Black-and-Red Conflict - Ch.27
Pairing: Renji and Byakuya
Rating: PG (overall M)
Spoilers: for the end of the SoulSociety arc
Discl.: Bleach and all its characters are (c) to kubotite. I do not make money with this.
Content: Byakuya is an arrogant bastard, says Renji. Abarai is an impertinent nuisance, says Byakuya. Unfortunately for them, opposites attract.
Notes: so sorry that this took so long... D:
beta-read by marinliliz
~~~Twenty-Seven~~~
Approach
He loves you.
For many minutes that sentence was the only thing in Byakuya's mind.
He had thought he would break. His nerves had been worn so thin by then that those words should have been the final tremor to shatter his restraints. He should have exploded. He should have raged. He hadn't thought he could bear hearing those words spoken out loud. But strangely enough, in the moment they had left Rukia's mouth, they had instead filled him with equilibrium.
All the rage Byakuya had felt before, the indignation at her daring to come here and approach him like this, it was gone. The shock that had paralyzed him when she had revealed how much she knew. All the fear and insecurity and tension; gone.
His head was bare of emotion for the first moment in a long, long time. He breathed deeply as blissfully clear trains of thought formed in his head and he could follow them. Could think without having to feel. But then again, it wasn't that he didn't feel, but that for once, he was able to clearly contemplate all his emotions without being harassed, confused, cornered or troubled by them.
What was he scared of? Hadn't he himself already realized? Hadn't he by now noticed that Renji didn't want to and wouldn't hurt him? Why was he not accepting it? Why could he not act the same way? Why could he not simply stop hurting that one person who cared so much about him?
He was not sure he had an answer, but now he saw how ridiculous it really was, how silly this fear he could not place but which was so deeply embedded in him. He should not fear. The man he was should not fear anything, but exactly that was his mistake. Fear was always there. His grandfather had taught him that, when Byakuya had been just a boy. Fear was there, always, but to be faced and conquered, not to be covered up.
Byakuya had needed a ridiculously large amount of time to finally realize that.
Someone else might have laughed, but the noble just let out a long, unconsciously held breath and finally moved from where he was standing to open the slide doors toward the gardens and look out. Darkness had already fallen a few hours ago and the night air was cool. Here and there dimmed lamps created small islands of light along a narrow path of round stones between old, gnarled pines, rhododendron, larches and of course the famous cherry and plum trees.
More than ever before, their sight touched something deep inside the noble now, something that had been carefully hidden for a very long time. Hisana had loved those trees, had walked among them whenever she could. It hadn't mattered for her if it was spring and they were like clouds on earth in their bloom, or if they reached with their vibrant green arms towards the sun in summer, if they were laden with fruits or bare, like ink drawings on the pure white canvas of newly fallen snow. She had loved them always. But then she had been like them, had shared their destiny. Beautiful, and fleeting. And gone too fast.
The time Byakuya had shared with his wife, it had been brilliant. But like the light pink snow at the end of April, when the cherry trees shed their blossoms like tears of sweet melancholy, time had went on. New springs had come and gone, but none ever as sweet as those few, precious years before her death. Only now another spring was approaching, which might hold a deeper promise again. One that Hisana would never have wanted him to miss.
Byakuya, don't hide again behind your mask after I'm gone.
She had said it, he was certain of it now. The words that had rung in his head again after so many years on the day Renji had dared speak Hisana's name and crossed his captain's boundaries with it; words the noble hadn't even been sure had left her mouth, now he did remember. It had been one of her last wishes, spoken on the same day she had asked him to find her sister Rukia and take care of her. On that same day she had asked him to not only live on, but live.
But he had not done it. He had only heeded one of her last wishes and had pushed the others from his mind for the sake of rules and obligation. But now he had gotten another chance.
Renji.
Byakuya knew he had been living with his mask for too long. He wouldn't be able to change the way he acted outwardly and even if did, it would take a long time. He would stay the captain of the 6th division, he would stay the 28th head of the Kuchiki-clan, the noble that most saw as an arrogant and unfeeling man. But maybe if it was only Renji, he would be able to be just Byakuya. He would be the person Renji could not resist and the person who could not resist Renji.
Early the next morning, after too few hours of precious sleep, the captain of the 6th left for his office. He cleared some of the paperwork, then looked over what the squad would need to be notified of throughout the day. Fortunately there wasn't much and nothing that absolutely required his personal presence, so he wrote a short note for the 3rd seat to take care of those matters. Then, as Byakuya was about to leave the building again, just as the first shinigami from his division only arrived, he hesitated.
He had made his decision under the dark cover of the night, but now, in the light of an overcast, gray morning, his stubborn, proud self had grown stronger again. Could he really do this? Could he really just leave behind the life as he had lived it until now? But then he realized that in fact, it was already too late to withdraw now. It was already too late to go back to that other, safer place. Also, he had tasted something he did not want to let go of anymore. Something he had tasted long, long ago, and almost forgotten. If he did the same mistake again, there would be no life left to live. It would be but a farce, an act, an empty shell.
So he stepped over the threshold, out into the young day and towards the 4th division quarters.
There, Renji was just waking up, being pulled out of the last tangles of sleep by the subdued hum of a familiar reiatsu that, even though it was released as the equivalent of a polite knock, still made him wide awake in moments. He sat up just as the door to his room was pushed open and his captain stepped in, Unohana-taichou closely behind the noble. She stayed on the threshold though, her gentle smile even more mysterious than usual.
“Good morning, Abarai-kun”, she said. “How are you feeling today?”
Renji hesitated, his eyes going back and forth uncertainly between the two captains. Unohana-taichou, all friendly attention and Byakuya, face blank with what seemed like indifference but nonetheless emanating tension.
“I-I'm good”, Renji offered slowly, then shrugged his shoulder and rolled it back for emphasize. “Not hurtin' 't'all anymore.”
The healer nodded but didn't seem quite convinced. Last evening, against better knowledge, Renji had tried twice to ask her to let him go the next day, but she was reluctant to release him from her care so soon. What had happened to him had been too grave and she didn’t wanted to take any risks. She needed to make absolutely sure that all of his wounds healed properly and that his reiatsu was back to normal.
“Really! I'm all healed up. Could go'n train right now. That'd help better'n this”, Renji motioned at the bandages that were wrapped around him tightly and which he felt to be more of a hindrance than a help. Truth speaking, his shoulder still hurt a bit, but he didn't think that anything except moving it and working it would help. He carefully avoided drawing any attention to his left arm though, since it was still in worse condition than the rest of him.
“Abarai Renji”
Her tone of voice had only barely changed, but the impact of it was so great that it made the redhead flinch and look down guiltily. Unseen to him, even Byakuya's chin rose for the fraction of an inch in surprise at the absolute obedience that voice demanded. In the next moment though, she had changed back to her usual friendly tone.
“I am glad you feel better. I will be back to have a look at you in an hour.”
With that she turned and left Renji alone with his captain, who closed the door and then stepped up to the foot of the bed. They looked at each other in silence, neither quite sure what to say. Though actually, Byakuya knew what he needed to say, just didn't know how and Renji was simply too surprised at seeing his captain here to say much. After the way Byakuya had left the day before, Renji had not expected him to come back again at all. In fact he had estimated to see him the earliest sometime next week, taken the fact that he still needed to stay in the hospital for at least another whole day and after that he would be on sick leave for a short time.
But now Byakuya was here, and there was definitely something different about the noble, though it was impossible to pinpoint what that was. Could Rukia really have gone and talked to him?
Renji frowned.
It wasn't as if he hadn't been thinking about Byakuya enough already. In fact he had done so basically nonstop since he was conscious again. Having him stand at the end of his bed now didn't really make things much easier. The fact that Renji accepted himself and his emotions and had finally talked to his best friend about it didn't mean his problems were solved. He was not ashamed of the fact that he liked his captain. He did not quite understand it himself, but then, feelings were feelings, he'd live with them. What he was ashamed of was the fact that he was not able to resist that man, even though he knew he was degrading himself. It couldn't go on like that. Renji knew that if Byakuya didn't change, he would have to force himself away from the noble somehow. He could not live with himself being just the other man's dog. But how could he even hope Byakuya would change? The man had claimed he would and failed to do it before. He was an arrogant bastard, and he didn't care. Did he?
His thoughts started to tie themselves into knots and a part of Renji seriously wished nothing of this had ever happened.
“Renji”
Byakuya's voice pulled the redhead from his thoughts and his vision focused back on the face barely three meters in front of him.
“It might not have looked like it yesterday, but I am glad that you are well.”
The sentence sounded like something rehearsed too many times and the redhead's frown deepened. He sat up, careful not to lean onto his left arm and reached for a glass of water on the small bedside table on his right. He drank from it slowly before putting it back, Byakuya's gray eyes following his movements. The captain grew more nervous with every passing second, though he was still successful in hiding it.
“So... ya always puke when you're happy?”
Even Renji himself was shocked, hearing those words out of his own mouth in a seemingly casual tone of voice. The eyes fastened on him widened and Byakuya's mask slipped into an expression of disbelief and indignation.
“Shit.” Renji cursed and rubbed his face with his hand. He realized that this really had been uncalled for, but he too, was by now pretty close to the end of his limits.
“S' just that... ya... I... all this... oh fuck.”
He growled in exasperation, then threw the blanket back with much more force than would have been necessary and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, letting his head hang. He heard the noble take a deep breath.
Byakuya had known this wouldn't be easy, but Renji's words, the biting mockery in them had already managed to threaten his patience once again. The redhead hadn't actually meant what he'd said, the captain realized it, but somehow that fact just didn't do very much to calm the rage that tightened the noble's throat. His voice was cold as he spoke again.
“Of course you don't believe it. You don't believe I could have felt worry when I found you half-dead in the Real World.”
Renji's eyes widened and he turned his head to look at the noble again.
“You found me?” And after a slight pause that yielded another realization: ”You came looking for me?”
He had thought before that the feeling of Byakuya's reiatsu in the Living World, short before he had passed out for the last time, had been a hallucination, but his captain nodded once, lips tightened into a thin line.
“Oh”, Renji said meekly and looked at the floor.
That fact, of course, put things into a slightly different light. It also made what he had said before sound incredibly stupid and spiteful. Hoping to act over his embarrassment he stood and stretched, grimacing slightly as still tender muscles complained. But he wasn't actually unhappy about it. This was a good pain. One he had felt often enough to know it meant that he healed and would be able to train and fight again soon. As he lifted his left arm though and tried to bend it he could not suppress a hiss of pain. In the next moment he suddenly found one of Byakuya's hands touching the limb lightly.
“Unohana is right. You are not healed yet.”
Renji's eyes showed suspicion as he pulled his arm closer to his body and moved two steps away, breaking their contact. Byakuya also took a step back then, growing uneasy about his lieutenant's reaction. How could he ever make Renji believe that...
“Waddaya really want.”
Renji spoke quietly and had turned his back to Byakuya. The plain, light yukata he was dressed in was slightly too narrow for his strong shoulders, the tattoos of which the captain could barely perceive through the thin fabric. Black lines he had touched before, and which he yearned to touch again. But he might never again, if he messed this up.
“You said before I was using you. That isn't right.”
Renji turned back toward him slowly, his expression showing clearly that he didn't quite share that opinion. But Byakuya lifted a slender hand, not wanting to be interrupted, his mind racing to form words that might change something, that might make Renji believe, might make him give the noble one more chance.
“I... realize now why you came to that impression. But I did not mean to...” His words came slowly, hesitantly, “to make you feel that way.”
His lieutenant did not look at him, simply stood staring at the floor, showing no reaction whatsoever. Byakuya's tension grew. His thoughts seemed to stagger and stumble over each other, desperately searching, but realizing how the whole situation was slipping from his control. He felt how the muscles in his hands started to twitch faintly. In a matter of a few seconds they would shake. He felt coldness crawl up his spine and at the same time the hard blade of pride at his throat.
He would not, could not beg, could not plead. Could not say something like that out loud. Not even here, now. He could not cross that border. He could only try to persuade.
“Renji.”
The redhead turned to his captain once more, his gaze sharp and probing.
“Come to the mansion.”
“No.”
“You can rest there. You will be cared for.”
“Yeah. I know how ya will care for me.”
Byakuya closed his eyes and averted his face with a jerk. He looked up again as he felt Renji close the gap between them, now standing directly before his captain.
“I won't”, was the only thing the noble managed to say as Renji towered over him, the red eyes ablaze with defiance and rage and the fear of being disappointed once again. And yet, far, far behind that, a weak flicker: hope.
“Why should I believe ya?” He spoke so quietly it was just a whisper, but still the words were sharp, a growl, a snarl.
The noble did not answer, but he did not look away either. And what appeared in his eyes in that moment, suddenly made the hope in Renji flare, made his stomach churn for a moment before he had to turn away if not to lose himself in that storm-driven sea.
While his captain's body stood straight and proud, while his chin was lifted high and the corners of his mouth turned down slightly to give him an imperious expression, none of those things were in his eyes.
In his eyes was what he could have never spoken out loud: the desperate promise to try and change, the plea to be given that one last chance.
~~~
Rating: PG (overall M)
Spoilers: for the end of the SoulSociety arc
Discl.: Bleach and all its characters are (c) to kubotite. I do not make money with this.
Content: Byakuya is an arrogant bastard, says Renji. Abarai is an impertinent nuisance, says Byakuya. Unfortunately for them, opposites attract.
Notes: so sorry that this took so long... D:
beta-read by marinliliz
~~~Twenty-Seven~~~
Approach
He loves you.
For many minutes that sentence was the only thing in Byakuya's mind.
He had thought he would break. His nerves had been worn so thin by then that those words should have been the final tremor to shatter his restraints. He should have exploded. He should have raged. He hadn't thought he could bear hearing those words spoken out loud. But strangely enough, in the moment they had left Rukia's mouth, they had instead filled him with equilibrium.
All the rage Byakuya had felt before, the indignation at her daring to come here and approach him like this, it was gone. The shock that had paralyzed him when she had revealed how much she knew. All the fear and insecurity and tension; gone.
His head was bare of emotion for the first moment in a long, long time. He breathed deeply as blissfully clear trains of thought formed in his head and he could follow them. Could think without having to feel. But then again, it wasn't that he didn't feel, but that for once, he was able to clearly contemplate all his emotions without being harassed, confused, cornered or troubled by them.
What was he scared of? Hadn't he himself already realized? Hadn't he by now noticed that Renji didn't want to and wouldn't hurt him? Why was he not accepting it? Why could he not act the same way? Why could he not simply stop hurting that one person who cared so much about him?
He was not sure he had an answer, but now he saw how ridiculous it really was, how silly this fear he could not place but which was so deeply embedded in him. He should not fear. The man he was should not fear anything, but exactly that was his mistake. Fear was always there. His grandfather had taught him that, when Byakuya had been just a boy. Fear was there, always, but to be faced and conquered, not to be covered up.
Byakuya had needed a ridiculously large amount of time to finally realize that.
Someone else might have laughed, but the noble just let out a long, unconsciously held breath and finally moved from where he was standing to open the slide doors toward the gardens and look out. Darkness had already fallen a few hours ago and the night air was cool. Here and there dimmed lamps created small islands of light along a narrow path of round stones between old, gnarled pines, rhododendron, larches and of course the famous cherry and plum trees.
More than ever before, their sight touched something deep inside the noble now, something that had been carefully hidden for a very long time. Hisana had loved those trees, had walked among them whenever she could. It hadn't mattered for her if it was spring and they were like clouds on earth in their bloom, or if they reached with their vibrant green arms towards the sun in summer, if they were laden with fruits or bare, like ink drawings on the pure white canvas of newly fallen snow. She had loved them always. But then she had been like them, had shared their destiny. Beautiful, and fleeting. And gone too fast.
The time Byakuya had shared with his wife, it had been brilliant. But like the light pink snow at the end of April, when the cherry trees shed their blossoms like tears of sweet melancholy, time had went on. New springs had come and gone, but none ever as sweet as those few, precious years before her death. Only now another spring was approaching, which might hold a deeper promise again. One that Hisana would never have wanted him to miss.
Byakuya, don't hide again behind your mask after I'm gone.
She had said it, he was certain of it now. The words that had rung in his head again after so many years on the day Renji had dared speak Hisana's name and crossed his captain's boundaries with it; words the noble hadn't even been sure had left her mouth, now he did remember. It had been one of her last wishes, spoken on the same day she had asked him to find her sister Rukia and take care of her. On that same day she had asked him to not only live on, but live.
But he had not done it. He had only heeded one of her last wishes and had pushed the others from his mind for the sake of rules and obligation. But now he had gotten another chance.
Renji.
Byakuya knew he had been living with his mask for too long. He wouldn't be able to change the way he acted outwardly and even if did, it would take a long time. He would stay the captain of the 6th division, he would stay the 28th head of the Kuchiki-clan, the noble that most saw as an arrogant and unfeeling man. But maybe if it was only Renji, he would be able to be just Byakuya. He would be the person Renji could not resist and the person who could not resist Renji.
Early the next morning, after too few hours of precious sleep, the captain of the 6th left for his office. He cleared some of the paperwork, then looked over what the squad would need to be notified of throughout the day. Fortunately there wasn't much and nothing that absolutely required his personal presence, so he wrote a short note for the 3rd seat to take care of those matters. Then, as Byakuya was about to leave the building again, just as the first shinigami from his division only arrived, he hesitated.
He had made his decision under the dark cover of the night, but now, in the light of an overcast, gray morning, his stubborn, proud self had grown stronger again. Could he really do this? Could he really just leave behind the life as he had lived it until now? But then he realized that in fact, it was already too late to withdraw now. It was already too late to go back to that other, safer place. Also, he had tasted something he did not want to let go of anymore. Something he had tasted long, long ago, and almost forgotten. If he did the same mistake again, there would be no life left to live. It would be but a farce, an act, an empty shell.
So he stepped over the threshold, out into the young day and towards the 4th division quarters.
There, Renji was just waking up, being pulled out of the last tangles of sleep by the subdued hum of a familiar reiatsu that, even though it was released as the equivalent of a polite knock, still made him wide awake in moments. He sat up just as the door to his room was pushed open and his captain stepped in, Unohana-taichou closely behind the noble. She stayed on the threshold though, her gentle smile even more mysterious than usual.
“Good morning, Abarai-kun”, she said. “How are you feeling today?”
Renji hesitated, his eyes going back and forth uncertainly between the two captains. Unohana-taichou, all friendly attention and Byakuya, face blank with what seemed like indifference but nonetheless emanating tension.
“I-I'm good”, Renji offered slowly, then shrugged his shoulder and rolled it back for emphasize. “Not hurtin' 't'all anymore.”
The healer nodded but didn't seem quite convinced. Last evening, against better knowledge, Renji had tried twice to ask her to let him go the next day, but she was reluctant to release him from her care so soon. What had happened to him had been too grave and she didn’t wanted to take any risks. She needed to make absolutely sure that all of his wounds healed properly and that his reiatsu was back to normal.
“Really! I'm all healed up. Could go'n train right now. That'd help better'n this”, Renji motioned at the bandages that were wrapped around him tightly and which he felt to be more of a hindrance than a help. Truth speaking, his shoulder still hurt a bit, but he didn't think that anything except moving it and working it would help. He carefully avoided drawing any attention to his left arm though, since it was still in worse condition than the rest of him.
“Abarai Renji”
Her tone of voice had only barely changed, but the impact of it was so great that it made the redhead flinch and look down guiltily. Unseen to him, even Byakuya's chin rose for the fraction of an inch in surprise at the absolute obedience that voice demanded. In the next moment though, she had changed back to her usual friendly tone.
“I am glad you feel better. I will be back to have a look at you in an hour.”
With that she turned and left Renji alone with his captain, who closed the door and then stepped up to the foot of the bed. They looked at each other in silence, neither quite sure what to say. Though actually, Byakuya knew what he needed to say, just didn't know how and Renji was simply too surprised at seeing his captain here to say much. After the way Byakuya had left the day before, Renji had not expected him to come back again at all. In fact he had estimated to see him the earliest sometime next week, taken the fact that he still needed to stay in the hospital for at least another whole day and after that he would be on sick leave for a short time.
But now Byakuya was here, and there was definitely something different about the noble, though it was impossible to pinpoint what that was. Could Rukia really have gone and talked to him?
Renji frowned.
It wasn't as if he hadn't been thinking about Byakuya enough already. In fact he had done so basically nonstop since he was conscious again. Having him stand at the end of his bed now didn't really make things much easier. The fact that Renji accepted himself and his emotions and had finally talked to his best friend about it didn't mean his problems were solved. He was not ashamed of the fact that he liked his captain. He did not quite understand it himself, but then, feelings were feelings, he'd live with them. What he was ashamed of was the fact that he was not able to resist that man, even though he knew he was degrading himself. It couldn't go on like that. Renji knew that if Byakuya didn't change, he would have to force himself away from the noble somehow. He could not live with himself being just the other man's dog. But how could he even hope Byakuya would change? The man had claimed he would and failed to do it before. He was an arrogant bastard, and he didn't care. Did he?
His thoughts started to tie themselves into knots and a part of Renji seriously wished nothing of this had ever happened.
“Renji”
Byakuya's voice pulled the redhead from his thoughts and his vision focused back on the face barely three meters in front of him.
“It might not have looked like it yesterday, but I am glad that you are well.”
The sentence sounded like something rehearsed too many times and the redhead's frown deepened. He sat up, careful not to lean onto his left arm and reached for a glass of water on the small bedside table on his right. He drank from it slowly before putting it back, Byakuya's gray eyes following his movements. The captain grew more nervous with every passing second, though he was still successful in hiding it.
“So... ya always puke when you're happy?”
Even Renji himself was shocked, hearing those words out of his own mouth in a seemingly casual tone of voice. The eyes fastened on him widened and Byakuya's mask slipped into an expression of disbelief and indignation.
“Shit.” Renji cursed and rubbed his face with his hand. He realized that this really had been uncalled for, but he too, was by now pretty close to the end of his limits.
“S' just that... ya... I... all this... oh fuck.”
He growled in exasperation, then threw the blanket back with much more force than would have been necessary and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, letting his head hang. He heard the noble take a deep breath.
Byakuya had known this wouldn't be easy, but Renji's words, the biting mockery in them had already managed to threaten his patience once again. The redhead hadn't actually meant what he'd said, the captain realized it, but somehow that fact just didn't do very much to calm the rage that tightened the noble's throat. His voice was cold as he spoke again.
“Of course you don't believe it. You don't believe I could have felt worry when I found you half-dead in the Real World.”
Renji's eyes widened and he turned his head to look at the noble again.
“You found me?” And after a slight pause that yielded another realization: ”You came looking for me?”
He had thought before that the feeling of Byakuya's reiatsu in the Living World, short before he had passed out for the last time, had been a hallucination, but his captain nodded once, lips tightened into a thin line.
“Oh”, Renji said meekly and looked at the floor.
That fact, of course, put things into a slightly different light. It also made what he had said before sound incredibly stupid and spiteful. Hoping to act over his embarrassment he stood and stretched, grimacing slightly as still tender muscles complained. But he wasn't actually unhappy about it. This was a good pain. One he had felt often enough to know it meant that he healed and would be able to train and fight again soon. As he lifted his left arm though and tried to bend it he could not suppress a hiss of pain. In the next moment he suddenly found one of Byakuya's hands touching the limb lightly.
“Unohana is right. You are not healed yet.”
Renji's eyes showed suspicion as he pulled his arm closer to his body and moved two steps away, breaking their contact. Byakuya also took a step back then, growing uneasy about his lieutenant's reaction. How could he ever make Renji believe that...
“Waddaya really want.”
Renji spoke quietly and had turned his back to Byakuya. The plain, light yukata he was dressed in was slightly too narrow for his strong shoulders, the tattoos of which the captain could barely perceive through the thin fabric. Black lines he had touched before, and which he yearned to touch again. But he might never again, if he messed this up.
“You said before I was using you. That isn't right.”
Renji turned back toward him slowly, his expression showing clearly that he didn't quite share that opinion. But Byakuya lifted a slender hand, not wanting to be interrupted, his mind racing to form words that might change something, that might make Renji believe, might make him give the noble one more chance.
“I... realize now why you came to that impression. But I did not mean to...” His words came slowly, hesitantly, “to make you feel that way.”
His lieutenant did not look at him, simply stood staring at the floor, showing no reaction whatsoever. Byakuya's tension grew. His thoughts seemed to stagger and stumble over each other, desperately searching, but realizing how the whole situation was slipping from his control. He felt how the muscles in his hands started to twitch faintly. In a matter of a few seconds they would shake. He felt coldness crawl up his spine and at the same time the hard blade of pride at his throat.
He would not, could not beg, could not plead. Could not say something like that out loud. Not even here, now. He could not cross that border. He could only try to persuade.
“Renji.”
The redhead turned to his captain once more, his gaze sharp and probing.
“Come to the mansion.”
“No.”
“You can rest there. You will be cared for.”
“Yeah. I know how ya will care for me.”
Byakuya closed his eyes and averted his face with a jerk. He looked up again as he felt Renji close the gap between them, now standing directly before his captain.
“I won't”, was the only thing the noble managed to say as Renji towered over him, the red eyes ablaze with defiance and rage and the fear of being disappointed once again. And yet, far, far behind that, a weak flicker: hope.
“Why should I believe ya?” He spoke so quietly it was just a whisper, but still the words were sharp, a growl, a snarl.
The noble did not answer, but he did not look away either. And what appeared in his eyes in that moment, suddenly made the hope in Renji flare, made his stomach churn for a moment before he had to turn away if not to lose himself in that storm-driven sea.
While his captain's body stood straight and proud, while his chin was lifted high and the corners of his mouth turned down slightly to give him an imperious expression, none of those things were in his eyes.
In his eyes was what he could have never spoken out loud: the desperate promise to try and change, the plea to be given that one last chance.
~~~