Warnings: AU, Yaoi/Slash

Characters: Ulquiorra/Ichigo, brief Grimmjow/Ichigo

Chapter Rating: PG-15

Disclaimer: Owned by Kubo Tite, et al.

Summary: Ichigo grows up under the watchful eye of his guardian, Ulquiorra.

A/N: Be forewarned—this is a peculiar child of a peculiar brain. Whether the reader may find anything worthy of approbation, the author cannot say—except that zie hopes the reader will show enough human respect and dignity to refrain from sacrificing zir upon the alter of the reader's indignation. Thank you most kindly for your time and for, if you may be so inclined, a memento of your visit in the form of a review. The author is, as always, the humble and pitiable servant of your entertainment.

::Eye for an Eye::

~Child~

His left eye is no longer his, and he can't help but feel a small flush of warmth in his belly at the knowledge. Ichigo has been waiting for days to finally take the bandages and gauze off and see how everything has turned out; and today is finally the day! With barely restrained excitement he sits on the stool, small feet kicking at the air, as his guardian methodically unwinds the protective strips of cloth. Each pass lets in more light. Each pass brings him closer to the fulfillment of expectation. He doesn't even feel the lingering pain of violence in the wounds littering his body.

"Close your eyes."

He obeys, biting his lower lip lightly, as a firm hand holds the gauze in place over his left eye in preparation for the final circuit. One pass. Two passes. He can sense the bandages falling away, the hand that gathers them, and the person standing close to his left shoulder.

"I am removing the gauze. Keep your eyes closed until I give you permission to do otherwise."

When he's older, perhaps Ichigo will have more to say on a human's instinctive capacity to differentiate between states of light and dark even without sight; for now, though, as a child that is a little less—or perhaps more—than human, all he understands is that there is a difference and that this means there's a high chance that everything has worked out.

His left eye is no longer of his body, but it will work for him now. It is a gift from his second most precious person to replace the one stolen by a power he should not have so brashly confronted at his current level. He chuckles a bit, grin splitting his face as he thinks back. Getting his butt kicked by some stupid Shinigami assistant captain was so worth it! He finally got to witness—albeit through the haze of swiftly falling unconsciousness—his guardian lose a bit of his infamous composure. Ulquiorra hadn't even bothered ensure the Shinigami was dead before opening up a passage home.

The will of Ichigo's foster father will always be the Espada's top priority, but he has a feeling that Ulquiorra isn't as indifferent to him as he seems. Why else would the Fourth give the child his own eye to replace the one that had been destroyed by the blade of a Zanpaku-tou? If Ichigo had any concept of human softness, he might try to classify and quantify his guardian's motives, but all he knows is the capriciousness of growing up amongst soul-devouring monsters, and so a small measure of demonstrated attachment has him grinning ear to ear with impish delight. After all, Syazel could probably create a new eye that would work just as well.

Cool hands capture his face and tilt it back. "Open your eyes slowly. If you feel any pain, stop."

The muted light pricks his new eye as he follows Ulquiorra's monotone instructions. Tears gather at the corner and he has to blink rapidly to keep them from spilling. It's not painful. It's just unpleasant. He's too strong for pain, anyway. His right eye focuses immediately. His left lags behind, everything a nauseating blur of abstract color. Then, second by second, his vision clears, though still sensitive to the dim lighting. He blinks, feeling the lid slide over the new organ with only the slightest difficulty. The socket is still tender from the diagonal slice that took his original eye, but it doesn't hurt—and he can see!

"How does it look?" he eagerly asks, staring up into his guardian's impassive face.

"Adequate. We will need to test the nerve response time." Dark-nailed fingers probe the still-swollen stitches cutting across his face.

"Ne, U'ra, we match now, sorta." The Espada pauses in his examination, some incomprehensible emotion plays at the corners of his lips.

"That is a useless observation."

The boy grins widely, showing off two rows of white teeth.

Ichigo left eye is no longer his own, now it is a luminous, poison-green—just like his second most favorite person's.

~Teenager~

Ichigo is pretty certain this isn't sex. He's always been under the impression that it involved less clothing and more skin. Still, it feels really good when Grimmjow's rough tongue does those strange, undulating moves inside Ichigo's smaller mouth, and when the Sixth's calloused hands move over his body without a hint of gentleness. It's good and Ichigo's hard, the tip of his penis damp and sticky, and it's not sex, but it just might turn out to be sex if the growling pants from the blue-haired Espada are any indication. Though how it becomes sex when neither of them has a vagina, well, the boy figures he'll find out. At least Grimmjow seems to know what he's doing.

And Ichigo is starting to get an inkling of where this is all going—what with Grimmjow's interest beginning to focus on Ichigo's ass—only there suddenly comes a separation between them in the form of Ichigo's guardian. He only has a chance to squeak out his surprise at the sudden hand dragging him away from the hot body between his young thighs before he finds himself meeting ignobly with the nacreous floor a few feet away. His shoulder makes a strange, fleshy popping noise as it strikes first, followed by his hip. Sharp, intense pain screams up the nerves in his arm. He wheezes out a shaky, "Fuck," and rolls over onto his back, clutching at his injured joint. Ulquiorra pays him only the briefest of disapproving glances.

The Fourth's focus is on the growling, obviously pissed-off Grimmjow, whom he effortlessly holds pinned to the wall with one pale hand. A jewel-bright rill of blood streams down the side of the Sixth's face where Ulquiorra slammed him—head-first, apparently—into the self-same wall.

So much for the whole maybe-sex.

"What the hell, you fucking bastard?"

"You do not have permission to touch him, Grimmjow." Black-nailed fingers flex, carving bleeding crescents into Grimmjow's face. Ichigo can see dark, painfully impotent rage twist the Sixth's features and he knows the lower ranked Espada is going to do something foolish; and Ichigo understands that for Grimmjow this isn't about sex, it's about self-destruction, the internecine disease infecting all of his foster father's guard. In the end, nothing is stronger than minus soul's all-consuming hatred of its own existence. Struggling to his knees, clutching his throbbing, probably dislocated shoulder, Ichigo pushes himself to intervene.

"U'ra," he says, reverting to the nickname he used in childhood when the Fourth's full name proved too much of a mouthful, "Nothing happened, okay. It wasn't anything."

Poison-green eyes turn, deliberately, to meet his pleading gaze; Ichigo feels a sudden twinge in his left eye. Grimmjow starts spitting out invectives, but neither of them pays attention.

"I won't do it again. I'll listen only to you."

Casually, Ulquiorra backhands Grimmjow and sends him flying down the hall, though his eyes never leave Ichigo's. The boy winces at the sudden burst of violence, but doesn't look away. The Fourth reaches out with his right hand, reaches out until the tips of his middle and index finger hover just centimeters away from Ichigo's left eye—the eye that is the same dangerous green as the Espada's own.

"I will not report your indiscretion to Aizen-sama at this time." The fingers slip down, tracing the pale line that cuts a diagonal path across his cheek without ever touching. An alien emotion moves like a shadow across Ulquiorra's otherwise blank features and Ichigo, for the life of him, cannot find a language with the capacity to describe the fleeting expression. "You will still be punished, regardless."

"Okay."

"First, your shoulder will need to be looked at. Can you stand or do you need assistance?" The hand moves away and Ichigo finds within himself a strange urge to reach out and drag it back, to bring it back to his cheek and nuzzle into it. He resists, and, instead, tightens his grip upon his shoulder; the stab of pain from the action brutally quells all incongruous urges.

"Please," he says, looking away. Down the hallway Grimmjow watches them, furious and silent, though he flinches when Ichigo glances at him, refusing to accept whatever softness might be in the boy's bi-colored eyes.

Ichigo's second attempt to get a handle on the whole sex thing is about as unsuccessful as his first all those years ago—and for pretty much the same reasons.

"What the hell are you doing, Ulquiorra?" he demands as the saturnine Espada drags the female arrancar—Ichigo can't remember her name—off his bed by one of her braided blonde pigtails. Moments later Ichigo's room has a new, blood-spattered hole. The air convulses with the passage of Ulquiorra's cero. "I'm old enough, dammit."

"That is of no consequence," the Fourth replies in the same monotonous tones he always employs. "I will not permit you to associate with trash like that."

Ichigo grabs a pillow and jams it across his lap. Not like Ulquiorra hasn't seen him naked—the Espada has been looking after him since he was a toddler—but right now Ichigo is suffering from a rather embarrassing case of blue-balls all thanks to his obdurate guardian and he has no desire for the Espada to see his wood. God dammit, and now Ulquiorra has killed off, most likely, the only creature here who has shown any interest in getting into Ichigo's pants; well, there's still Grimmjow, but Ichigo promised Ulquiorra that he wouldn't do anything 'inappropriate' with the Sixth.

"Then who can I fuck, huh? I'm not a kid. I'm not—I'm not some… Urgh." He closes his eyes and slumps forward. He's going to be a virgin for the rest of his life, especially if Ulquiorra kills his prospective partners before they can even take off all their clothes; and how does the Fourth even know when Ichigo is about to get frisky? Fuck, does he have some sort of radar or something? "Please, just tell me who, okay? Who can I have sex with?"

"Sexual intercourse is a waste of time and a pointless endeavor of procreation. You should concern yourself more with becoming worthy of Aizen-sama's regard."

"I'm not some asexual eunuch," Ichigo says, frustrations of many kinds thickening his voice. "I'm a teenage guy. Do you understand that at all? Maybe you Hollows don't need sex or don't care about it or whatever, but I do." He fists the pillow on his lap, twisting and twisting and twisting the fabric until the threads threaten to snap, the cloth to rip. He's had it with just his hand. He's had it with wet dreams and cold showers and seeing all those female arrancars in those skimpy outfits and not being able to do anything because all of them are too scared to even look him in the eye. Except that blonde, but now she's so many disassociated spirit particles thanks to Ulquiorra's cero; and why are they so scared of Ichigo? It's not like he's done anything, really, to warrant that kind of blatant avoidance. Not like he…

The pillow shreds. White down fills the air.

"You. It was you, wasn't it?" Hot, pulsing anger claws at his stomach and sends bile rushing up the back of his throat. "You're the reason, aren't you? Fuck, that's why no one wants to have sex with me. You told them something or threatened them or—or—I don't know—but it was you."

Poison-green eyes regard him impassively, not the least disturbed by the suffocating reiatsu swelling within the room. His left eye begins to throb with the pressure.

"What right do you have to control my sex life, huh? Even Sousuke doesn't care who I fuck. Why do you? Why? Tell me! Give me a reason! Why are you screwing with me like this?" The words rush out of him, hot and furious, and as they do he is following, body lunging forward, hands outstretched. He's got his guardian by his bony shoulders now, blunt fingers digging the iron-hard flesh beneath the white fabric of the Espada's uniform. The Fourth does not flinch or look away; he stands, immovable, even as Ichigo tries and tries and tries to shake him, to unbalance him, to do something, but he is like a child trying to move a mountain and the only outcome is exhaustion and defeat.

Slumping against his guardian, fit subsiding, he breaths in the familiar scent of old blood and ancient power and comes to the humiliating realization that he's still hard, still naked and damp with thwarted exertion.

"If I satisfy you, will you cease these shameful displays?" A hand that will never be gentle cups the back of his head. "If I do this, will you only look at me, Kurosaki Ichigo?"

Ichigo's heart trips and something hot and heavy slides into his stomach. He clutches the fabric of Ulquiorra's uniform and nods.

"Yes, U'ra."

After all, Ulquiorra is Ichigo's second most favorite person.

~End~

A/N: The author writes this in celebration of being, barring any unforeseen circumstances, the proud owner of zir very own house. The various documents have been signed, money has been put in escrow, a 30-year fixed mortgage rate has been locked in and all that needs to be done is an inspection and the final transfer of funds. So, horray! Furthermore, there might be a fourth and final installment--no promises--with the subtitle "Adult." Again, this is a possibility and no concrete plans have been made. Thank you all for your patience and regard.