Fan MailDate: 09/01/10
Summary: It's just a letter - how much trauma could it cause? The answer: more than you'd think - and the Espada are about to find this out the hard way.
Word count: 906
A/N: Dedicated to the amazing BananaNutCrunch, who so very kindly beta'd this story for me. If you like Espada fics, then go read hers NOW. Oh, wait, not NOW, read this first.
Disclaimer: Bleach is not mine, and neither is McSpoony.
"HEY, MORONS! WE'VE GOT MAIL!"
Grimmjow, clutching a large sack, appeared in the doorway. Said sack was currently overflowing with what appeared to be letters, and if you were to have looked out into the corridor, you would see a trail of envelopes.
Nnoitora, who was currently reading (yes, that's right, reading. An actual book. Wow.) looked up in a way that could almost be called desperate. In fact, Nnoitora was desperate. Desperately bored. There was absolutely nothing to do other than read – not that Nnoitora wasn't fond of reading. He was, but Charles Dickens's language was archaic, to say the least.
"What's this?" he asked, slipping in a marker and putting the book down. "We got mail?"
Grimmjow, however, simply stared at him. "Dude. Are you actually reading an actual book? Like, with words instead of pictures?"
Nnoitora scowled. "Yea, is that such a surprise?"
"Well...I didn't really think that...you know, you could-"
"WHY DOES EVERYONE ASSUME I AM ILLITERATE?!"
Ulquiorra, who had been intently discussing the symbolism of supernatural sparkling with Szayel, looked up. "Because it's you, Nnoitora."
"I resent that."
Szayel yawned, reminding them the conversation was going off-track. "The bag of mail, Grimmjow?"
"Oh yeah! Well, we've got a whole heap of FAN MAIL." He stepped into the room and closed the door, before upending the bag. A torrent of letters spilled around his feet, until he was literally standing in an ocean of paper. "And seeing as a small few of them aren't addressed to me, I thought you might wanna look through them."
Curious, the three Espada wandered over as Grimmjow sat down and opened an envelope at random. "Dear Grimmjow," he read,
"Thank you for being so awesomely awesome! Your blue hair is awesome, your Resurrección is awesome and your number 6 tattoo is awesome! You're obviously the coolest Espada, 'cause you're that awesome.
"He thinks I'm awesome," Grimmjow added, somewhat unnecessarily.
Szayel scoffed, muttering something under his breath that sounded a lot like "Yeah...you wish..." before picking up a letter addressed to himself. "Ah, one for me."
"Dear Szayel, I have to ask, why is your hair so pink? I mean, it looks nice and all, but seriously! It makes you look like a girl! Do you dye it or something? 'Cause it looks reeeeeaaaaaally retarded on you.'"
Miffed, Szayel looked up at the other three. "My hair's not that bad, is it?'
"Yeah, it is actually," Grimmjow admitted, at least having the decency to look sheepish. "You look like some sort of drag queen."
Szayel's eyes widened behind his glasses. He looked hurt, turning away to mumble, "It's not my fault that this is my natural hair colour..."
Guiltily, Grimmjow coughed slightly, before turning to Ulquiorra. "Being more quiet than usual, Ulquiorra?"
Ulquiorra simply shook his head, and wordlessly passed a letter to the blue-haired Espada. Reading it, Grimmjow scowled, before scrunching it into a ball and throwing it away viciously. "Damn...I hate yaoi fangirls..."
He shuddered slightly, then picked up another letter. "You got any good ones, Nnoitora?"
The Quinta had been, up to that moment, frantically opening envelopes, scanning through them, then throwing them aside. He looked up when he heard his name, and whined in agitation, "They're all hate letters!"
Distracted from his own sulking, Szayel glanced at him in sympathy. "Ouch, that's harsh." He patted the taller Espada's shoulder rather awkwardly.
"And they call me McSpoony! I'm not a spoon," he sniffed.
"I'm sure you're not," Szayel agreed.
Grimmjow shook his head. "C'mon, it's not that bad," he reasoned.
"It is, actually."
Scowling, Grimmjow turned to Ulquiorra. "I was trying to be optimistic, you dolt."
"But really, it is. Look at these! 'I hate you Nnoitra you pig,' 'Nel was ten times better than you ever could be,' and 'U suk noitorra dye dye dye.'"
"...wow. That is bad."
Szayel sighed. "Oddly enough, I don't get the feeling that either of you are helping." He looked at Nnoitora. "Anyway, you're not the only one who's hated," he added. "The fangirls loathe me and my Resurrección. Bah! As if I choose my sword!"
"And the fans think I'm emo," Ulqiorra added. "I'm not emo. Just because I'm the embodiment of despair, and I don't care about anything, and I have black nails, that doesn't make me emo! They call me Emospada," he said this with a distasteful sniff, "and hate me for being cold and cruel and apparently ruining the various Orihime pairings."
The three Espada turned expectantly to Grimmjow.
"Emospada," he snickered.
Ulquiorra blinked coldly. "Your turn, Grimmjow."
"Don't look at me. We've already established that I'm awesome."
Szayel rolled his eyes, before turning to Nnoitora. "Everyone thinks that Grimmjow is a heartless bastard for being a dumb, single-minded killing machine with a complete disregard for authority. They all agree that he's a jerk for being an indiscriminating murderer, and despise him because of the fact that he has absolutely no ambition in life except to kill just for the heck of it. Basically, they hate him just the same as you."
"Except, I've got cooler hair," Grimmjow added, albeit (more than) slightly deflated.
The four of them sat there quietly for a while, considering the figurative plate that had been placed before them. "Well," Grimmjow said finally. "Look on the bright side to this."
"There's a bright side?" Nnoitora asked, the first words he had spoken in a while.
"Yeah. Tesla's well-liked."