Bleach- "Stunted Forward Motion" 2/2
The horror continues... o.o
Title: Stunted Forward Motion
Universe: Bleach
Theme/Topic: 10,000 word challenge
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: RenjixByakuya , mentioned IchigoxRukia and some Byakuya+Hisana and Renji+Rukia.
Spoilers: Whole Soul Society Arc
Word Count: 11,274
Time: Days and days and days. -_-;;
Warnings: Spoilers for the Soul Society Arc and slight spoilers for around… 193 to be safe?.
Summary: Sort-of companion piece to “On the Next Go Round”- Byakuya and Renji battle loneliness and rejection.
Dedication: Ann- because she challenged me.
A/N: I say companion piece because it sort of follows events I set up in “On the Next Go Round” but at the same time, that story doesn’t have to be read for this one to make sense. Hopefully. Done for a fic challenge/contest thing over at gwyaoi.org because Ann thought I should give it a shot. I totally procrastinated until the last minute, but I got it done! Miracles do happen. Even you know, if they're a bit shoddy. XD
Disclaimer: Not mine, though I wish constantly.
Distribution: Just lemme know.
The redhead returns soon thereafter, tea tray in hand, and bustling about pouring Byakuya the first cup, he pauses with a little frown when he notices that Byakuya has taken the cherry pastry out and put it on his own napkin. “Er, cherry one’s mine, taichou.”
Byakuya blinks. “I thought you liked apple best.”
“Well uh, you know how they’re the most popular there, woke up a little late this mornin’ ya see, so I managed to grab the last one, but there was only cherry left and the baker said it was the second most popular flavor so…”
“I could eat the cherry.”
It’s Renji’s turn to blink, and he almost over-pours the tea when he hears that. “But uh, ain’t apple your favorite?”
It is, but for some inexplicable reason, Byakuya feels like pushing the point anyway. “Does that matter?”
“Sure it does. If you like the apple, you should eat it, taichou. I can make due, ya know.”
“And I can’t?” The question on Byakuya’s part isn’t asked out of umbrage on his part, but genuine curiosity, and Renji understands his captain enough to know that.
“Well, ya could, but you know, I figure since taichou’s the type of guy that doesn’t like things to change too much…”
The sixth division captain’s brow furrows slightly. Does everyone really know that about him?
He sighs, supposing that all evidence points to the affirmative. “Alright then.”
They eat breakfast together in silence, and watching his vice-captain, Byakuya can’t help but wonder what, exactly, is wrong with the cherry in the first place.
It had to be the second most popular flavor for a reason, after all.
~~~~~
The next few weeks are busy with the normal sort of grunt work, some major battles taking place here and there as Aizen’s stream of abandoned experiments had rallied and declared war on seireitei.
It had been a mediocre battle in Byakuya’s opinion, the surviving results of Aizen Sousuke’s failed attempts at creating a super army gathering after they’d been left alone and fatherless by Aizen’s death. They’d been bent on revenge for their defeated patriarch in this particular battle, and as embittered as they were, they were really, nothing more than a headless snake to deal with for the Gotei-13.
Byakuya’s sixth division had been sent to the front line with orders to destroy the entire army with the aid of the second and eleventh divisions, but by the time they’d arrived at the field, Zaraki had pretty much, on his own, created a playground of body parts for his vice-captain to play in, and the rest was clean up work for the remaining divisions.
Quite a bit of clean up work, really, being left to kill off the enemies that had been debilitated by Zaraki’s wild battle lust- a moaning head here, a twitching form there, a torso trying to claw itself to safety.
The only thing dangerous about the whole fiasco, in Byakuya’s opinion, has been the following paperwork.
Because, as a result of their “late” arrival onto the field, much more forms have been generated to explain the sixth division’s tardiness. These forms have to be processed and approved by the Center 46 and all other divisions involved in the incident, meaning that the sixth division has to work in conjunction with the second division, which was also, oddly enough, “late” given Zaraki’s impatience to wait for backup. There’s a whole bullshit bureaucratic process that has to go into the works now in order to find the proper party to blame for the “miscommunication” and as expected, Zaraki refuses to budge and admit that he acted too hastily.
The paperwork is almost enough that Byakuya is willing to take the blame so long as it ends. However, Soi Fong is being less than cooperative on that front, the second division leader also refusing to capitulate and admit any late arrival on her team’s part, firing a storm of forms in both Zaraki and Byakuya’s divisions as a result.
This is the culprit as of late, for both he and his vice-captain’s rather sour moods, he thinks.
“Taichou… I know for a fact that I already filled out and submitted this form! To the same person!” the redhead complains, waving a two-inch thick sheave of papers at Byakuya with a forlorn expression on his face. “I’m telling you, Zaraki’s just tossing them when they go through for his part and that’s why it’s not getting processed.”
Byakuya sits at his desk signing more of such forms, and arching an eyebrow, merely says, “The processing office sends necessary paperwork to the divisions from which it needs signatures. If it were Zaraki’s end that was holding it up, they would send it to him. Seeing as to how it was sent here, it’s our responsibility to fill it out. No matter how many times you claim to have done it, Renji.”
Renji scowls. “I’m tellin’ ya, I did it already.”
“That may be all well and good, but the office is suggesting that you didn’t, and asking if you can please do it again.”
“Well I don’t wanna.”
“I however, am not asking, fukutaichou.”
“Che! That’s bullshit, taichou, c’mon. Just talk to Zaraki, I can almost guarantee that the stuff’ll go through the moment you convince ole’ one-eye to do his part!”
“Renji. Please go back to work.”
“You aren’t even hearin’ me out, are ya? C’mon, taichou, quit bein’ such a hardass, will ya? Just go see him about it.”
“I don’t have time to be traipsing around seireitei asking for kindnesses that may or may not benefit me in the first place. The office is saying that we failed to turn in these forms and so we will turn them in. Zaraki’s part in our office’s paperwork is null, Renji.”
“It’s impossible to compromise with you, ain’t it? C’mon taichou, what if I asked if ya could just go and see about this for me, huh? Before I go crazy. Just bend a little, can ya? Try’n see where I’m comin’ from.”
“Renji, I am ordering you to return to your desk and fill out those forms now. There’s a lot of work to do and I can’t have the both of us wasting time asking niceties of one another.”
“But…”
“Now, fukutaichou.”
“Argh! You never budge, do ya? This is why no one ever wants to… ya make it freakin’ impossible!” Renji exclaims thoughtlessly, whirling around and storming out of the room with the forms crumpled in his fist.
Byakuya blinks at the outburst as his office door shuts behind the redhead, not quite believing what he’d just heard from Renji.
“I do too budge.”
It sounds empty even to himself, but he finds himself having to say it anyway.
~~~~~
The next time he visits Rukia and Ichigo is two days after that shouting incident, and over tea with his sister, he asks very subtly, if he is well, un-budge-able.
She spits tea everywhere.
And after she’s mopped up the mess, she turns to look at him with a sort of heady concern, the kind he’d only ever seen her show Ichigo before, after his first few weeks of apprenticeship under his father.
He surmises that the outlook is bleak.
“What brought this on?” she asks, still slightly bewildered at his inquiry.
“Well, Renji accused me of being unmoving,” he admits rather stiffly. “I just wanted a second opinion.”
“Niisama, what makes you think you’re anything but un-budge-able?” she asks, looking as if the motherly part of her wants to reach out with her hand and feel his forehead for fever.
He frowns at her question and sips his tea a little huffily. “Well… I… am I really?”
She nods slowly. “The most immobile man I have ever met.”
He looks down at the table. “Is that… off-putting?”
She snorts, and had it been a time in the past, back when she’d been under his roof, he would have reprimanded her for such crude behavior. As it is he can’t really say anything about it since Ichigo is probably the one who taught her how to do it properly in the first place.
At the thought, he can only imagine what she would be up to had she married Renji instead, and brow furrowed, he realizes that there’s something distinctly unsettling about that thought, given that the things he’s learned from Renji over their time together thus far mostly seem to be of a carnal nature. He’s uncertain of how he feels when thinking about the possibility of his little sister and his vice-captain engaging in those sorts of things.
“Niisama, it’s the most, off-putting infuriating thing in the world,” she tells him with a hand on his shoulder. “I’m surprised Renji still puts up with you as well as he does.”
He crosses his arms. “He yelled at me. It was uncalled for.”
She shrugs. “The word around is that you two have grown to be quite good friends. What’s a friend if he or she can’t yell at you for your more glaring faults?”
Byakuya swallows distastefully. “That may or may not be so, but we still have…an understanding,” he responds. Perhaps an unhealthy one, but the important part of it is that they understand each other, after all, and that’s really all that matters in the long run, isn’t it? “It doesn’t give him the right to throw around such accusations when he knows very well where I’m coming from.”
“Well even so,” Rukia begins rather in an overly-conversational manner, “I think that if you’d like to maintain whatever sort of understanding it is that the two of you have, you’ve got to learn to become a little more…yielding. He’s been trying too, you know.”
Byakuya blinks. “He has?”
“Well, he writes me once in a while,” she admits. “Though his letters never really say anything much besides the normal formalities, trying to stay friendly, I suppose, despite, well… you know. It drives Ichigo crazy because he thinks there’s some sort of code Renji’s using to try and communicate with me without my husband knowing.” She seems mildly amused be the whole fiasco, and Byakuya vaguely wonders what her point is. “Well, lately it seems as if he’s relaxing a little,” she explains on her brother’s mildly confused expression. “He seems more at ease when he writes me. I was…well, I was worried. After I came here, I wasn’t sure if he and I could be friends anymore.”
“And?”
“He seems…happier. Or at least, that he’s getting there.”
“Does he?”
“He writes a lot about you.”
“…does he?”
“Well, not intentionally, I don’t think, but he always seems to have something to say that involves you, niisama.”
Byakuya realizes that he feels rather embarrassed by that. “What does he say?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
He frowns. “Rukia…”
She smiles and reaches out to put a small hand on his shoulder, eyes looking suddenly, far more worldly than he ever remembers having seen them before, a woman now, his little sister. “Niisama. Don’t you think it’s time to grow up a little?” she asks, patting him like she sometimes does her son, when he doesn’t quite understand what’s expected of him either.
“I…”
“For the record,” she adds with a rather wicked smirk, “I think you’ve seemed a little different yourself, lately.”
“Have I?”
“Well, you never would have asked me if you seemed un-budge-able before, I don’t think.”
He concedes that point.
“And you seem like you don’t mind talking as much as you used to, niisama. I think, whatever it is that you two are doing to each other… it’s good. I’m glad that you both seem… better when you’re around one another.” She pauses thoughtfully. “So what exactly are you two…”
It’s at that point that he excuses himself to the restroom.
He may be talking more than he used to, but even still, he doesn’t think he’s quite ready to talk that openly yet.
She laughs at him as he makes his way out of the room, and as he leaves, he can’t help but smile a little bit too.
~~~~~
Visits to see the family are always helpful for his equilibrium, and when he returns to Soul Society a few days later, freshly drooled on, cried on, vomited on, and peed on, he thinks that all it really takes is some time with the youngsters to put life into perspective.
Children are far worse a thing to face than Hollows.
And so he walks into his workplace more level-headed than he’s been since Renji stormed out on him during the filing incident (which consequently, did end up being Zaraki’s fault, but bygones were bygones and all that).
The only thing he has to complain about really, is the niggling at the back of his brain that wonders as to what, exactly, it is that Renji writes about him to Rukia, and why he does it at all.
Is he really…happier?
Byakuya pushes open the doors to his division’s main office, finding Renji working at his desk on the last remnants from the Zaraki caper that refuse to die, mumbling to himself about paperwork, paperwork, paperwork as he does.
“Good morning, Renji.”
The redhead turns at the sound of his captain’s voice, and a small smile flits across the edges of his lips as he salutes his leader’s return. “Welcome back, sir.”
Byakuya nods. “Thank you. Did I miss much while I was away?”
“Just er…paperwork,” Renji answers a bit awkwardly. “Speakin’ of which, taichou…”
“I’m sorry.”
The vice-captain pauses mid-breath. “Eh?”
“I was informed that the form backlog was actually Zaraki-taichou’s doing. So I wanted to say I apologize for inconveniencing you with it unnecessarily.”
Renji is obviously shocked at imperious Kuchiki-taichou’s unexpected apology, and fumbles to find words appropriate for a response. “Oh. Well, uh. Well, that’s good. I guess, ‘cuz I wanted to say um… sorry for yellin’. You know, I shouldn’t of. Since you’re my captain.”
“No, you shouldn’t have yelled at your captain, Renji,” Byakuya agrees, ever the maintainer of strict protocol. “But I will let it slide on account of deserving it rather powerfully.”
Renji blinks.
Byakuya, turning to head into his private office, leaves Renji standing agape just like that, and with a rather amused little smirk on his face, thinks that maybe it’s not too bad, if changing oneself, if growing up a little, can always be accompanied by such delightful reactions.
~~~~~
The next morning, in the spirit of growth, he wakes up several hours early and treks to Rukongai alone, to a certain sector, to a certain street, to a certain shop, and buys breakfast for them both, making it back early enough to know that Renji hasn’t left for work yet, though he will probably be wide awake by now if he’s as consistent a riser during sober night-befores as he is for the mornings after the drunk ones.
So he knocks on his vice-captain’s door when he reaches it, the familiar white bag tucked under his arm and a tray of hot tea between his hands.
“Er, one sec, I’ll be uh…”
Some fumbling, a small crash, and several yelps are heard before the door slides open, Renji with his hair still down and his uniform hastily donned appearing in front of his captain with a look of surprise. “Taichou?”
“Good morning.”
“Uh…mornin’. Somethin’ going on or something?”
Byakuya arches a brow. “Breakfast?”
“Breakfast?” Renji repeats dumbly.
“Shall we have some?” the captain asks, indicating the tea tray and the white bag he’s currently carrying.
“Huh? Oh. Oh! Uh, yeah… c’mon in, taichou… sorry… here, lemme take that…”
Renji relieves him of the tray and picks his way through his slightly messy vice-captain’s quarters so that they can sit at his small table.
He swipes a couple of things off of the second chair and invites Byakuya to sit with a slightly sheepish look.
“Thank you.”
“Er…so uh, so…what brings you here this mornin’ taichou? Besides well, you know. The breakfast,” he asks, reaching for the teapot as Byakuya sets the white bag on the table in front of them.
“I felt like a change today,” Byakuya informs him; gently swatting his vice-captain’s hands away from the pot so that he can pour tea for the both of them.
“Er, that so?” Renji asks cautiously, not certain as to what this means, if it means anything at all besides his captain suddenly going a little bit insane.
Byakuya, sensing his subordinate’s thoughts, sighs a little exasperatedly. “I can feel like change once in a while, can’t I?” And to prove the point, he takes out the pastries, one an apple and one a blackcurrant.
“Well, sure, I guess, so,” Renji responds automatically. He looks down at the baked goods. “Hey, is that? Huh.”
Byakuya decides that maybe Renji has all the right in the world to be a little bit confused by the sudden change of heart, given how rarely it’s ever occurred in all the time they’ve known each other, and with a self-deprecating little smile, the sixth division captain gently pushes the apple pastry towards Renji before taking the blackcurrant one for himself.
Renji watches him unabashedly, staring openly as Byakuya takes the first bite.
“Well?” the redhead asks after an impatient moment of watching his captain chew.
“It’s good,” Byakuya responds, oddly amused by the event the redhead was making of his new choice in breakfast goods. “Different, but good too.”
“So uh…if I may ask sir…what exactly, uh, brought this on?”
“Hunger,” Byakuya responds dryly, taking a sip of his tea.
Renji blinks, cheeks turning slightly red at his captain’s blunt answer. “Well yes, I mean, obviously, I mean…”
And then Byakuya finds himself smirking a little without knowing it. “It’s time to grow up a little, don’t you think, Renji?” he asks with just the slightest hint of mischief in his tone, though he feels an accompanying nervousness that’s two times as strong as any amusement he might find at Renji’s discomfort.
“Come again?”
“I shouldn’t be afraid of a little change now and again, don’t you think?”
Renji, still befuddled, goes with the safest answer. “Well, no, of course not.”
“I already know I like apple,” Byakuya continues, feeling ever-so-slightly cheesy as he does, “so maybe it’s time to see if I like anything else as well.”
“That so?”
A nod.
And then Renji clears his throat, which, given how well Byakuya knows the other man, means he’s beginning to catch on a little. “Well uh, I been thinkin’ on tryin’ some new things myself, too,” the redhead begins. “Know I don’t really like cherry much, but there’s a bunch of other kinds too, isn’t there?”
The conversation is idiotic, it must sound that way to be sure, but Byakuya can’t help but feel like it’s one of the most profound moments of his life.
“The blackcurrant is good. It takes a little getting used to, I think, but after a while, it’s really quite good.”
“Think I’ll try that next time then, taichou. Thanks.”
Byakuya smiles. “Very well.”
And so they finish their tea and pastries and clean up before going to work, Byakuya thinking that maybe growing up a little bit, letting things change, might not be so difficult if he makes the effort
And later, to prove the final point, he steels himself as he passes his vice-captain’s desk on his way to a meeting, pausing in front of the redhead to ask, “Renji…would you like to have a drink later?”
Renji looks a little surprised at the request, but nods nonetheless. “Sure. Should I bring the…”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Ah, okay. See you later then?”
“Aa.”
~~~~~
They meet in the evening after work at the back porch of Byakuya’s quarters, the captain sliding the door open to find his vice-captain already waiting, staring out across the water of the pond thoughtfully, chin resting atop his knees.
He turns when he hears his captain arrive, and allows a sad sort of smile. “Evenin’, taichou.”
“Evening.”
Renji blinks when Byakuya sits down in his normal spot beside him, craning his neck to take a more thorough look around. “Where’s the sake?”
“I didn’t bring any.”
“…oh.” Renji looks at his captain strangely. “Taichou?”
His palms are a little sweaty, and he feels that he might possibly be ill, but outwardly, he only closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath.
He’s decided now, and really, the only way to go about this is to force a change, even at risk to himself again. But it’s…
“Time to grow up, right, Renji? Time to change.”
His voice is so soft that Renji has to lean forward to hear him better, feeling nervous because Byakuya oozes nervousness himself right now, and it can’t help but rub off on the vice-captain who understands him so well, the one who has always been right here beside him whenever he felt so lonely that it might’ve killed him if he’d had to stay by himself at those times.
“Taichou?” Renji repeats softly, concern written all over his face.
“You love Rukia, don’t you?”
The redhead recoils a little bit at that, and looking away in embarrassment, he manages a, “well…yeah. I guess it’s just always been that way.”
“I still love her too, you know.”
Renji’s eyes bug a little, and Byakuya realizes that he phrased that all wrong.
“Um., Hisana. Not Rukia. Though I do love her, just differently,” he starts awkwardly.
Renji chuckles a little. “Scared the shit out of me for a second, taichou,” he admits, looking immensely relieved. “But yeah, I know. You still love her, your wife, that is. Only natural, right?”
“Of course.”
Silence for a moment.
And then, “Do you think, Renji, that it’s okay to begin to care for someone else when, at the same time, you still love that one person?”
Renji swallows, brow furrowing thoughtfully. It’s a moment before he answers.
“Well… I mean… I think, that sometimes, it just happens, ya know? I mean… maybe, you don’t try for it exactly, or maybe you do, but if it happens, well, if it happens it happens, right? Can’t be helped… nothin’ to be shamed of. Nothin’ to run away from, I guess. Right?”
“Just…happens, huh?”
“Well, yeah. It’s like, when you least expect it, ain’t it? Just happens. And you realize you care about someone else too, ya know? I mean… well, do you um, do you know what I mean taichou?”
Byakuya, looking down at his lap, regards his hands and sighs quietly. “I think…maybe I do.”
The redhead blinks almost incredulously. “You do?”
“I… it can’t be helped sometimes, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But, that’s okay. Perhaps?”
“Well yeah. I suppose, so long as the people understand each other, right?”
“Renji…”
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever remember it, when we sleep together?”
Silence.
“Renji?”
Part of Byakuya has been expecting this, almost hoping for it really, but at the same time, he doesn’t quite know what to say should Renji honestly respond that he doesn’t remember, given that all of Byakuya’s preparation for tonight had mostly rested on the belief that Renji wasn’t always as drunk as he professed to be when they were together.
Well, perhaps then, he shouldn’t do this. Not now. Moving to stand, Byakuya clears his throat and tells his vice-captain, “If you don’t remember, please forget that I said anything and…”
“You smell nice,” Renji blurts out, interrupting Byakuya and as he does, reaching out to grab the other man’s sleeve to keep him from leaving.
It’s the captain’s turn to be confused, and blinking, he looks at the redhead in surprise.
“Ah, when we… well, when you’n I… I always think taichou smells nice,” Renji continues, turning his gaze downward because he’s unable to look his leader in the eye. “It was the first thing I thought that first night we… and I was a little drunk and I just wanted to see, if taichou tasted like he smelled.”
Byakuya honestly doesn’t know where this is going, so he sits silently by and lets the younger man continue.
“All I was thinkin’ when I kissed you was, taichou smells nice, taichou tastes nice… I like the way, even after taichou drinks, that he doesn’t taste at all like the sake. It’s all I could think of, ya see?”
“Renji…I… I understand if you weren’t, if you didn’t mean…”
“I didn’t think about Rukia once.”
“Renji?”
“I didn’t think about her once. But then, ya know… in the mornin’… I woke up in my own room and ya didn’t say anythin’ about it at work, so I thought, well, I figured you’d just wanted, well, to forget for a while. I figured maybe you’d been drunk yourself and didn’t know what was goin’ on and that maybe you didn’t want anything, really, but maybe to forget for a while. So I…”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“Yeah. But I always thought, that I liked how you smelled, and how you felt. And then I thought I was bein’ crazy because someone who loves someone else shouldn’t be thinkin’ things like that, right? I mean, it was all wrong of me, wasn’t it? To forget about her, to not even think of her once ‘cuz all I could think was how it was with you.”
“You felt guilty.”
“Because you…when you talk about Hisana, ya know? It’s like…she’s all there is in the world. And when I hear you talk about her, I think that I want my love to be like yours. I want it to be really true too. The one person most important to me, that I’ll never betray, even if they don’t love me back. But then you and I… and all I could think…. I felt bad. I felt bad ‘cuz it was like I couldn’t love Rukia as well as you loved Hisana. So I didn’t… I didn’t wanna say anything. Wanted to let you think I was the same as you, I guess. Thinkin’ bout someone else whenever we…but I was really thinkin’, about how nice it was to touch you.”
“…oh.”
“Um, so I guess I’m just sayin’ that yeah. I remember.” The redhead laughs sheepishly. “In the uh, roundabout way.”
Byakuya smiles a little bit himself at the younger man’s admission. “You were right. I wanted to forget for a while,” he admits himself, not unaware of Renji’s slight expression of disappointment at the revelation. “You were the only who could make me.”
“T-taichou?”
“Whenever I was with you…drinking, or working, or otherwise… you were the only one that understood me enough so that I wouldn’t have to keep thinking about everything by myself. You’re the only one that does that. Makes me forget.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Renji’s face flushes and he smiles nervously, still looking down at the ground. “Oh. Well… okay then. Good. Yeah, good.”
They sit together in companionable silence for the rest of the evening, watching fireflies zip across the water and stars twinkling in the sky. Neither of them have any alcohol to indulge in, but there’s an overwhelming feeling of calm regardless, and Byakuya thinks that if this how change feels, maybe he can do it after all.
After some time, when Renji tentatively leans over to kiss him, Byakuya tilts his head back and opens his mouth obligingly, and for a moment, lets himself forget what it is to be lonely and enjoy for the first time, the taste of his vice-captain without the seasonings of wine or sorrow on his lips and tongue. It’s awkward and tentative and comfortably sweet, as any real first kiss should be, and Byakuya thinks that this is okay, that it’s okay to change like this, to change and let himself be in the company of someone who truly understands him, who knows how he feels and the pain he’s been through and who will buy him breakfast tomorrow morning and encourage him to try new things.
Because this is the sort of new thing that can work, when he’s here with someone else like this, someone who he can reach out and touch and who will willingly touch him back, someone who, whenever they’re together, makes him forget for a while, that he’s ever been lonely at all.
It’s a big change, and he’s never been good with this sort of thing, really.
But he’s beginning to think that maybe, maybe this one will be okay.
END
Edits needed, but probably too much of an effort at this point. o.o Because really. IT'S SO CHEEEEEEEESIE. ^^;;
Title: Stunted Forward Motion
Universe: Bleach
Theme/Topic: 10,000 word challenge
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: RenjixByakuya , mentioned IchigoxRukia and some Byakuya+Hisana and Renji+Rukia.
Spoilers: Whole Soul Society Arc
Word Count: 11,274
Time: Days and days and days. -_-;;
Warnings: Spoilers for the Soul Society Arc and slight spoilers for around… 193 to be safe?.
Summary: Sort-of companion piece to “On the Next Go Round”- Byakuya and Renji battle loneliness and rejection.
Dedication: Ann- because she challenged me.
A/N: I say companion piece because it sort of follows events I set up in “On the Next Go Round” but at the same time, that story doesn’t have to be read for this one to make sense. Hopefully. Done for a fic challenge/contest thing over at gwyaoi.org because Ann thought I should give it a shot. I totally procrastinated until the last minute, but I got it done! Miracles do happen. Even you know, if they're a bit shoddy. XD
Disclaimer: Not mine, though I wish constantly.
Distribution: Just lemme know.
The redhead returns soon thereafter, tea tray in hand, and bustling about pouring Byakuya the first cup, he pauses with a little frown when he notices that Byakuya has taken the cherry pastry out and put it on his own napkin. “Er, cherry one’s mine, taichou.”
Byakuya blinks. “I thought you liked apple best.”
“Well uh, you know how they’re the most popular there, woke up a little late this mornin’ ya see, so I managed to grab the last one, but there was only cherry left and the baker said it was the second most popular flavor so…”
“I could eat the cherry.”
It’s Renji’s turn to blink, and he almost over-pours the tea when he hears that. “But uh, ain’t apple your favorite?”
It is, but for some inexplicable reason, Byakuya feels like pushing the point anyway. “Does that matter?”
“Sure it does. If you like the apple, you should eat it, taichou. I can make due, ya know.”
“And I can’t?” The question on Byakuya’s part isn’t asked out of umbrage on his part, but genuine curiosity, and Renji understands his captain enough to know that.
“Well, ya could, but you know, I figure since taichou’s the type of guy that doesn’t like things to change too much…”
The sixth division captain’s brow furrows slightly. Does everyone really know that about him?
He sighs, supposing that all evidence points to the affirmative. “Alright then.”
They eat breakfast together in silence, and watching his vice-captain, Byakuya can’t help but wonder what, exactly, is wrong with the cherry in the first place.
It had to be the second most popular flavor for a reason, after all.
~~~~~
The next few weeks are busy with the normal sort of grunt work, some major battles taking place here and there as Aizen’s stream of abandoned experiments had rallied and declared war on seireitei.
It had been a mediocre battle in Byakuya’s opinion, the surviving results of Aizen Sousuke’s failed attempts at creating a super army gathering after they’d been left alone and fatherless by Aizen’s death. They’d been bent on revenge for their defeated patriarch in this particular battle, and as embittered as they were, they were really, nothing more than a headless snake to deal with for the Gotei-13.
Byakuya’s sixth division had been sent to the front line with orders to destroy the entire army with the aid of the second and eleventh divisions, but by the time they’d arrived at the field, Zaraki had pretty much, on his own, created a playground of body parts for his vice-captain to play in, and the rest was clean up work for the remaining divisions.
Quite a bit of clean up work, really, being left to kill off the enemies that had been debilitated by Zaraki’s wild battle lust- a moaning head here, a twitching form there, a torso trying to claw itself to safety.
The only thing dangerous about the whole fiasco, in Byakuya’s opinion, has been the following paperwork.
Because, as a result of their “late” arrival onto the field, much more forms have been generated to explain the sixth division’s tardiness. These forms have to be processed and approved by the Center 46 and all other divisions involved in the incident, meaning that the sixth division has to work in conjunction with the second division, which was also, oddly enough, “late” given Zaraki’s impatience to wait for backup. There’s a whole bullshit bureaucratic process that has to go into the works now in order to find the proper party to blame for the “miscommunication” and as expected, Zaraki refuses to budge and admit that he acted too hastily.
The paperwork is almost enough that Byakuya is willing to take the blame so long as it ends. However, Soi Fong is being less than cooperative on that front, the second division leader also refusing to capitulate and admit any late arrival on her team’s part, firing a storm of forms in both Zaraki and Byakuya’s divisions as a result.
This is the culprit as of late, for both he and his vice-captain’s rather sour moods, he thinks.
“Taichou… I know for a fact that I already filled out and submitted this form! To the same person!” the redhead complains, waving a two-inch thick sheave of papers at Byakuya with a forlorn expression on his face. “I’m telling you, Zaraki’s just tossing them when they go through for his part and that’s why it’s not getting processed.”
Byakuya sits at his desk signing more of such forms, and arching an eyebrow, merely says, “The processing office sends necessary paperwork to the divisions from which it needs signatures. If it were Zaraki’s end that was holding it up, they would send it to him. Seeing as to how it was sent here, it’s our responsibility to fill it out. No matter how many times you claim to have done it, Renji.”
Renji scowls. “I’m tellin’ ya, I did it already.”
“That may be all well and good, but the office is suggesting that you didn’t, and asking if you can please do it again.”
“Well I don’t wanna.”
“I however, am not asking, fukutaichou.”
“Che! That’s bullshit, taichou, c’mon. Just talk to Zaraki, I can almost guarantee that the stuff’ll go through the moment you convince ole’ one-eye to do his part!”
“Renji. Please go back to work.”
“You aren’t even hearin’ me out, are ya? C’mon, taichou, quit bein’ such a hardass, will ya? Just go see him about it.”
“I don’t have time to be traipsing around seireitei asking for kindnesses that may or may not benefit me in the first place. The office is saying that we failed to turn in these forms and so we will turn them in. Zaraki’s part in our office’s paperwork is null, Renji.”
“It’s impossible to compromise with you, ain’t it? C’mon taichou, what if I asked if ya could just go and see about this for me, huh? Before I go crazy. Just bend a little, can ya? Try’n see where I’m comin’ from.”
“Renji, I am ordering you to return to your desk and fill out those forms now. There’s a lot of work to do and I can’t have the both of us wasting time asking niceties of one another.”
“But…”
“Now, fukutaichou.”
“Argh! You never budge, do ya? This is why no one ever wants to… ya make it freakin’ impossible!” Renji exclaims thoughtlessly, whirling around and storming out of the room with the forms crumpled in his fist.
Byakuya blinks at the outburst as his office door shuts behind the redhead, not quite believing what he’d just heard from Renji.
“I do too budge.”
It sounds empty even to himself, but he finds himself having to say it anyway.
~~~~~
The next time he visits Rukia and Ichigo is two days after that shouting incident, and over tea with his sister, he asks very subtly, if he is well, un-budge-able.
She spits tea everywhere.
And after she’s mopped up the mess, she turns to look at him with a sort of heady concern, the kind he’d only ever seen her show Ichigo before, after his first few weeks of apprenticeship under his father.
He surmises that the outlook is bleak.
“What brought this on?” she asks, still slightly bewildered at his inquiry.
“Well, Renji accused me of being unmoving,” he admits rather stiffly. “I just wanted a second opinion.”
“Niisama, what makes you think you’re anything but un-budge-able?” she asks, looking as if the motherly part of her wants to reach out with her hand and feel his forehead for fever.
He frowns at her question and sips his tea a little huffily. “Well… I… am I really?”
She nods slowly. “The most immobile man I have ever met.”
He looks down at the table. “Is that… off-putting?”
She snorts, and had it been a time in the past, back when she’d been under his roof, he would have reprimanded her for such crude behavior. As it is he can’t really say anything about it since Ichigo is probably the one who taught her how to do it properly in the first place.
At the thought, he can only imagine what she would be up to had she married Renji instead, and brow furrowed, he realizes that there’s something distinctly unsettling about that thought, given that the things he’s learned from Renji over their time together thus far mostly seem to be of a carnal nature. He’s uncertain of how he feels when thinking about the possibility of his little sister and his vice-captain engaging in those sorts of things.
“Niisama, it’s the most, off-putting infuriating thing in the world,” she tells him with a hand on his shoulder. “I’m surprised Renji still puts up with you as well as he does.”
He crosses his arms. “He yelled at me. It was uncalled for.”
She shrugs. “The word around is that you two have grown to be quite good friends. What’s a friend if he or she can’t yell at you for your more glaring faults?”
Byakuya swallows distastefully. “That may or may not be so, but we still have…an understanding,” he responds. Perhaps an unhealthy one, but the important part of it is that they understand each other, after all, and that’s really all that matters in the long run, isn’t it? “It doesn’t give him the right to throw around such accusations when he knows very well where I’m coming from.”
“Well even so,” Rukia begins rather in an overly-conversational manner, “I think that if you’d like to maintain whatever sort of understanding it is that the two of you have, you’ve got to learn to become a little more…yielding. He’s been trying too, you know.”
Byakuya blinks. “He has?”
“Well, he writes me once in a while,” she admits. “Though his letters never really say anything much besides the normal formalities, trying to stay friendly, I suppose, despite, well… you know. It drives Ichigo crazy because he thinks there’s some sort of code Renji’s using to try and communicate with me without my husband knowing.” She seems mildly amused be the whole fiasco, and Byakuya vaguely wonders what her point is. “Well, lately it seems as if he’s relaxing a little,” she explains on her brother’s mildly confused expression. “He seems more at ease when he writes me. I was…well, I was worried. After I came here, I wasn’t sure if he and I could be friends anymore.”
“And?”
“He seems…happier. Or at least, that he’s getting there.”
“Does he?”
“He writes a lot about you.”
“…does he?”
“Well, not intentionally, I don’t think, but he always seems to have something to say that involves you, niisama.”
Byakuya realizes that he feels rather embarrassed by that. “What does he say?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
He frowns. “Rukia…”
She smiles and reaches out to put a small hand on his shoulder, eyes looking suddenly, far more worldly than he ever remembers having seen them before, a woman now, his little sister. “Niisama. Don’t you think it’s time to grow up a little?” she asks, patting him like she sometimes does her son, when he doesn’t quite understand what’s expected of him either.
“I…”
“For the record,” she adds with a rather wicked smirk, “I think you’ve seemed a little different yourself, lately.”
“Have I?”
“Well, you never would have asked me if you seemed un-budge-able before, I don’t think.”
He concedes that point.
“And you seem like you don’t mind talking as much as you used to, niisama. I think, whatever it is that you two are doing to each other… it’s good. I’m glad that you both seem… better when you’re around one another.” She pauses thoughtfully. “So what exactly are you two…”
It’s at that point that he excuses himself to the restroom.
He may be talking more than he used to, but even still, he doesn’t think he’s quite ready to talk that openly yet.
She laughs at him as he makes his way out of the room, and as he leaves, he can’t help but smile a little bit too.
~~~~~
Visits to see the family are always helpful for his equilibrium, and when he returns to Soul Society a few days later, freshly drooled on, cried on, vomited on, and peed on, he thinks that all it really takes is some time with the youngsters to put life into perspective.
Children are far worse a thing to face than Hollows.
And so he walks into his workplace more level-headed than he’s been since Renji stormed out on him during the filing incident (which consequently, did end up being Zaraki’s fault, but bygones were bygones and all that).
The only thing he has to complain about really, is the niggling at the back of his brain that wonders as to what, exactly, it is that Renji writes about him to Rukia, and why he does it at all.
Is he really…happier?
Byakuya pushes open the doors to his division’s main office, finding Renji working at his desk on the last remnants from the Zaraki caper that refuse to die, mumbling to himself about paperwork, paperwork, paperwork as he does.
“Good morning, Renji.”
The redhead turns at the sound of his captain’s voice, and a small smile flits across the edges of his lips as he salutes his leader’s return. “Welcome back, sir.”
Byakuya nods. “Thank you. Did I miss much while I was away?”
“Just er…paperwork,” Renji answers a bit awkwardly. “Speakin’ of which, taichou…”
“I’m sorry.”
The vice-captain pauses mid-breath. “Eh?”
“I was informed that the form backlog was actually Zaraki-taichou’s doing. So I wanted to say I apologize for inconveniencing you with it unnecessarily.”
Renji is obviously shocked at imperious Kuchiki-taichou’s unexpected apology, and fumbles to find words appropriate for a response. “Oh. Well, uh. Well, that’s good. I guess, ‘cuz I wanted to say um… sorry for yellin’. You know, I shouldn’t of. Since you’re my captain.”
“No, you shouldn’t have yelled at your captain, Renji,” Byakuya agrees, ever the maintainer of strict protocol. “But I will let it slide on account of deserving it rather powerfully.”
Renji blinks.
Byakuya, turning to head into his private office, leaves Renji standing agape just like that, and with a rather amused little smirk on his face, thinks that maybe it’s not too bad, if changing oneself, if growing up a little, can always be accompanied by such delightful reactions.
~~~~~
The next morning, in the spirit of growth, he wakes up several hours early and treks to Rukongai alone, to a certain sector, to a certain street, to a certain shop, and buys breakfast for them both, making it back early enough to know that Renji hasn’t left for work yet, though he will probably be wide awake by now if he’s as consistent a riser during sober night-befores as he is for the mornings after the drunk ones.
So he knocks on his vice-captain’s door when he reaches it, the familiar white bag tucked under his arm and a tray of hot tea between his hands.
“Er, one sec, I’ll be uh…”
Some fumbling, a small crash, and several yelps are heard before the door slides open, Renji with his hair still down and his uniform hastily donned appearing in front of his captain with a look of surprise. “Taichou?”
“Good morning.”
“Uh…mornin’. Somethin’ going on or something?”
Byakuya arches a brow. “Breakfast?”
“Breakfast?” Renji repeats dumbly.
“Shall we have some?” the captain asks, indicating the tea tray and the white bag he’s currently carrying.
“Huh? Oh. Oh! Uh, yeah… c’mon in, taichou… sorry… here, lemme take that…”
Renji relieves him of the tray and picks his way through his slightly messy vice-captain’s quarters so that they can sit at his small table.
He swipes a couple of things off of the second chair and invites Byakuya to sit with a slightly sheepish look.
“Thank you.”
“Er…so uh, so…what brings you here this mornin’ taichou? Besides well, you know. The breakfast,” he asks, reaching for the teapot as Byakuya sets the white bag on the table in front of them.
“I felt like a change today,” Byakuya informs him; gently swatting his vice-captain’s hands away from the pot so that he can pour tea for the both of them.
“Er, that so?” Renji asks cautiously, not certain as to what this means, if it means anything at all besides his captain suddenly going a little bit insane.
Byakuya, sensing his subordinate’s thoughts, sighs a little exasperatedly. “I can feel like change once in a while, can’t I?” And to prove the point, he takes out the pastries, one an apple and one a blackcurrant.
“Well, sure, I guess, so,” Renji responds automatically. He looks down at the baked goods. “Hey, is that? Huh.”
Byakuya decides that maybe Renji has all the right in the world to be a little bit confused by the sudden change of heart, given how rarely it’s ever occurred in all the time they’ve known each other, and with a self-deprecating little smile, the sixth division captain gently pushes the apple pastry towards Renji before taking the blackcurrant one for himself.
Renji watches him unabashedly, staring openly as Byakuya takes the first bite.
“Well?” the redhead asks after an impatient moment of watching his captain chew.
“It’s good,” Byakuya responds, oddly amused by the event the redhead was making of his new choice in breakfast goods. “Different, but good too.”
“So uh…if I may ask sir…what exactly, uh, brought this on?”
“Hunger,” Byakuya responds dryly, taking a sip of his tea.
Renji blinks, cheeks turning slightly red at his captain’s blunt answer. “Well yes, I mean, obviously, I mean…”
And then Byakuya finds himself smirking a little without knowing it. “It’s time to grow up a little, don’t you think, Renji?” he asks with just the slightest hint of mischief in his tone, though he feels an accompanying nervousness that’s two times as strong as any amusement he might find at Renji’s discomfort.
“Come again?”
“I shouldn’t be afraid of a little change now and again, don’t you think?”
Renji, still befuddled, goes with the safest answer. “Well, no, of course not.”
“I already know I like apple,” Byakuya continues, feeling ever-so-slightly cheesy as he does, “so maybe it’s time to see if I like anything else as well.”
“That so?”
A nod.
And then Renji clears his throat, which, given how well Byakuya knows the other man, means he’s beginning to catch on a little. “Well uh, I been thinkin’ on tryin’ some new things myself, too,” the redhead begins. “Know I don’t really like cherry much, but there’s a bunch of other kinds too, isn’t there?”
The conversation is idiotic, it must sound that way to be sure, but Byakuya can’t help but feel like it’s one of the most profound moments of his life.
“The blackcurrant is good. It takes a little getting used to, I think, but after a while, it’s really quite good.”
“Think I’ll try that next time then, taichou. Thanks.”
Byakuya smiles. “Very well.”
And so they finish their tea and pastries and clean up before going to work, Byakuya thinking that maybe growing up a little bit, letting things change, might not be so difficult if he makes the effort
And later, to prove the final point, he steels himself as he passes his vice-captain’s desk on his way to a meeting, pausing in front of the redhead to ask, “Renji…would you like to have a drink later?”
Renji looks a little surprised at the request, but nods nonetheless. “Sure. Should I bring the…”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Ah, okay. See you later then?”
“Aa.”
~~~~~
They meet in the evening after work at the back porch of Byakuya’s quarters, the captain sliding the door open to find his vice-captain already waiting, staring out across the water of the pond thoughtfully, chin resting atop his knees.
He turns when he hears his captain arrive, and allows a sad sort of smile. “Evenin’, taichou.”
“Evening.”
Renji blinks when Byakuya sits down in his normal spot beside him, craning his neck to take a more thorough look around. “Where’s the sake?”
“I didn’t bring any.”
“…oh.” Renji looks at his captain strangely. “Taichou?”
His palms are a little sweaty, and he feels that he might possibly be ill, but outwardly, he only closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath.
He’s decided now, and really, the only way to go about this is to force a change, even at risk to himself again. But it’s…
“Time to grow up, right, Renji? Time to change.”
His voice is so soft that Renji has to lean forward to hear him better, feeling nervous because Byakuya oozes nervousness himself right now, and it can’t help but rub off on the vice-captain who understands him so well, the one who has always been right here beside him whenever he felt so lonely that it might’ve killed him if he’d had to stay by himself at those times.
“Taichou?” Renji repeats softly, concern written all over his face.
“You love Rukia, don’t you?”
The redhead recoils a little bit at that, and looking away in embarrassment, he manages a, “well…yeah. I guess it’s just always been that way.”
“I still love her too, you know.”
Renji’s eyes bug a little, and Byakuya realizes that he phrased that all wrong.
“Um., Hisana. Not Rukia. Though I do love her, just differently,” he starts awkwardly.
Renji chuckles a little. “Scared the shit out of me for a second, taichou,” he admits, looking immensely relieved. “But yeah, I know. You still love her, your wife, that is. Only natural, right?”
“Of course.”
Silence for a moment.
And then, “Do you think, Renji, that it’s okay to begin to care for someone else when, at the same time, you still love that one person?”
Renji swallows, brow furrowing thoughtfully. It’s a moment before he answers.
“Well… I mean… I think, that sometimes, it just happens, ya know? I mean… maybe, you don’t try for it exactly, or maybe you do, but if it happens, well, if it happens it happens, right? Can’t be helped… nothin’ to be shamed of. Nothin’ to run away from, I guess. Right?”
“Just…happens, huh?”
“Well, yeah. It’s like, when you least expect it, ain’t it? Just happens. And you realize you care about someone else too, ya know? I mean… well, do you um, do you know what I mean taichou?”
Byakuya, looking down at his lap, regards his hands and sighs quietly. “I think…maybe I do.”
The redhead blinks almost incredulously. “You do?”
“I… it can’t be helped sometimes, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But, that’s okay. Perhaps?”
“Well yeah. I suppose, so long as the people understand each other, right?”
“Renji…”
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever remember it, when we sleep together?”
Silence.
“Renji?”
Part of Byakuya has been expecting this, almost hoping for it really, but at the same time, he doesn’t quite know what to say should Renji honestly respond that he doesn’t remember, given that all of Byakuya’s preparation for tonight had mostly rested on the belief that Renji wasn’t always as drunk as he professed to be when they were together.
Well, perhaps then, he shouldn’t do this. Not now. Moving to stand, Byakuya clears his throat and tells his vice-captain, “If you don’t remember, please forget that I said anything and…”
“You smell nice,” Renji blurts out, interrupting Byakuya and as he does, reaching out to grab the other man’s sleeve to keep him from leaving.
It’s the captain’s turn to be confused, and blinking, he looks at the redhead in surprise.
“Ah, when we… well, when you’n I… I always think taichou smells nice,” Renji continues, turning his gaze downward because he’s unable to look his leader in the eye. “It was the first thing I thought that first night we… and I was a little drunk and I just wanted to see, if taichou tasted like he smelled.”
Byakuya honestly doesn’t know where this is going, so he sits silently by and lets the younger man continue.
“All I was thinkin’ when I kissed you was, taichou smells nice, taichou tastes nice… I like the way, even after taichou drinks, that he doesn’t taste at all like the sake. It’s all I could think of, ya see?”
“Renji…I… I understand if you weren’t, if you didn’t mean…”
“I didn’t think about Rukia once.”
“Renji?”
“I didn’t think about her once. But then, ya know… in the mornin’… I woke up in my own room and ya didn’t say anythin’ about it at work, so I thought, well, I figured you’d just wanted, well, to forget for a while. I figured maybe you’d been drunk yourself and didn’t know what was goin’ on and that maybe you didn’t want anything, really, but maybe to forget for a while. So I…”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“Yeah. But I always thought, that I liked how you smelled, and how you felt. And then I thought I was bein’ crazy because someone who loves someone else shouldn’t be thinkin’ things like that, right? I mean, it was all wrong of me, wasn’t it? To forget about her, to not even think of her once ‘cuz all I could think was how it was with you.”
“You felt guilty.”
“Because you…when you talk about Hisana, ya know? It’s like…she’s all there is in the world. And when I hear you talk about her, I think that I want my love to be like yours. I want it to be really true too. The one person most important to me, that I’ll never betray, even if they don’t love me back. But then you and I… and all I could think…. I felt bad. I felt bad ‘cuz it was like I couldn’t love Rukia as well as you loved Hisana. So I didn’t… I didn’t wanna say anything. Wanted to let you think I was the same as you, I guess. Thinkin’ bout someone else whenever we…but I was really thinkin’, about how nice it was to touch you.”
“…oh.”
“Um, so I guess I’m just sayin’ that yeah. I remember.” The redhead laughs sheepishly. “In the uh, roundabout way.”
Byakuya smiles a little bit himself at the younger man’s admission. “You were right. I wanted to forget for a while,” he admits himself, not unaware of Renji’s slight expression of disappointment at the revelation. “You were the only who could make me.”
“T-taichou?”
“Whenever I was with you…drinking, or working, or otherwise… you were the only one that understood me enough so that I wouldn’t have to keep thinking about everything by myself. You’re the only one that does that. Makes me forget.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Renji’s face flushes and he smiles nervously, still looking down at the ground. “Oh. Well… okay then. Good. Yeah, good.”
They sit together in companionable silence for the rest of the evening, watching fireflies zip across the water and stars twinkling in the sky. Neither of them have any alcohol to indulge in, but there’s an overwhelming feeling of calm regardless, and Byakuya thinks that if this how change feels, maybe he can do it after all.
After some time, when Renji tentatively leans over to kiss him, Byakuya tilts his head back and opens his mouth obligingly, and for a moment, lets himself forget what it is to be lonely and enjoy for the first time, the taste of his vice-captain without the seasonings of wine or sorrow on his lips and tongue. It’s awkward and tentative and comfortably sweet, as any real first kiss should be, and Byakuya thinks that this is okay, that it’s okay to change like this, to change and let himself be in the company of someone who truly understands him, who knows how he feels and the pain he’s been through and who will buy him breakfast tomorrow morning and encourage him to try new things.
Because this is the sort of new thing that can work, when he’s here with someone else like this, someone who he can reach out and touch and who will willingly touch him back, someone who, whenever they’re together, makes him forget for a while, that he’s ever been lonely at all.
It’s a big change, and he’s never been good with this sort of thing, really.
But he’s beginning to think that maybe, maybe this one will be okay.
END
Edits needed, but probably too much of an effort at this point. o.o Because really. IT'S SO CHEEEEEEEESIE. ^^;;