing.”

His cheeks flamed. “And whose fault is that?”

Cloud writhed against Sephiroth’s chest. The general’s lips were firmly attached to his neck, alternating between biting and sucking a spot just above his collarbone. Sephiroth’s hands moved erratically over his front, dipping teasingly low on his stomach and then stroking back to brush across his chest, never quite touching where he needed them to. Every time he tried to touch himself, to relieve some of the pressure building inside of him, either Sephiroth or Zack would swat his hands away.

Zack stilled momentarily. His hands slid down Cloud’s legs to grab him by the knees and Cloud lost any semblance of balance he’d once had as his knees were hooked over Zack’s shoulders, effectively trapping him between the two men. Zack’s fingers dug into his hips once more as Zack returned to pounding into him. Cloud could only gasp and moan. It seemed like Zack was pushing deeper inside of him than before. His hips slammed against Cloud’s rear, driving him back against Sephiroth’s mouth.

Teeth bit down hard and Cloud came, his scream bouncing off the walls of the general’s bedroom.

Sephiroth’s smirk widened.

“Miss me?” Zack’s hand brushed Cloud’s shoulder as he sat.

A cup of chocolate pudding hovered at the edge of Cloud’s tray. “Pudding, pudding?”

The glare Cloud leveled would have had most men wisely ducking for cover. Zack just smiled and made the cup dance on the edge of Cloud’s tray.

He surrendered with a sigh. “Stop that.” Cloud grabbed the cup before Zack could spill it. “And if you ever call me that again, I will kill you.”

“Sure thing, sugar.”

He turned to Sephiroth, hoping that the general had at least some idea on how to reign Zack in. After all, Sephiroth had always seemed like a private person to him. If Zack kept acting up, there’d be no way to deny what was really going on between the three of them.

His eyes met Sephiroth’s and he flushed again. Famous generals should not be licking their spoons like that, like it was… something else entirely, especially not while staring at Cloud so intently.

Zack pulled out slowly, leaving a trail of fluid dripping down Cloud’s thighs. He shivered. Each touch seemed ten times more pleasurable on his flushed skin, and even the lightest brush of fingers made him moan. Zack lifted Cloud’s legs off of his shoulders and glanced at Sephiroth.

Some unspoken communication passed between the two men and then Zack smiled. They shifted Cloud’s legs until he was kneeling, his legs pressed against the outside of Sephiroth’s, and he was lifted. Two sets of hands moved him, lowering him down onto Sephiroth’s cock. It was too much for him, too soon after coming. He shivered, blushing at the embarrassing sounds that slipped from his lips. Sephiroth was inside, sliding in easily with the help of Zack’s seed.

Then they moved him and Cloud lost all connection to reality. All he knew was heat and his own labored breaths and the feeling of Sephiroth moving deep inside of him.

“Not feeling well, Cloud?” Sephiroth’s sounded far too pleased with himself. “You look a little flushed. I hope we didn’t wear you out last night. You seemed quite exhausted afterwards.”

What the hell had he gotten himself into?

Cloud glanced around the room at the wide-eyed guards and trainees, all of whom were staring at them. Hell, even the lunch-lady was staring. He sighed again and glared as Zack’s hand ‘accidentally’ brushed his knee.

“How much longer?”

Zack looked honestly confused. “What?”

“How much longer do I have to put up with the two of you doing everything short of grabbing my ass in public because of some stupid, primitive need to stake your claim?”

Zack’s hand moved up his knee, trailing dangerously close to his upper inner thigh. “Well, sometimes people are a little slow…”

“The only one that’s slow around here is you, Zack Fair.”

Cloud stood before Zack could respond. He grabbed a handful of spikey hair and pulled Zack’s head back. His lips locked onto Zack’s in a kiss that left no room for misinterpretation. The hand on Cloud’s ass and the fact that it was still attached five seconds later was another dead give-away.

He turned to Sephiroth. The general simply pushed his chair back and waited. Cloud straddled Sephiroth’s lap, smiling a little as Sephiroth’s arm instantly encircled his waist and the general leaned down for a much chaster kiss.

“And that,” Cloud said slowly as he broke away from Sephiroth, “should leave no doubt about any claim.” He stood, aware of every single eye on him. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go kill something or someone.”

The eyes followed him as he left.

Ichigo eyes were drawn to the arrancar as soon as he walked in the door. Rukia had blathered something about gathering at Mr. Hat-and-Clog’s shop, so he’d expected to see some of the Shinigami and Chad and Ishida and Orihime, but not… him. Urahara said something that Ichigo didn’t manage to catch, he was too focused on staring at the man who shouldn’t be there.

Rukia stepped between them and put her hand over Ichigo’s clenched fist. She shook her head, seemingly ready to fight him to keep him away from Grimmjow. Why were they stopping him? Why was he the only one ready to fight? They all knew who the arrancar was, so why weren’t they…

“No fighting,” Urahara repeated calmly.

Ichigo’s mouth hung open as he stared back and forth between Rukia and Urahara. “What do you mean?! He’s an arrancar!”

Rukia’s eyebrow twitched. Her smile was a touch too fake. “Now, Ichigo, be nice. He’s our ally now.”

There were too many smiling faces, some forced, some grim, some simply amused. Ichigo pointed at the blue-haired man that grinned from the tatami on the floor of the other room. Bandages peeked out from under the blanket. They covered most of the exposed part of Grimmjow’s chest and continued down. “But he… You… he… why… he….”

They just stared at him. Why did no one but him understand the massive wrongness of this situation? Even Ishida and Orihime seemed to be taking it in stride.

“Ichigo…” Rukia smiled wanly as she started to speak.

Ichigo cut her off. “He tried to kill me! He almost did kill me! Multiple times!”

Byakuya snorted from where he leaned against the doorframe, his attention split between Grimmjow and Ichigo as if he were some sort of guard. He wasn’t entirely certain if Byakuya was there to keep Ichigo away from Grimmjow or the other way around. “So did I and yet you have no problem fighting alongside me, or any of the other Shinigami for that matter.”

Rukia smiled sweetly and Ichigo suddenly wished he was anywhere but here. “Would everyone who’s tried to kill Ichigo please raise their hand?”

Half the Shinigami loitering in the room raised their hands, along with Urahara and Ishida. Grimmjow’s smile was far too cocky for Ichigo’s liking as the arrancar raised his hand. He was tempted to stomp over there and beat the smile off Grimmjow’s face, even with Byakuya and half a dozen Shinigami standing in the way. He might even give in to that temptation if the bastard didn’t stop looking so damn pleased with himself.

“And everyone who’s wanted to kill Ichigo at some point?”

More hands rose. The majority of the people in the room had a hand raised, in fact.

“Orihime!?” Ichigo spluttered in disbelief.

She blushed and lowered her hand slightly. “Well, I had this dream… and you took my cheesecake… and then that happened, and that and so…”

Suddenly he understood why Orihime had been so mad at him for no reason last year. “You mean when you wrote all over my desk in marker two semesters ago it was because….”

Orihime pouted. “I’m sorry! But, you were really mean in the dream and I-”

Byakuya cut Orihime off with a cough and a pointed glance. “Can we cut the chatter? Get to the point.”

Urahara shrugged and twirled his cane. “This is the point. Grimmjow’s allied with us, Ichigo – don’t kill him, Grimmjow – don’t kill Ichigo, and that’s really all I had. Sake, anyone?”

Ichigo stormed out.

*****

“No.”

Rukia’s smile widened. “Ichigo.”

He was not pouting. “Absolutely not. No. Not happening.”

“Ah.” She was grinning. He had the feeling he was about to lose this argument. “Too bad your father already agreed.”

“Whaaat!?” When had she… “No. No, no, no, no.”

Rukia twirled around the room, as gleeful as she got whenever there was another of those stupid Chappy… things out. “He thinks its soooo nice that you’re helping out an injured classmate, what with Jack’s parents being away in America.”

His idiot-father was going to be insufferable. His sisters, worse. “Jack?”

“Well we can’t call him Grimm. Actually, we did, but that’s as a last name – Jack Grimm. Jow wouldn’t have worked, and Jager makes him sound like some foreign rock star.”

“But… Jack?”

“It’s an American name, right?”

This conversation was moving away from his real objection. “That’s not the point! Why here? Why me?”

Rukia’s face split in a brimming grin. “We have our reasons. Mostly, you’re just convenient.”

“I don’t want to be convenient. I don’t want him here! We hate each other. What possibly made you think this was a good idea?”

“Don’t be so negative, Ichigo. It’ll work out.” Rukia stepped up onto the windowsill. “And remember, no killing each other.”

She was gone before he could reply.

*****

Ichigo couldn’t sleep. He was tired, exhausted after school followed by dealing with Rukia and then his family and Grimmjow. It was late. He was going to be dead tomorrow if he didn’t get some sleep.

The floor was hard and cold. The thin futon felt lumpy and he kept accidentally kicking his desk chair. Above him, Grimmjow lay in Ichigo’s bed, wearing nothing but bandages and pajama pants, getting arrancar cooties all over his bed. It was too quiet.

He couldn’t sleep.

“This is so unfair,” he muttered quietly to the room at large.

“Well,” Grimmjow’s voice stretched in the silence. Ichigo hadn’t actually meant to for the bastard to hear him. “You could always come up here.”

Images flashed through Ichigo’s mind unbidden. It was a small bed, not enough room for them both to lay flat which meant… “No way in hell, pervert.” He added ‘homo’ to the growing list of insults he used to categorize the blue-haired arrancar. The mental images shifted, slowly growing more vivid, more… explicit. He scratched ‘homo’ from the list and decided he’d rather never think about it again.

His body reacted on its own, stirring slightly at the thought of Grimmjow pinning him down and the slide of flesh….

The mattress creaked, breaking that thought. “Actually,” Grimmjow spoke quietly, “I was just thinking it’d be easier to kill you if you were up here, but…”

A dark shadow fell over him and then there was cotton in his face. His shout was muffled by the pillow. He grabbed Grimmjow’s arms, but unfortunately gravity was helping the arrancar instead of him. Grimmjow shifted to the floor. It seemed like he was using all his weight to push the pillow into Ichigo’s face, hard enough that the tension of the cloth actually hurt. He couldn’t breathe.

Ichigo used his grip on Grimmjow’s arms to steady himself. He guessed and aimed. His foot connected.

“OW!” The pillow fell away. Ichigo grabbed it and inhaled a deep lungful of oxygen.

As soon as he could see again, he smacked Grimmjow with the pillow, hard.

“Hey, injured here!”

“You tried to kill me!” Ichigo belatedly remembered that his sisters were sleeping in the next room. In a lower voice he added, “with my own pillow.”

He smacked Grimmjow again for good measure, aiming for the bandages on his chest. Why didn’t he keep a real sword in his room? Oh, right. He didn’t want his father to think he was joining a street gang, again. One lecture on that topic was bad enough and his father kept giving him these strange looks every time he came home with bruises or bandaged up.

Grimmjow’s teeth gleamed in the faint light from the street. He shifted away from Ichigo, leaning back against the mattress. The arrancar was staring at him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ichigo hissed softly. He half expected one of his sisters to peak in and tell them to keep the noise down. “I thought you wanted to be allies or something.”

Grimmjow shrugged. “You were whining. I didn’t want to hear it.”

“And that makes it okay to try and kill me? You should have been sleeping.”

“So should you.”

Dead people politics were far too confusing sometimes. Hadn’t Rukia told him that Grimmjow had wanted to come here, that he’d approached Urahara on his own? Ichigo glared. “This is all some ploy so you can kill me while I’m stuck as a human, isn’t it?”

“You think so?” Grimmjow snorted. It almost seemed like the bastard was enjoying this. Probably part of his nefarious plan. He’d keep Ichigo awake at night so that Ichigo wasn’t able to defend himself when the real attack came. “If I wanted to that, I would have just waited until you were asleep and snapped that fragile human neck of yours.” The arrancar’s chuckle seemed to bounce off the walls, multiplying in the shadows. “No, when I kill you, you’re gonna be awake and armed, and when you die, it’ll be because I overpowered your sorry ass and not because you happened to fall asleep nearby.”

It took Ichigo a minute to process Grimmjow’s entire speech. “So the short version is, ‘I’m not gonna kill you in your sleep’?”

“Something like that.”

Strangely, he believed Grimmjow. Ichigo filed that in with the growing collection of things he never wanted to think about.

“Fine,” he groused instead. He shoved both pillows under his head, pulled up the covers, and turned his back on the arrancar.

The room was silent for several minutes. Finally, he heard Grimmjow stand and the mattress creaked again. Fabric shifted and he pictured Grimmjow lying with his back to Ichigo. For a brief, tiny second he felt bad about stealing Grimmjow’s pillow. His lungs still hurt. The feeling of pity didn’t last.

Ichigo finally fell asleep.

*****

“Why did you change sides?” Ichigo asked quietly, hoping Grimmjow would take the hint and speak softly so the other pedestrians wouldn’t overhear them. It was strange seeing Grimmjow in normal clothing, almost as strange as it had been when Renji and the others had suddenly appeared at his school. Stranger still considering he’d had to borrow said clothes from Ichigo.

The mocking grin that seemed permanently attached to Grimmjow’s face faded slightly. “Politics.”

“What the hell kind of answer is that?”

Grimmjow just grinned. “Ask the Shinigami sometime.”

In a roundabout way, that made sense. After the whole ordeal with Rukia’s trial, he could understand how politics in the other realms – Shinigami and Hollow – could be quite complicated. He was happier not dealing with any of that.

“So you and Aizen had a falling out? Don’t blame you. From what I’ve heard, the guy’s a dick.”

Grimmjow’s laughter startled him. Had he ever heard the arrancar laugh? Well, laugh in something other than a “your imminent demise amuses me” kind of way.

“Yeah, something like that.” Grimmjow glanced over at him. “Look, you really don’t want to know about all that crap. Just take it that I wasn’t an arrancar when I came to this world, and there’s no way for me to go back, so I’d rather kick the shit out of all the weak little Hollows in your world, maybe even piss off any arrancar that wander nearby.”

Ichigo took a minute to digest all that, turning Grimmjow’s words over in his head until they made sense. Curiosity kept him talking. “Why not just crusade against the Shinigami? I mean, they were your enemy, right?”

Grimmjow snorted. “I’m violent, not stupid. There’s one of me and how many of them? Plus getting to their world is a real bitch. A crusade against the Shinigami’s great if I want to go out in a blaze of glory, but I’m all about getting stronger, not giving up.”

“Oh.” That made a twisted sort of sense.

“Think of it this way – I live to fight. I’m stuck here, which leaves one of three options. Either I fight you humans, I fight the Shinigami, or I fight the Hollows. Humans are pathetic, the Shinigami outnumber me, and that leaves the Hollows. Does that work for you, or do you want to go right now, alliance be damned?”

The offer was tempting. He wouldn’t mind a rematch, especially after the comment about being pathetic, but something in Grimmjow’s words stopped him. The way Grimmjow talked… his tone was full of bluster, but his words…. Ichigo pitied him, almost.

“We can save the rematch for later,” Ichigo answered slowly. They were almost to the school gates. “For now, I’d rather just laugh as you get your ass handed to you by the Japanese school system. Not much use for Trigonometry or Ancient History in the Hollow world, I’m sure. And remember, no slaughtering the mortals, even if they give you detention.”

The glower on Grimmjow’s face more than made up for the former-arrancar’s earlier comments.

*****

They fought together like smooth symmetry. Together, not apart or against each other. They hadn’t planned it. Ichigo had started out with the whole divide-and-conquer strategy. That was the way he was used to working with Ishida and the others. Grimmjow had been on the complete opposite side of the battle field with his own Hollows to kill. Either Ichigo had moved closers or Grimmjow had shifted towards him, and neither of them noticed until they were side-to-side, fighting the same enemy in a series of moves so precise, so perfectly intertwined, it was hard to image they weren’t rehearsed. Ichigo had blocked and then Grimmjow was there, stepping in on one side and creating an opening for Ichigo on the left. They moved simultaneously, striking as one and when the Hollow disappeared, Ichigo was left staring across at an equally surprised arrancar.

The battle was decided in that instant. It didn’t matter how many Hollows there were, or who was helping them. Ichigo and Grimmjow could have taken the rest on their own without a problem. They nearly did. They moved with blind confidence, running at full tilt through the remaining enemies. Hollows evaporated in their wake and Ichigo realized as soon as the battle truly was finished that he wanted more.

Grimmjow watched him, and in the back of his mind, Ichigo wondered, what if?

They could go at each other right now, keep the fight going, but he knew that wouldn’t have the same effect. Then, they’d be back to ‘against’ and as thrilling as that had been, it hardly rivaled the sheer high of fighting ‘with’. But there were battles that could be fought without swords and the only enemy he needed was standing right beside him, a similar contemplative look glittering in his eyes.

Ichigo didn’t say a word as he reclaimed his body from Kon, smiling in a way that had Ichigo and Orihime looking at him strangely. Rukia had taken to staying with Urahara for the time being, and Kon had gone with her. If he remembered correctly, his sisters would be busy helping his father run errands for the next few hours.

He started home. Grimmjow followed. Nothing needed to be said.

Ichigo glared at the still form in his bed. “Grimmjow, get up.”

“Fuck off.”

“We’re supposed to be meeting Rukia soon.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

Ichigo leaned over to grab the blankets. Like hell he was going to let Grimmjow sleep. If he had to meet with Rukia, so did Grimmjow.

He never quite made it to the blankets.

Grimmjow reached up with surprising speed, flipping Ichigo until he was trapped under the arrancar. Teeth pressed against his throat, a knee slid between his thighs.

“Not getting up,” Grimmjow muttered into Ichigo’s neck.

It was tempting. Ichigo glanced at the clock and groaned. “We’re going to be late.”

“Fuck being late.” Grimmjow’s hands were working insistently at Ichigo’s shirt. He’d already gotten half the buttons undone before Ichigo thought to stop him.

“We have to-”

A tongue down his throat cut him off and Ichigo forgot what he’d been trying to stop. His shirt fell open and then his pants were being unbuttoned and slid down. He vaguely remembered having to be somewhere as Grimmjow turned him onto his stomach but then Grimmjow reached for the tube of lubricant they kept hidden under the mattress. Slick fingers shoved inside of him, not bothering with gentleness in favor of expediency, and Ichigo forgot all about promises and meetings.

Grimmjow’s cock was a welcome invasion. He came at Ichigo like it was a battle, hands clawing, bruising, hips slamming forward. There was power in every movement, power and control. Ichigo had given up trying to fight back. Fun as it was, bruises in certain areas made it difficult to walk the next day, and it was good, in its own way, just to give in. He knew he could fight back, but he didn’t want to, reveling instead in the way Grimmjow moved him, in the feel of Grimmjow pounding inside of him, and the rise and fall of their hips.

He pulled his knees forward, lifting his ass to give Grimmjow better access. One hand moved around to stroke Ichigo, his reward for cooperation, and it didn’t take long before he was coming, seed spilling over Grimmjow’s hand and onto the sheets. He was going to have to change them later.

Grimmjow collapsed, spent, on top of him, his weight forcing Ichigo flat against the mattress. For a moment, they just lay there, breathing heavily and letting their hearts slow down.

“Wasn’t there somewhere you had to be?” Grimmjow asked after a minute.

“Somewhere we have to be, and we’re leaving as soon as you get the fuck off my ass.”

“Might want some clothes first,” Grimmjow laughed as he moved away. He stood, smacking Ichigo lightly on the ass before walking over to Ichigo’s closet.

Ichigo sighed and stood. They were going to be late, and Rukia was going to know why.