Coyote Starrk and Ulquiorra – 85 and 95?

– anonymous

(85: Innocent physical contact, 95: Sleep Intimacy)

Ulquiorra… wakes.

(Every waking is a marvel.)

There’s an arm over his waist and a leg tucked between his own, hot breath on the back of his neck and a hint of sharp-edged bone digging into his spine. It’s verging on uncomfortable but at the same time…

(He can feel pain because he exists.)

Starrk grumbles and buries his face against the back of Ulquiorra’s neck, arm tightening around his waist and fragment of mask digging deeper with every motion.

(Their masks are both bane and boon, the source of their strength and the source of their pain, forever and always.)

“We need to rise,” Ulquiorra tells Starrk, gripping the other Hollow’s wrist. Starrk whines, pathetic like the dog Kurosaki had introduced Ulquiorra to when he’d asked, and burrows closer. “Lillynette will not remain away much longer.”

Starrk mumbles something against his neck, words incomprehensible but tone familiar. It’s… exasperating; an emotion that Ulquiorra is only just beginning to familiarize himself with.

(He… wonders, sometimes.)

(Wonders why he does this, why he returns to Starrk’s side again and again, but…)

(I Reject…!)

(Well, of all of Aizen’s forces, only Starrk shares his experiences and… it’s something.)

“I’m not dealing with your excitable other half,” Ulquiorra says as he pries himself out of Starrk’s grip. His back feels unbearably cold without Starrk pressed against it, just like every morning he goes through this, but he rolls out of their shared bed without hesitation.

Starrk cracks open an eye to fix Ulquiorra with a look, even as he drags Ulquiorra’s pillow closer and tucks it against his chest. “One day I’ll get you to stay,” he mumbles into the fabric, then yawns and lets his eye close. “You’ll see.”

Ulquiorra scoffs and turns away to get dressed, ignoring the tiny spark of… something… brewing in the space where Inoue Orihime called his heart into being. He doesn’t know what it is but… it’s growing. Slowly. Infinitesimally. A grain of sand every time he spends the night with Starrk and wakes to warmth and existence that he never expected to have.

One day he’ll understand what it is.

One day.