Brown Leafed Vertigo #16-2
Story Title: Brown Leafed Vertigo
Chapter Title: Feathered Sacred
Author: foxflare
Disclaimer: I own no part of Cl2(aq) + H2O(l) ↔ 2H+(aq) + Cl-(aq) + ClO-(aq). Kubo Tite-sama whitens & brightens all.
Chapter Summary: Skin & secrets are shrouded & shared. No one is straight safe.
XVI. Feathered Sacred 2/2
Byakuya looked at him, a frown furrowing his brow, and Renji recognized too late the banana peel that had led to his Freudian slip.
"About last night," he explained with what he hoped was a passable imitation of nonchalance. "Why haven't you said anything? Lectured me, made me write 'I will not drink until I am of age' six hundred times in kanji-only characters. . .?"
"Would you like me to?"
Ride my ass? Well, not really, but I'd be open to riding yours. . .
"Not really. But. . .that's it? You're just gonna let me off scot-free?"
Kuchiki-sensei swallowed a bite of omelet with a stoicism that shouldn't have been possible through that much pepper.
"To what point and purpose would I punish you now? You recognize that your actions warrant consequences, and unless you believe that my leniency indicates the beginning of a hitherto absent trend in your life of escaping unscathed all situations in which you may be named a culprit, I would judge your lesson learned."
Renji's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Careful, Sensei. It almost sounds like you have faith in me."
"What indication have I ever given that I do not?"
"Well, there's. . ." Renji hunted through his memories, but it was true: he could recall no specific instance in which Kuchiki Byakuya had outright doubted his potential. "Okay, but come on, even you've gotta admit you've pretty much snubbed me since you've known me."
Byakuya blinked at him, looking genuinely puzzled. "I made you my teacher's aid."
"Well, yeah, but. . .before that." Renji could feel himself losing ground.
"You feel you were treated differently than any of my other students?"
"Well, no," Renji admitted. "But that's just it. You're an equal opportunity ignorer."
"Pray tell, what specific forms of acknowledgment ought I be dispensing? I understand Urahara-sensei rewards his top testers with candy bars; should I begin rewarding good performances with treats?"
"No, that's--"
"I teach history, Renji, not obedience school. If you wish to be regarded as a hound to be trained and not a person fully capable of recognizing and pursuing knowledge as its own reward, then I suggest you look elsewhere."
"I don't--"
"There comes a point in every young person's life when acting with maturity must become a conscious decision for the betterment of oneself, and not a trick performed for the sake of instant gratification. With adulthood comes the freedom of choice, one of the most valuable commodities any man can possess. I give my pupils the option to practice their authenticity. Whether or not they act upon it is entirely up to them. You of all people ought to find that a relatable sentiment."
"But you're you!" Renji finally exploded. "Do you. . .do you have any idea what that means to someone like me? You wanna talk pets? Well I am the eternal underdog! I've always had to fight twice as hard to accomplish the same stuff as everyone else, and you? You were born with that stuff. You were a winner and you never even had to run the race, an' lemme tell you, freedom of choice looks a lot different when that choice is between stealing and eating versus veal or lamb. So yeah, sometimes a candy bar can be a real fuckin' luxury, and if it's the only food you've had in a week, you're gonna remember the face of the asshole who gave it to you, because when you're struggling, you have to be able to remember that somebody gives a shit, 'cause otherwise, why should you?"
"Personal pride," Byakuya offered. "The unwillingness to perpetuate a poor example."
"Okay, so when you're stretched to the limits of your means, and no one comes to your aid, then what happens? You bite off your own nose to spite everyone else's face? Name the last one-man revolution that actually worked. You can't always do everything alone -- that's the point of people. And while trusting that they'll act with integrity is a real noble idea, you can't just give a guy a What without a worthwhile Why. Martyrs don't die for causes that never gave them hope."
"And you are what, the Yoshida Shoin of Seireitei Academy, year twelve?"
Renji glowered at him. "You're missing the point on purpose, aren't you?"
"Oh, I understand your point. I simply find it lacks perspective. Even if every situation can be made into a metaphorical battle, not every outcome will have been worth the fight. Neither do martyrs often advocate Pyrrhic victories."
"Yeah yeah," Renji waved him off. "Shades of gray, I get all that. But just because one man's ash looks like another man's charcoal doesn't mean meat'll cook over both. One of 'em's still gotta be--"
"Wrong," Byakuya finished, sounding none too impressed with his T.A.'s discourse. "But have you not flourished, Renji, under my. . .erroneous tutelage?"
I have been charred to a fucking crisp by you, you have burned your way into my bones--
"Oh, yeah," Renji shrugged with an ease he did not actually feel. "Truth is, I decided to kill myself for you a long time ago. But I will always defend a person's right to candy bars."
He didn't even try to hide that one. Didn't try to turn it innocent with clarification. It felt like testing the water with a cannonball dive instead of a toe, but. . .fuck it.
Byakuya did indeed look momentarily alarmed, or. . .actually, he looked kind of angry, and Renji realized too late that making light of death in conversation with a widower was less an act of fuck it, and more one that was very insensitively fucked up.
And sure enough, the bitterness that colored Byakuya's tongue wasn't only owing to the black coffee he'd been drinking when he said, "Alas, it is the fatal flaw of all educators that they may only successfully teach what they know."
Well done, Abarai. Way to cook your own goose.
But Renji also managed to pinpoint, then, the origins of why his teacher's instructive doctrine had sounded so much like a recitation: it was the knee-jerk reaction of one who had too often been called upon to explain himself. One whose true character had been denied in favor of a caricature as prone to discrimination as Renji's own underprivileged pigeonhole. One who had gone against the grain of what he himself had been taught, and continued to pay heavily for it.
A dead wife. The scorn of her sister, and very likely that of his own family.
But. . .if Kuchiki-sensei's so rich, then why does he teach here?
The answer to Kira's question now seemed pathetically simple: because he chose to. Because he could, and he wanted to.
Because in doing so, something had once given him hope. The exertion of his personal freedom, of his right to choose the path of his own life, even if he preferred dirt to pavement.
But it had been a dead end decision, hadn't it? She was gone, and all he had left now was the mindless execution of tasks he had set for himself when they had still held meaning.
Renji had been so intent on sniffing out the man's true self, he hadn't ever opened his eyes to the fact that it had always been on display.
"Come on, Sensei," Renji gentled, feeling the omelets' eggshells crackling underfoot even as he sat with his legs swinging in the air. "Don't be. . ." He caught Byakuya's warning look, and knew he was in no position to be posing even the most plaintive of orders. "You know I didn't mean it like that. I don't even know what I'm saying half the time, I just let my mouth hang open and watch the wind make my gums flap. It's idiotic, I know, but. . ."
Byakuya frowned at him and muttered, almost to himself, "Why do you so incessantly sell yourself short?"
The redhead shrugged and scratched at the side of his nose. "I dunno. I guess small numbers always look a lot bigger when you're born into poverty."
"It is foolish to value one's true worth as equal to one's gross annual income."
Renji noisily slurped down the last of the sugary sludge at the bottom of his coffee cup in an effort to further lighten the mood.
"Yep," he agreed, smacking his lips. "See? Idiotic."
Kuchiki-sensei shook his head and exhaled a heavy -- one might say disgusted -- breath through his nose. He stood and collected their empty plates and placed them in the sink, and Renji got the sense that something, at some point, had taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque, wherever that was.
"Your clothes should be dry by now," Byakuya told him. "After you've dressed, I will take you to Rukia's apartment."
"Wait!" said Renji.
Byakuya looked at him, and he wrung his brains for procrastination material.
"What. . .what about that dojo you told me about?"
Byakuya flipped a switch on the wall to his right, and Renji whistled lowly.
"Nice," he appraised, stepping into a room easily sixteen tatami mats in size. The far wall was lined completely with perfectly flat and spotless mirrors. In the sword rack to his left, the bamboo shinai and bokken shone like gold.
He looked briefly to Byakuya for approval before selecting one and lifting it free, testing its weight in his hands.
"How often do you train?" he asked, holding the shinai up close, examining the grain of its wood and admiring the quality of its leather hilt.
"Whenever I feel so inclined."
"Okay, when was the last time you trained?"
"The day before yesterday."
"Really. . ." Renji murmured under his breath, then turned and tossed the weapon to his teacher. "Think fast, Sensei!"
Byakuya caught it automatically, scowling.
"Renji, that is not--"
"You challenged me to a duel, remember?" He tugged off his pyjama top and folded it as neatly as he could manage before placing it on the floor.
Byakuya only stared at him.
"Come on, Sensei," Renji persisted. "Don't punk out on me now. We don't even have to do full bogu, just skins and swords."
The history professor hesitated, then leaned his shinai against the wall and reached for the hem of his sweater.
Renji regretted abruptly his suggestion that they spar sans armor -- more specifically, sans groin-shielding tare.
Think unsexy thoughts, he commanded his brain. Both of them. Scrubbing toilets. Sentaagai. Iba. Iba dressed in sentaagai sitting on a toilet I'll later have to scrub.
Thankfully, it worked. He had to gulp to force down a heave, but it worked. Then he had to gulp again.
Kuchiki-sensei's naked torso was, predictably, absolutely goddamn beautiful. It conjured up allusions to almost all the bullet points on Renji's ready-made list of Perfect Things That Could Be Metaphorically Applied to Kuchiki Byakuya, many of which could be found in museums, under or behind glass, or in the sky at night, preceded by such monthly titles as Dragon or Lotus, White or Bitter or Hungry Ghost. He was lean and hard and pale and smooth and--
Iba dressed in sentaagai! Iba dressed in sentaagai!
"Renji. . ."
"Ngh?"
"I confess, I have always wondered. . .why the tattoos?"
"The what?" Renji shook himself. "Oh." He looked down at his chest, where the tribal design that interlocked across his brow, neck and arms was still but a hollow outline. "They're, uh. . .promises. Insurance policies."
"Indemnifying what?"
"I'm the eternal underdog, remember? I never said that was something I resented or wasn't proud of." He gestured broadly at his person. "These make sure I'll never lose that. They make sure I'll never be able to 'pass' for ordinary or get lazy or cut myself any slack, 'cause no one else has and no one's ever gonna. Everything I accomplish, I do so in spite of my upbringing, and I want everyone else to know that, too. And one day, when I'm the CEO of my own company, every person I meet'll know I must've had to fight harder than anyone else to get there. They won't be able to deny I earned it. So every time I achieve something I've really been busting my ass for, I expand the design, to reward myself and to make sure I have to work even harder next time.
"Plus," he shrugged, grinning lopsidedly, "it's kind of a half-assed pact me and the guys have as, y'know, the school roughnecks. I got mine first, but Madarame liked the idea of permanently spitting in the face of the establishment so much he got his eyes done. Then Iba's yanki ass wanted in on it, but he fed us some crap about disappointing his mother and got his put on his back. Hisagi-senpai pu-- . . .chickened out at the last minute and got his eyebrow pierced instead, but at least it's something. Oh, and Yumi likes to pretend his makeup makes him part of the club when he's feeling particularly butch, but we only humor him because he's insufferable when he sulks."
Byakuya nodded in understanding, although he looked only politely interested. Whatever. As long as he was still looking.
"And their. . .specific meanings?" he asked -- idly or warily, Renji couldn't quite tell.
The redhead dragged two fingers across his forehead. "This is my acceptance into Pure Souls." He encircled his throat with one hand, pressing thumb and forefinger against the lightning bolts striking their way down his neck. "These are for the first time I brought home a perfect score on a test. Sousuke even made taiyaki for dinner." He rolled his eyes but smiled at the memory, then moved on to his arms. "My second and third years at the Academy, one stripe for every class I aced. And this," Renji laid a hand on his chest, over his heart, "is for you. Got it right after school the day A.P. History showed up on my revised schedule. Now I'm your T.A., it can be filled in, soon as I have the cash to do it. Probably a couple weeks after break."
But if this revelation pleased him, Kuchiki-sensei did not show it.
"If you expect me to feel flattered, Renji--"
"Not at all," Renji cut him off. "But you did ask."
Byakuya made an indifferent noise in the back of his throat, then picked up his shinai with, Renji sensed, a resoluteness he hadn't previously possessed.
"Shall we?"
"Sure thing. And after I've defeated you, I've got a question of my own I'd like answered."
"Your unwarranted overconfidence, Abarai, is even less becoming than your body art."
Ouch. All right, so Kuchiki-sensei was obviously more competitive than he let on. Renji's grip on his shinai tightened. He muttered, "We'll see how unwarranted it is when I've driven you to your knees. . ."
He bowed and crouched down into son-kyo position. Byakuya did the same, and began the match with a low, formal "Hajime."
In unison they rose, although neither immediately attacked. For a moment they circled one another, gaging distance and height, judging the solidity of the other person's stance.
The tone of the match was set in two simple moves: Renji struck first with a kiai that, with the natural depth of his voice, had thrown more than one opponent off-balance with its guttural strength. He delivered a hard, quick downward slice, a warm-up blow more than anything else, a demonstration of his own power intended to mentally intimidate rather than physically subdue.
Kuchiki-sensei deflected it easily, angling his shinai in such a way that the hit slid ineffectually off to one side.
Both were breathing hard and sweating within minutes. More than once, Renji wished he had a hair tie handy, but he stopped irritatedly pushing back with his shoulders the red strands that stuck to the sides of his face when he noticed Kuchiki-sensei didn't seem to be in the least distracted by his own. The older man was absolutely focused on the match at hand, and he was good enough that Renji could not afford to be any less so. Byakuya's fighting style was economical, composed of swift, sure movements that expended a minimum of effort -- and he was fast, able to dodge and strike with almost astounding rapidity. Renji's own style was much more demanding, but where Kuchiki-sensei was quick, the redhead was strong. He was capable of absorbing a great deal of force, and his greatest advantage against his teacher's speed was the brief split-seconds Kuchiki-sensei needed to recover his inertia from having hit what basically amounted to a brick wall of Abarai.
His second-greatest advantage was his big, fat mouth.
"Is that all you got, Sensei? Whaddaya call it, Mosquito Style?"
It wasn't really a weapon he consciously used. In fact, it was more like a side-effect, or a sickness. Like an acute case of verbal dyssentary.
"Do I even need a sword? Should I just go get some bug spray?"
Definitely something related to Tourette's Syndrome.
"Maybe one of those little zappy lights?"
Or mental retardation.
"So tell me, if you treat all your students like drones, does that make you the Queen Bee?"
The problem with a learning curve is that it must eventually plateau, or reach a drop-off point.
"Ow! Hey! Easy, Sensei -- no armor, remember?"
Likewise, patience has a ceiling.
"Ow! Son of a--"
Also, insects,
"Sensei--"
when agitated,
"What the--"
tend to swarm.
"Ow, ow, ow! Shit!"
Six hits in rapid succession forced him halfway across the dojo. The change in location should have made the following ones easier to block, but it didn't. Somehow, Kuchiki-sensei had managed to corner him in a clearing. The blows rained down on all sides, sharp little taps that twinged like wasp stings on Renji's arms and legs, and he couldn't stop them all. Hell, he couldn't even get a fix on the wooden blade that was causing them -- it was like being caught in a teeming flurry of splinters. He ducked, and Kuchiki-sensei was already there with a blow to his shin. He jumped, and his forearm echoed with the pain of a hit to his elbow that should have gone whizzing beneath his feet. He feinted--
--and fainted.
Or at least became very suddenly, intimately acquainted with the floor, his vision blotted out with stars, following a hard crack against his right temple.
It took a few moments for the murky cloud of shock and pain to dissipate, and when it did he found himself being helped to his knees by strong but hesitant hands. His eyes watered fiercely when he opened them, but even through their automatic tears he could clearly see Kuchiki-sensei's face looking more deeply confused and horrified than if Urahara-sensei had bounded into the dojo wearing a Domo-kun suit and professing his undying love.
"Renji-- I am sorry, I did not mean. . ."
Renji smiled weakly. "Like hell you didn't."
Byakuya's hands grew very still against Renji's shoulders, like a pair of turtledoves poised for takeoff, but they fluttered only a few inches before landing again upon Renji's own hand that covered his injury.
"Here," the older man murmured, "let me, let me see. . ."
He peeled the heel of Renji's palm away from the wound, which seemed to throb all the harder at the sudden absence of pressure against it. Renji hissed and felt something tickle the side of his face. He looked down at his hand, and saw blood. Great. Couldn't he go two weeks without incurring some kind of cranial damage. . .?
"Renji, look at me."
Of all the tasks Kuchiki-sensei had ever assigned him, this was by far the easiest. Mahogany latched onto pewter. He could see, Renji thought, his own face there, like a reflection in a silver-backed mirror.
Byakuya shaded one of the redhead's eyes, then the other, testing them against the light.
"Um. Peek-a-boo?" Renji tried, and was frowned at.
"Your pupils are evenly dilated and responsive. Do you feel at all ill? Drowsy?"
"Yeah, all morning."
The frown deepened.
"A blow to the head is no laughing matter, Renji."
"You're telling me."
An abashed flush rose on Kuchiki-sensei's cheeks. "Any ringing in your ears? Neck pain? Headache?"
"You just used my head for batting practice with a meter of bamboo; yes, there's a lingering sensation. But I've got a thick skull, and anyway, I know what a concussion feels like. Trust me, I'm fine."
"You are bleeding."
Renji absently wiped again at his wound. "Yeah, well, it was worth it."
"Worth it. . .?"
"I got you on your knees, didn't I?"
Byakuya stared at him as if he'd grown a second head.
Then he stood.
"Oh, now that's just plain childish, Sen--"
"Shut up, Renji."
Renji glowered indignantly at his teacher's back as Kuchiki-sensei strode past him, heading for the rear of the dojo.
He took a white box emblazoned with a red cross from the wall, returned, and knelt once more.
Oh.
Renji reddened, feeling foolish. Byakuya tore open a sterile packet containing an antiseptic wipe and began to gently but thoroughly clean the blood from his pupil's face.
"Tss!" Renji flinched as the cold, moist fabric made contact with the cut on his temple. "Stuff stings. . .but I guess I deserve it, for egging you on the way I did."
He heard Kuchiki-sensei breathe in deeply, felt him exhale slowly, his breath cool against Renji's damp cheek.
"No, Renji," the older man quietly admitted. "You don't deserve it. I should not have allowed myself to be carried away."
"Yeah. . .I guess we both did. I didn't know you would take me so seriously."
Kuchiki-sensei set the wipe aside in its wrapper and opened a sterile gauze pad, which he instructed Renji to press against his temple. Burnished eyes watched as elegant fingers, one of them stained on one side of its second knuckle with his blood, rifled through the first aid kit's bandage box.
"Heh. Kinda weird, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"You an' me, sittin' here. I mean, aside from official class stuff and, like, five sentences at the festival -- sorry for ditching you there, by the way; something came up that was kind of. . .imperative -- but aside from that, we've never actually talked before. Now in the past, what, fifteen hours? We've conversed, argued, philosophized, eaten together, you beat the crap outta me. . ."
Another package was ripped open, and then Byakuya's hand was on Renji's wrist, lowering his arm. Renji felt ointment being lightly dabbed against his cut, and then Kuchiki-sensei's hands on his face, their warm, callused palms bracing against his cheek and brow as the taciturn man arranged a butterfly strip to suture the wound.
". . .it's been nice," Renji quietly continued. "Well, I could've done without this specifically, but the rest of it. . .it was so much easier than I thought it would be. Admit it, we're not a bad match. . .are we?"
Byakuya's hands lowered, and Renji turned to look at him.
Kuchiki-sensei's expression was. . .fiercely passive, Renji observed. Like "a little too quiet" or "don't look down."
Their faces were very, very close.
"Renji, I. . ." That bow-shaped mouth untied with the words, unwrapped itself like a present.
Renji's heart throbbed.
Fuck it.
He felt Byakuya stop breathing the instant their lips touched, a hot assault of forceful yearning against yielding, pliable stillness. He held the kiss for one beat, two, and tried not to listen for the clatter of the other shoe as it hit the floor.
Please, Yumi, he inwardly begged, please be right about him. . .
He couldn't move. He couldn't stomach the thought of opening his eyes and finding disgust waiting for him in the gray gaze whose color made him wish for stormy weather every day, and so he stayed there, hovering, holding his breath as he felt Byakuya's begin again, coming fast and shallow against his face.
"Renji. . ."
No -- no, he didn't want to hear it. He couldn't hear it: he'd die.
He surged forward, trapping Kuchiki-sensei's words with a second kiss, and. . .
. . .and there was a reciprocating pressure this time -- slight, but unmistakably there.
Oh holy God.
Oh Buddha, oh Shiva, oh Amun-fucking-Ra.
Renji accepted the proffered inch and hurtled headlong towards the nearest mile marker, his heart singing, all diffidence crushed under the sudden avalanche of years of dogged, indefatigable conquest. He leaned in, taking hold of Kuchiki-sensei's wrists to brace himself, feeling Kuchiki-sensei's pulse pound beneath his encircling fingers as they kissed, hard and deep, tongues sour with the aftertaste of coffee sweeping over clean, smooth teeth.
The room -- no, Renji's world -- shifted, spinning sinistrally, as if the universe had reorganized itself around a focal point of shadow-black hair, alabastrine skin, a moist and supple mouth. It was as if Renji's every nerve ending was spiked, was raised like hackles -- but unquestionably not in anger.
It was a little alarming, where "a little" was comparable to "downright," and "alarming" could be freely interchanged with "terrifying."
He had kissed before -- plenty of girls, in one-night party hook-ups and a few awkward, short-lived schoolyard "relationships" -- and they'd all been, he'd thought, pretty damn nice; but none of them, not a single one, had ever felt like this. They hadn't even come close, and he knew, with one hundred percent certainty, that it wasn't because Kuchiki-sensei was a guy.
None of them had ever meant this much.
For all Renji's dreaming -- and oh, this man had come to embody every possible form his dreams could take -- the concept, the very idea that he would get this far, accomplish this much, had always seemed so agonizingly distant. He hadn't been -- he wasn't -- prepared for it. These feelings. . .this feeling, that had spent so long accumulating and condensing inside of him. . .
It ignited like a supernova in thermal runaway.
Like a stellar black hole, it consumed.
Renji's hands tightened as his mouth moved south, over that perfect fucking jawline, that smooth white neck beneath which Byakuya's breath rushed like the ravenous gasps of a drowning man.
"Renji, stop this," he panted, warring with instinct against the angle of his arching back.
"No."
"Renji. . ."
The boy in question dragged his teeth over the soft lobe of Byakuya's left ear, and his name was thinned into the most erotic sigh he had ever heard.
Renji groaned softly, "Christ, Sensei. . .d'you have any idea what you're doing to me?"
"Yes," Byakuya choked. "Yes. . .Renji, stop. --I said stop!"
"No!" Renji shouted. He lurched forward without thinking, causing Byakuya to tumble backward to the floor. Renji followed, crouching, pinning him there, and as he stared down into the older man's pink-cheeked, half-panicked and half-seething face, he noticed, for the very first time, that he was bigger than his teacher.
"Release me," Byakuya ordered, his arms straining against his pupil's grip on his wrists.
Renji ignored him. "Tell me why," he demanded.
"Because this cannot happen!"
Renji shook his head. "Not that. When I told you I'd already decided to kill myself for you, why didn't you ask me what I meant by that?"
It didn't seem possible that there could be enough room in Kuchiki-sensei's narrowed eyes to hold the amount of contempt Renji thought he saw there.
"Because I did not care for the answer."
"Because you thought it was gonna be this?"
Byakuya's scowl sharpened, and he responded without directly replying, "And was I wrong in that assumption?"
"Yeah," said Renji, "you were. You know who that asshole is who I remember, that one who gave a damn? It's you, you arrogant bastard! I watched you give Rukia the whole fucking chocolate factory, and I hated you for it even as I was happy for her, and I haven't been able to take my eyes off you since. That's why."
He didn't wait for the words to sink in before continuing, "But I've seen you now, Sensei -- I mean really seen you. I've noticed every doctor's appointment you make for her -- she bitches about 'em enough, so I ought'a. A check-up every three months, because despite everything, you still give a damn; because you're terrified of losing her, too, even if neither of you will admit it. She's not a debt you're trying to repay -- she's a part of the person you loved, and I can't compete with that. You can't surpass devotion. I used to envy you for your money and everything it could give her, but now all I can see is that we're two sides of the same hopeless goddamn coin. We've just both given ourselves up for dead in different ways."
"You are seventeen," Byakuya hissed. "What can you possibly know of--"
"I'm a fucking orphan!" Renji reminded him. "You think I don't know what it is to be abandoned? How much it fucking twists like a jagged knife in your heart to know that you weren't enough of an incentive for someone who was supposed to love you to stick around, no matter what?"
"Hisana was sick."
"Yeah, she was, but don't try to pretend there isn't a part of you that's pissed off she didn't get better -- that she didn't fight hard enough to be able to stay with you--"
"Enough! How dare you, you ignorant, insolent child--"
"Child? Really? Because according to you, seventeen's plenty old enough to make a mature decision. Freedom of choice, right, Sensei? Isn't it just as important that we have the freedom to choose wrongly?"
"Do not put words in my mouth, especially after warping their meaning to suit your. . ."
"My what? My tricks?" Byakuya's breath hitched as Renji forced one of his hands against his groin. "Does this feel inauthentic to you, Kuchiki Byakuya? Three and a half years of waiting for instant gratification? I'm in love with you, you ass! And I'm here and you are heaven. Don't you know what that means?"
He did. Renji could see it in his face that Byakuya did know, even if he didn't want to. Even if it was tearing him apart inside to know. His eyes had widened at that word -- love -- and frankly, so had Renji's. He hadn't intended to say it, hadn't ever even thought it before, but it had slipped the chain of his mouth and raced away at the always-startling speed of truth, and now he could only hope -- pray -- that it would heal on command.
"Renji, listen to me. This cannot happen. I am your teacher. It would be an. . .an abhorrent abuse of my power over you--"
"It's too late for that now," Renji argued, struggling to keep the desperation out of his voice, already uncomfortable with how far he had had to push things. If Byakuya said no again, he would have no choice but to comply, aware that the line he was drawing between giving the man no way out of acknowledging the validity of his feelings and actually forcing him to completely accept them could be construed as being exceedingly fine, indeed. "You can't decide that on your own. You can't just pretend that you didn't kiss me back."
A pained, grieving look dashed across Kuchiki-sensei's features, but not quickly enough that it had gone unseen.
"Be that as it may. . ." Byakuya's voice was steady, but scratchy, brittle words flaking from a parched throat.
Renji sighed and closed his eyes and let his forehead drop, defeated, against one pale, overheated shoulder.
". . .I finish at the Academy at the end of April," he said softly. "Unless you fail me for this."
"No," Byakuya breathed. "This is. . .inapplicable to any coursework I have assigned."
A tiny smile pulsed and faded on Renji's mouth. "If I come to you then. . ." he trailed off, the question asking itself in the silence.
"You will still be seventeen," was its answer.
"I'll be eighteen in nine months."
"That is a long time, Renji. Many things may happen between now and then."
"But we won't."
". . .no," Byakuya murmured, but there was an edge to his voice that razored it into something that sounded almost like regret -- or doubt.
Renji blinked, and felt his eyelashes brush against his teacher's skin. "One more question, Sensei?"
"What is it, Renji?"
He lifted his head to meet Byakuya's gaze, his body sinking in stages until it rested flush against the older man's, whose hands and legs, whose stomach and shoulders and, Renji imagined, every fiber of his being was shaking with fear, revulsion, and above all, the effort of his own self-denial.
". . .you know how hard you're trembling, right?"
Something visibly collapsed in Byakuya's eyes before he could close them. A harsh gasp, like the precursor to a sob, rasped along his throat.
"Sensei. . .?"
He shook his head. "Do not call me that."
"But--"
"Do not," he snapped, then opened his eyes to stare intensely -- beseechingly -- into Renji's own. His breathing was fast. His voice was rough. ". . .do not make this worse."
"Byakuy--"
The final vowel was sucked into Renji's lungs with a sharp intake of air as Kuchiki-sensei's mouth met his in the first in a series of wet, hungry kisses, their duration quick but deep, as though the history professor was trying to pull away and devour him at the same time. Renji's left hand released Byakuya's wrist to fist in raven locks, holding his idol's face to his, not letting him escape, not letting him take any of it back.
It was nothing like the seduction Renji had imagined, wherein clothing was removed piece by piece, unveiling feasts of skin for eyes, and they lapsed into a refined rhythm of give-and-take sensuality and the drawing out of pleasure until its undeniable completion. This was simply take, distilled to its most potent, unadulterated form. This was blind desire, tightly shut eyes and can'tstop, not even for clothes, not even for air. This was it'sbeensolong and it'sokayit'sokayI'vegotyou and holdon, holdonbutpleasepleasedon'tholdback. They were a tangle of lips and limbs, of hot, slick skin and still-clothed grinding hips, unwilling or unable to break apart even to ease the pressure rapidly building within the tight confines of denim and silk. They were clinging and clutching and gripping and moving and oh, God, he smelled so good, he felt so good, the best, even like this, quaking with shame and need, hating himself and maybe even hating Renji for doing this to him, but by God they were doing it and it could never, ever be undone.
And it's your heart
That's so wrong
Mistaken
You'll never know
Your feathered sacred self
But you can't deny how I feel
And you can't decide for me. . . -- Portishead, "Elysium"
Chapter XVII
Chapter Title: Feathered Sacred
Author: foxflare
Disclaimer: I own no part of Cl2(aq) + H2O(l) ↔ 2H+(aq) + Cl-(aq) + ClO-(aq). Kubo Tite-sama whitens & brightens all.
Chapter Summary: Skin & secrets are shrouded & shared. No one is straight safe.
XVI. Feathered Sacred 2/2
Byakuya looked at him, a frown furrowing his brow, and Renji recognized too late the banana peel that had led to his Freudian slip.
"About last night," he explained with what he hoped was a passable imitation of nonchalance. "Why haven't you said anything? Lectured me, made me write 'I will not drink until I am of age' six hundred times in kanji-only characters. . .?"
"Would you like me to?"
Ride my ass? Well, not really, but I'd be open to riding yours. . .
"Not really. But. . .that's it? You're just gonna let me off scot-free?"
Kuchiki-sensei swallowed a bite of omelet with a stoicism that shouldn't have been possible through that much pepper.
"To what point and purpose would I punish you now? You recognize that your actions warrant consequences, and unless you believe that my leniency indicates the beginning of a hitherto absent trend in your life of escaping unscathed all situations in which you may be named a culprit, I would judge your lesson learned."
Renji's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Careful, Sensei. It almost sounds like you have faith in me."
"What indication have I ever given that I do not?"
"Well, there's. . ." Renji hunted through his memories, but it was true: he could recall no specific instance in which Kuchiki Byakuya had outright doubted his potential. "Okay, but come on, even you've gotta admit you've pretty much snubbed me since you've known me."
Byakuya blinked at him, looking genuinely puzzled. "I made you my teacher's aid."
"Well, yeah, but. . .before that." Renji could feel himself losing ground.
"You feel you were treated differently than any of my other students?"
"Well, no," Renji admitted. "But that's just it. You're an equal opportunity ignorer."
"Pray tell, what specific forms of acknowledgment ought I be dispensing? I understand Urahara-sensei rewards his top testers with candy bars; should I begin rewarding good performances with treats?"
"No, that's--"
"I teach history, Renji, not obedience school. If you wish to be regarded as a hound to be trained and not a person fully capable of recognizing and pursuing knowledge as its own reward, then I suggest you look elsewhere."
"I don't--"
"There comes a point in every young person's life when acting with maturity must become a conscious decision for the betterment of oneself, and not a trick performed for the sake of instant gratification. With adulthood comes the freedom of choice, one of the most valuable commodities any man can possess. I give my pupils the option to practice their authenticity. Whether or not they act upon it is entirely up to them. You of all people ought to find that a relatable sentiment."
"But you're you!" Renji finally exploded. "Do you. . .do you have any idea what that means to someone like me? You wanna talk pets? Well I am the eternal underdog! I've always had to fight twice as hard to accomplish the same stuff as everyone else, and you? You were born with that stuff. You were a winner and you never even had to run the race, an' lemme tell you, freedom of choice looks a lot different when that choice is between stealing and eating versus veal or lamb. So yeah, sometimes a candy bar can be a real fuckin' luxury, and if it's the only food you've had in a week, you're gonna remember the face of the asshole who gave it to you, because when you're struggling, you have to be able to remember that somebody gives a shit, 'cause otherwise, why should you?"
"Personal pride," Byakuya offered. "The unwillingness to perpetuate a poor example."
"Okay, so when you're stretched to the limits of your means, and no one comes to your aid, then what happens? You bite off your own nose to spite everyone else's face? Name the last one-man revolution that actually worked. You can't always do everything alone -- that's the point of people. And while trusting that they'll act with integrity is a real noble idea, you can't just give a guy a What without a worthwhile Why. Martyrs don't die for causes that never gave them hope."
"And you are what, the Yoshida Shoin of Seireitei Academy, year twelve?"
Renji glowered at him. "You're missing the point on purpose, aren't you?"
"Oh, I understand your point. I simply find it lacks perspective. Even if every situation can be made into a metaphorical battle, not every outcome will have been worth the fight. Neither do martyrs often advocate Pyrrhic victories."
"Yeah yeah," Renji waved him off. "Shades of gray, I get all that. But just because one man's ash looks like another man's charcoal doesn't mean meat'll cook over both. One of 'em's still gotta be--"
"Wrong," Byakuya finished, sounding none too impressed with his T.A.'s discourse. "But have you not flourished, Renji, under my. . .erroneous tutelage?"
I have been charred to a fucking crisp by you, you have burned your way into my bones--
"Oh, yeah," Renji shrugged with an ease he did not actually feel. "Truth is, I decided to kill myself for you a long time ago. But I will always defend a person's right to candy bars."
He didn't even try to hide that one. Didn't try to turn it innocent with clarification. It felt like testing the water with a cannonball dive instead of a toe, but. . .fuck it.
Byakuya did indeed look momentarily alarmed, or. . .actually, he looked kind of angry, and Renji realized too late that making light of death in conversation with a widower was less an act of fuck it, and more one that was very insensitively fucked up.
And sure enough, the bitterness that colored Byakuya's tongue wasn't only owing to the black coffee he'd been drinking when he said, "Alas, it is the fatal flaw of all educators that they may only successfully teach what they know."
Well done, Abarai. Way to cook your own goose.
But Renji also managed to pinpoint, then, the origins of why his teacher's instructive doctrine had sounded so much like a recitation: it was the knee-jerk reaction of one who had too often been called upon to explain himself. One whose true character had been denied in favor of a caricature as prone to discrimination as Renji's own underprivileged pigeonhole. One who had gone against the grain of what he himself had been taught, and continued to pay heavily for it.
A dead wife. The scorn of her sister, and very likely that of his own family.
But. . .if Kuchiki-sensei's so rich, then why does he teach here?
The answer to Kira's question now seemed pathetically simple: because he chose to. Because he could, and he wanted to.
Because in doing so, something had once given him hope. The exertion of his personal freedom, of his right to choose the path of his own life, even if he preferred dirt to pavement.
But it had been a dead end decision, hadn't it? She was gone, and all he had left now was the mindless execution of tasks he had set for himself when they had still held meaning.
Renji had been so intent on sniffing out the man's true self, he hadn't ever opened his eyes to the fact that it had always been on display.
"Come on, Sensei," Renji gentled, feeling the omelets' eggshells crackling underfoot even as he sat with his legs swinging in the air. "Don't be. . ." He caught Byakuya's warning look, and knew he was in no position to be posing even the most plaintive of orders. "You know I didn't mean it like that. I don't even know what I'm saying half the time, I just let my mouth hang open and watch the wind make my gums flap. It's idiotic, I know, but. . ."
Byakuya frowned at him and muttered, almost to himself, "Why do you so incessantly sell yourself short?"
The redhead shrugged and scratched at the side of his nose. "I dunno. I guess small numbers always look a lot bigger when you're born into poverty."
"It is foolish to value one's true worth as equal to one's gross annual income."
Renji noisily slurped down the last of the sugary sludge at the bottom of his coffee cup in an effort to further lighten the mood.
"Yep," he agreed, smacking his lips. "See? Idiotic."
Kuchiki-sensei shook his head and exhaled a heavy -- one might say disgusted -- breath through his nose. He stood and collected their empty plates and placed them in the sink, and Renji got the sense that something, at some point, had taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque, wherever that was.
"Your clothes should be dry by now," Byakuya told him. "After you've dressed, I will take you to Rukia's apartment."
"Wait!" said Renji.
Byakuya looked at him, and he wrung his brains for procrastination material.
"What. . .what about that dojo you told me about?"
Byakuya flipped a switch on the wall to his right, and Renji whistled lowly.
"Nice," he appraised, stepping into a room easily sixteen tatami mats in size. The far wall was lined completely with perfectly flat and spotless mirrors. In the sword rack to his left, the bamboo shinai and bokken shone like gold.
He looked briefly to Byakuya for approval before selecting one and lifting it free, testing its weight in his hands.
"How often do you train?" he asked, holding the shinai up close, examining the grain of its wood and admiring the quality of its leather hilt.
"Whenever I feel so inclined."
"Okay, when was the last time you trained?"
"The day before yesterday."
"Really. . ." Renji murmured under his breath, then turned and tossed the weapon to his teacher. "Think fast, Sensei!"
Byakuya caught it automatically, scowling.
"Renji, that is not--"
"You challenged me to a duel, remember?" He tugged off his pyjama top and folded it as neatly as he could manage before placing it on the floor.
Byakuya only stared at him.
"Come on, Sensei," Renji persisted. "Don't punk out on me now. We don't even have to do full bogu, just skins and swords."
The history professor hesitated, then leaned his shinai against the wall and reached for the hem of his sweater.
Renji regretted abruptly his suggestion that they spar sans armor -- more specifically, sans groin-shielding tare.
Think unsexy thoughts, he commanded his brain. Both of them. Scrubbing toilets. Sentaagai. Iba. Iba dressed in sentaagai sitting on a toilet I'll later have to scrub.
Thankfully, it worked. He had to gulp to force down a heave, but it worked. Then he had to gulp again.
Kuchiki-sensei's naked torso was, predictably, absolutely goddamn beautiful. It conjured up allusions to almost all the bullet points on Renji's ready-made list of Perfect Things That Could Be Metaphorically Applied to Kuchiki Byakuya, many of which could be found in museums, under or behind glass, or in the sky at night, preceded by such monthly titles as Dragon or Lotus, White or Bitter or Hungry Ghost. He was lean and hard and pale and smooth and--
Iba dressed in sentaagai! Iba dressed in sentaagai!
"Renji. . ."
"Ngh?"
"I confess, I have always wondered. . .why the tattoos?"
"The what?" Renji shook himself. "Oh." He looked down at his chest, where the tribal design that interlocked across his brow, neck and arms was still but a hollow outline. "They're, uh. . .promises. Insurance policies."
"Indemnifying what?"
"I'm the eternal underdog, remember? I never said that was something I resented or wasn't proud of." He gestured broadly at his person. "These make sure I'll never lose that. They make sure I'll never be able to 'pass' for ordinary or get lazy or cut myself any slack, 'cause no one else has and no one's ever gonna. Everything I accomplish, I do so in spite of my upbringing, and I want everyone else to know that, too. And one day, when I'm the CEO of my own company, every person I meet'll know I must've had to fight harder than anyone else to get there. They won't be able to deny I earned it. So every time I achieve something I've really been busting my ass for, I expand the design, to reward myself and to make sure I have to work even harder next time.
"Plus," he shrugged, grinning lopsidedly, "it's kind of a half-assed pact me and the guys have as, y'know, the school roughnecks. I got mine first, but Madarame liked the idea of permanently spitting in the face of the establishment so much he got his eyes done. Then Iba's yanki ass wanted in on it, but he fed us some crap about disappointing his mother and got his put on his back. Hisagi-senpai pu-- . . .chickened out at the last minute and got his eyebrow pierced instead, but at least it's something. Oh, and Yumi likes to pretend his makeup makes him part of the club when he's feeling particularly butch, but we only humor him because he's insufferable when he sulks."
Byakuya nodded in understanding, although he looked only politely interested. Whatever. As long as he was still looking.
"And their. . .specific meanings?" he asked -- idly or warily, Renji couldn't quite tell.
The redhead dragged two fingers across his forehead. "This is my acceptance into Pure Souls." He encircled his throat with one hand, pressing thumb and forefinger against the lightning bolts striking their way down his neck. "These are for the first time I brought home a perfect score on a test. Sousuke even made taiyaki for dinner." He rolled his eyes but smiled at the memory, then moved on to his arms. "My second and third years at the Academy, one stripe for every class I aced. And this," Renji laid a hand on his chest, over his heart, "is for you. Got it right after school the day A.P. History showed up on my revised schedule. Now I'm your T.A., it can be filled in, soon as I have the cash to do it. Probably a couple weeks after break."
But if this revelation pleased him, Kuchiki-sensei did not show it.
"If you expect me to feel flattered, Renji--"
"Not at all," Renji cut him off. "But you did ask."
Byakuya made an indifferent noise in the back of his throat, then picked up his shinai with, Renji sensed, a resoluteness he hadn't previously possessed.
"Shall we?"
"Sure thing. And after I've defeated you, I've got a question of my own I'd like answered."
"Your unwarranted overconfidence, Abarai, is even less becoming than your body art."
Ouch. All right, so Kuchiki-sensei was obviously more competitive than he let on. Renji's grip on his shinai tightened. He muttered, "We'll see how unwarranted it is when I've driven you to your knees. . ."
He bowed and crouched down into son-kyo position. Byakuya did the same, and began the match with a low, formal "Hajime."
In unison they rose, although neither immediately attacked. For a moment they circled one another, gaging distance and height, judging the solidity of the other person's stance.
The tone of the match was set in two simple moves: Renji struck first with a kiai that, with the natural depth of his voice, had thrown more than one opponent off-balance with its guttural strength. He delivered a hard, quick downward slice, a warm-up blow more than anything else, a demonstration of his own power intended to mentally intimidate rather than physically subdue.
Kuchiki-sensei deflected it easily, angling his shinai in such a way that the hit slid ineffectually off to one side.
Both were breathing hard and sweating within minutes. More than once, Renji wished he had a hair tie handy, but he stopped irritatedly pushing back with his shoulders the red strands that stuck to the sides of his face when he noticed Kuchiki-sensei didn't seem to be in the least distracted by his own. The older man was absolutely focused on the match at hand, and he was good enough that Renji could not afford to be any less so. Byakuya's fighting style was economical, composed of swift, sure movements that expended a minimum of effort -- and he was fast, able to dodge and strike with almost astounding rapidity. Renji's own style was much more demanding, but where Kuchiki-sensei was quick, the redhead was strong. He was capable of absorbing a great deal of force, and his greatest advantage against his teacher's speed was the brief split-seconds Kuchiki-sensei needed to recover his inertia from having hit what basically amounted to a brick wall of Abarai.
His second-greatest advantage was his big, fat mouth.
"Is that all you got, Sensei? Whaddaya call it, Mosquito Style?"
It wasn't really a weapon he consciously used. In fact, it was more like a side-effect, or a sickness. Like an acute case of verbal dyssentary.
"Do I even need a sword? Should I just go get some bug spray?"
Definitely something related to Tourette's Syndrome.
"Maybe one of those little zappy lights?"
Or mental retardation.
"So tell me, if you treat all your students like drones, does that make you the Queen Bee?"
The problem with a learning curve is that it must eventually plateau, or reach a drop-off point.
"Ow! Hey! Easy, Sensei -- no armor, remember?"
Likewise, patience has a ceiling.
"Ow! Son of a--"
Also, insects,
"Sensei--"
when agitated,
"What the--"
tend to swarm.
"Ow, ow, ow! Shit!"
Six hits in rapid succession forced him halfway across the dojo. The change in location should have made the following ones easier to block, but it didn't. Somehow, Kuchiki-sensei had managed to corner him in a clearing. The blows rained down on all sides, sharp little taps that twinged like wasp stings on Renji's arms and legs, and he couldn't stop them all. Hell, he couldn't even get a fix on the wooden blade that was causing them -- it was like being caught in a teeming flurry of splinters. He ducked, and Kuchiki-sensei was already there with a blow to his shin. He jumped, and his forearm echoed with the pain of a hit to his elbow that should have gone whizzing beneath his feet. He feinted--
--and fainted.
Or at least became very suddenly, intimately acquainted with the floor, his vision blotted out with stars, following a hard crack against his right temple.
It took a few moments for the murky cloud of shock and pain to dissipate, and when it did he found himself being helped to his knees by strong but hesitant hands. His eyes watered fiercely when he opened them, but even through their automatic tears he could clearly see Kuchiki-sensei's face looking more deeply confused and horrified than if Urahara-sensei had bounded into the dojo wearing a Domo-kun suit and professing his undying love.
"Renji-- I am sorry, I did not mean. . ."
Renji smiled weakly. "Like hell you didn't."
Byakuya's hands grew very still against Renji's shoulders, like a pair of turtledoves poised for takeoff, but they fluttered only a few inches before landing again upon Renji's own hand that covered his injury.
"Here," the older man murmured, "let me, let me see. . ."
He peeled the heel of Renji's palm away from the wound, which seemed to throb all the harder at the sudden absence of pressure against it. Renji hissed and felt something tickle the side of his face. He looked down at his hand, and saw blood. Great. Couldn't he go two weeks without incurring some kind of cranial damage. . .?
"Renji, look at me."
Of all the tasks Kuchiki-sensei had ever assigned him, this was by far the easiest. Mahogany latched onto pewter. He could see, Renji thought, his own face there, like a reflection in a silver-backed mirror.
Byakuya shaded one of the redhead's eyes, then the other, testing them against the light.
"Um. Peek-a-boo?" Renji tried, and was frowned at.
"Your pupils are evenly dilated and responsive. Do you feel at all ill? Drowsy?"
"Yeah, all morning."
The frown deepened.
"A blow to the head is no laughing matter, Renji."
"You're telling me."
An abashed flush rose on Kuchiki-sensei's cheeks. "Any ringing in your ears? Neck pain? Headache?"
"You just used my head for batting practice with a meter of bamboo; yes, there's a lingering sensation. But I've got a thick skull, and anyway, I know what a concussion feels like. Trust me, I'm fine."
"You are bleeding."
Renji absently wiped again at his wound. "Yeah, well, it was worth it."
"Worth it. . .?"
"I got you on your knees, didn't I?"
Byakuya stared at him as if he'd grown a second head.
Then he stood.
"Oh, now that's just plain childish, Sen--"
"Shut up, Renji."
Renji glowered indignantly at his teacher's back as Kuchiki-sensei strode past him, heading for the rear of the dojo.
He took a white box emblazoned with a red cross from the wall, returned, and knelt once more.
Oh.
Renji reddened, feeling foolish. Byakuya tore open a sterile packet containing an antiseptic wipe and began to gently but thoroughly clean the blood from his pupil's face.
"Tss!" Renji flinched as the cold, moist fabric made contact with the cut on his temple. "Stuff stings. . .but I guess I deserve it, for egging you on the way I did."
He heard Kuchiki-sensei breathe in deeply, felt him exhale slowly, his breath cool against Renji's damp cheek.
"No, Renji," the older man quietly admitted. "You don't deserve it. I should not have allowed myself to be carried away."
"Yeah. . .I guess we both did. I didn't know you would take me so seriously."
Kuchiki-sensei set the wipe aside in its wrapper and opened a sterile gauze pad, which he instructed Renji to press against his temple. Burnished eyes watched as elegant fingers, one of them stained on one side of its second knuckle with his blood, rifled through the first aid kit's bandage box.
"Heh. Kinda weird, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"You an' me, sittin' here. I mean, aside from official class stuff and, like, five sentences at the festival -- sorry for ditching you there, by the way; something came up that was kind of. . .imperative -- but aside from that, we've never actually talked before. Now in the past, what, fifteen hours? We've conversed, argued, philosophized, eaten together, you beat the crap outta me. . ."
Another package was ripped open, and then Byakuya's hand was on Renji's wrist, lowering his arm. Renji felt ointment being lightly dabbed against his cut, and then Kuchiki-sensei's hands on his face, their warm, callused palms bracing against his cheek and brow as the taciturn man arranged a butterfly strip to suture the wound.
". . .it's been nice," Renji quietly continued. "Well, I could've done without this specifically, but the rest of it. . .it was so much easier than I thought it would be. Admit it, we're not a bad match. . .are we?"
Byakuya's hands lowered, and Renji turned to look at him.
Kuchiki-sensei's expression was. . .fiercely passive, Renji observed. Like "a little too quiet" or "don't look down."
Their faces were very, very close.
"Renji, I. . ." That bow-shaped mouth untied with the words, unwrapped itself like a present.
Renji's heart throbbed.
Fuck it.
He felt Byakuya stop breathing the instant their lips touched, a hot assault of forceful yearning against yielding, pliable stillness. He held the kiss for one beat, two, and tried not to listen for the clatter of the other shoe as it hit the floor.
Please, Yumi, he inwardly begged, please be right about him. . .
He couldn't move. He couldn't stomach the thought of opening his eyes and finding disgust waiting for him in the gray gaze whose color made him wish for stormy weather every day, and so he stayed there, hovering, holding his breath as he felt Byakuya's begin again, coming fast and shallow against his face.
"Renji. . ."
No -- no, he didn't want to hear it. He couldn't hear it: he'd die.
He surged forward, trapping Kuchiki-sensei's words with a second kiss, and. . .
. . .and there was a reciprocating pressure this time -- slight, but unmistakably there.
Oh holy God.
Oh Buddha, oh Shiva, oh Amun-fucking-Ra.
Renji accepted the proffered inch and hurtled headlong towards the nearest mile marker, his heart singing, all diffidence crushed under the sudden avalanche of years of dogged, indefatigable conquest. He leaned in, taking hold of Kuchiki-sensei's wrists to brace himself, feeling Kuchiki-sensei's pulse pound beneath his encircling fingers as they kissed, hard and deep, tongues sour with the aftertaste of coffee sweeping over clean, smooth teeth.
The room -- no, Renji's world -- shifted, spinning sinistrally, as if the universe had reorganized itself around a focal point of shadow-black hair, alabastrine skin, a moist and supple mouth. It was as if Renji's every nerve ending was spiked, was raised like hackles -- but unquestionably not in anger.
It was a little alarming, where "a little" was comparable to "downright," and "alarming" could be freely interchanged with "terrifying."
He had kissed before -- plenty of girls, in one-night party hook-ups and a few awkward, short-lived schoolyard "relationships" -- and they'd all been, he'd thought, pretty damn nice; but none of them, not a single one, had ever felt like this. They hadn't even come close, and he knew, with one hundred percent certainty, that it wasn't because Kuchiki-sensei was a guy.
None of them had ever meant this much.
For all Renji's dreaming -- and oh, this man had come to embody every possible form his dreams could take -- the concept, the very idea that he would get this far, accomplish this much, had always seemed so agonizingly distant. He hadn't been -- he wasn't -- prepared for it. These feelings. . .this feeling, that had spent so long accumulating and condensing inside of him. . .
It ignited like a supernova in thermal runaway.
Like a stellar black hole, it consumed.
Renji's hands tightened as his mouth moved south, over that perfect fucking jawline, that smooth white neck beneath which Byakuya's breath rushed like the ravenous gasps of a drowning man.
"Renji, stop this," he panted, warring with instinct against the angle of his arching back.
"No."
"Renji. . ."
The boy in question dragged his teeth over the soft lobe of Byakuya's left ear, and his name was thinned into the most erotic sigh he had ever heard.
Renji groaned softly, "Christ, Sensei. . .d'you have any idea what you're doing to me?"
"Yes," Byakuya choked. "Yes. . .Renji, stop. --I said stop!"
"No!" Renji shouted. He lurched forward without thinking, causing Byakuya to tumble backward to the floor. Renji followed, crouching, pinning him there, and as he stared down into the older man's pink-cheeked, half-panicked and half-seething face, he noticed, for the very first time, that he was bigger than his teacher.
"Release me," Byakuya ordered, his arms straining against his pupil's grip on his wrists.
Renji ignored him. "Tell me why," he demanded.
"Because this cannot happen!"
Renji shook his head. "Not that. When I told you I'd already decided to kill myself for you, why didn't you ask me what I meant by that?"
It didn't seem possible that there could be enough room in Kuchiki-sensei's narrowed eyes to hold the amount of contempt Renji thought he saw there.
"Because I did not care for the answer."
"Because you thought it was gonna be this?"
Byakuya's scowl sharpened, and he responded without directly replying, "And was I wrong in that assumption?"
"Yeah," said Renji, "you were. You know who that asshole is who I remember, that one who gave a damn? It's you, you arrogant bastard! I watched you give Rukia the whole fucking chocolate factory, and I hated you for it even as I was happy for her, and I haven't been able to take my eyes off you since. That's why."
He didn't wait for the words to sink in before continuing, "But I've seen you now, Sensei -- I mean really seen you. I've noticed every doctor's appointment you make for her -- she bitches about 'em enough, so I ought'a. A check-up every three months, because despite everything, you still give a damn; because you're terrified of losing her, too, even if neither of you will admit it. She's not a debt you're trying to repay -- she's a part of the person you loved, and I can't compete with that. You can't surpass devotion. I used to envy you for your money and everything it could give her, but now all I can see is that we're two sides of the same hopeless goddamn coin. We've just both given ourselves up for dead in different ways."
"You are seventeen," Byakuya hissed. "What can you possibly know of--"
"I'm a fucking orphan!" Renji reminded him. "You think I don't know what it is to be abandoned? How much it fucking twists like a jagged knife in your heart to know that you weren't enough of an incentive for someone who was supposed to love you to stick around, no matter what?"
"Hisana was sick."
"Yeah, she was, but don't try to pretend there isn't a part of you that's pissed off she didn't get better -- that she didn't fight hard enough to be able to stay with you--"
"Enough! How dare you, you ignorant, insolent child--"
"Child? Really? Because according to you, seventeen's plenty old enough to make a mature decision. Freedom of choice, right, Sensei? Isn't it just as important that we have the freedom to choose wrongly?"
"Do not put words in my mouth, especially after warping their meaning to suit your. . ."
"My what? My tricks?" Byakuya's breath hitched as Renji forced one of his hands against his groin. "Does this feel inauthentic to you, Kuchiki Byakuya? Three and a half years of waiting for instant gratification? I'm in love with you, you ass! And I'm here and you are heaven. Don't you know what that means?"
He did. Renji could see it in his face that Byakuya did know, even if he didn't want to. Even if it was tearing him apart inside to know. His eyes had widened at that word -- love -- and frankly, so had Renji's. He hadn't intended to say it, hadn't ever even thought it before, but it had slipped the chain of his mouth and raced away at the always-startling speed of truth, and now he could only hope -- pray -- that it would heal on command.
"Renji, listen to me. This cannot happen. I am your teacher. It would be an. . .an abhorrent abuse of my power over you--"
"It's too late for that now," Renji argued, struggling to keep the desperation out of his voice, already uncomfortable with how far he had had to push things. If Byakuya said no again, he would have no choice but to comply, aware that the line he was drawing between giving the man no way out of acknowledging the validity of his feelings and actually forcing him to completely accept them could be construed as being exceedingly fine, indeed. "You can't decide that on your own. You can't just pretend that you didn't kiss me back."
A pained, grieving look dashed across Kuchiki-sensei's features, but not quickly enough that it had gone unseen.
"Be that as it may. . ." Byakuya's voice was steady, but scratchy, brittle words flaking from a parched throat.
Renji sighed and closed his eyes and let his forehead drop, defeated, against one pale, overheated shoulder.
". . .I finish at the Academy at the end of April," he said softly. "Unless you fail me for this."
"No," Byakuya breathed. "This is. . .inapplicable to any coursework I have assigned."
A tiny smile pulsed and faded on Renji's mouth. "If I come to you then. . ." he trailed off, the question asking itself in the silence.
"You will still be seventeen," was its answer.
"I'll be eighteen in nine months."
"That is a long time, Renji. Many things may happen between now and then."
"But we won't."
". . .no," Byakuya murmured, but there was an edge to his voice that razored it into something that sounded almost like regret -- or doubt.
Renji blinked, and felt his eyelashes brush against his teacher's skin. "One more question, Sensei?"
"What is it, Renji?"
He lifted his head to meet Byakuya's gaze, his body sinking in stages until it rested flush against the older man's, whose hands and legs, whose stomach and shoulders and, Renji imagined, every fiber of his being was shaking with fear, revulsion, and above all, the effort of his own self-denial.
". . .you know how hard you're trembling, right?"
Something visibly collapsed in Byakuya's eyes before he could close them. A harsh gasp, like the precursor to a sob, rasped along his throat.
"Sensei. . .?"
He shook his head. "Do not call me that."
"But--"
"Do not," he snapped, then opened his eyes to stare intensely -- beseechingly -- into Renji's own. His breathing was fast. His voice was rough. ". . .do not make this worse."
"Byakuy--"
The final vowel was sucked into Renji's lungs with a sharp intake of air as Kuchiki-sensei's mouth met his in the first in a series of wet, hungry kisses, their duration quick but deep, as though the history professor was trying to pull away and devour him at the same time. Renji's left hand released Byakuya's wrist to fist in raven locks, holding his idol's face to his, not letting him escape, not letting him take any of it back.
It was nothing like the seduction Renji had imagined, wherein clothing was removed piece by piece, unveiling feasts of skin for eyes, and they lapsed into a refined rhythm of give-and-take sensuality and the drawing out of pleasure until its undeniable completion. This was simply take, distilled to its most potent, unadulterated form. This was blind desire, tightly shut eyes and can'tstop, not even for clothes, not even for air. This was it'sbeensolong and it'sokayit'sokayI'vegotyou and holdon, holdonbutpleasepleasedon'tholdback. They were a tangle of lips and limbs, of hot, slick skin and still-clothed grinding hips, unwilling or unable to break apart even to ease the pressure rapidly building within the tight confines of denim and silk. They were clinging and clutching and gripping and moving and oh, God, he smelled so good, he felt so good, the best, even like this, quaking with shame and need, hating himself and maybe even hating Renji for doing this to him, but by God they were doing it and it could never, ever be undone.
And it's your heart
That's so wrong
Mistaken
You'll never know
Your feathered sacred self
But you can't deny how I feel
And you can't decide for me. . . -- Portishead, "Elysium"
Chapter XVII