Reclaim [Matsukira; Gin-centric] [Bleach]
Title :: Reclaim
Pairing :: Matsukira, but don’t let that fool you. For them, it’s all about Gin.
Rating :: PG-13
Wordcount :: 2,700
Summary :: “Might help you forget, for a while.”
She asked him if he wanted to drink with her, again:
“Might help you forget, for a while.”
He said he didn’t want to, not now, not ever implied and hovering at the tip of his tongue, just waiting to jump, and he knew she heard.
He went anyway.
She was strangely beautiful when she was drunk (not that she wasn’t lovely to begin with), all unnaturally glowing and wet lips forming cruel words they both knew she didn’t mean. He watched her openly (not that she really noticed nor cared), in a vague, detached way, fascinated despite himself.
“You were the last one,” he finally announced, randomly interrupting one of her tirades, drunkenly pleased with his deduction.
“I - what?”
“To touch him,” Izuru whispered, almost shy now but still too inebriated to care, and too envious to stop.
“Oh,” she said, and her hand curled into a fist at her side. “Oh.”
He looked at her hand, followed the movements of her fingers, and he knew that had been the last thing his captain had touched before leaving the Soul Society behind. He hadn’t been there to see, of course, but he’d heard, and he was achingly jealous and somehow strangely relieved. He knew, everyone knew, that he wouldn’t have been able to let go, and being forced away would have been…
Best not to think of that, he supposed.
And then she was talking again, and suddenly shaking her head. “But, no. Not really. Not the last one to touch him like I really wanted. That -- that’d be you.”
He choked on his mouthful of drink, and he didn’t know whether his throat burned hotter or his face. “You - how did you -”
“It’s Gin,” Rangiku said, and shrugged as if this explained everything. And really, Izuru supposed, it did.
“And you don’t…”
“Hate you? How the hell’s it your fault? It’s Gin.”
At least someone else understands what passes for my logic, he thought, and nodded mournfully. “It’s…yes.”
“Can’t say m’not jealous, though.” Her full lips curled down into a blatant pout, and she stared at him through tipsy, half-lidded eyes.
He opened his mouth to apologise, and then found that he couldn’t.
“When was the last time?” she demanded, and this time he startled so badly his drink nearly spilled, and he immediately began to stutter panicked protests.
But when he saw the look on her face, he stopped. If he couldn’t even apologise, then didn’t he at least owe her this?
“It was…it was…” Izuru was shaking, and he had no idea whether it was from embarrassment or guilt or grief or ill-disguised lust, even now. “Right after he…right after he took me from that jail cell. In the middle of everything, he stopped me for - that. Everything that was happening, was about to happen, and we…” He swallowed down bile, and hoped he’d drank enough that he’d be throwing up later. He’d need it, once this conversation was over.
“Fucking bastard,” Rangiku whispered, and Izuru was beyond relieved to realise she didn’t mean him. “He really couldn’t leave without getting his hands on you one last time.”
Izuru drew his knees to his chest, rested his forehead on them, and tried not to be proud.
He tried even harder not to be sick.
He did not look up for a long time.
He was beginning to hope that he’d drunk himself halfway to catatonia, when a hand startled him by resting lightly on his hair. It stroked down, over the long taut line of his jaw, pausing briefly on his throat and finally coming to rest on his forearm, just above his wrist.
“Matsumoto.” Her name came out on a small puff of air, somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. He didn’t even have to ask, the sharp clarity strangling him at once. (Whatever else had happened, whatever else he had become, Izuru had always been exceptionally bright, and he needed to be told few things twice, if at all.)
“We were before, anyway,” she said carefully, tonelessly, the tips of her nails pressing just slightly against his skin.
“Sharing him.”
“Yes.”
Izuru didn’t answer, but he shifted, turned his own hand palm-upwards, and grasped.
He held onto that hand like a lifeline, just like it had done to Gin, and neither of them quite knew what else to do.
It was less awkward, the next time.
Or maybe they were both just more drunk.
Same end result, either way.
And somehow, this was easier, Izuru thought, inasmuch as he could think anything with this much alcohol in him. Everything his captain had done had always mortified him, for rather good reason. (And he’d always gone along with it, anyway.) But here, with Matsumoto, the shame was less intense - because she knew, because in a way she was just as helpless as he.
So here, like this, he could get answers he never would have normally.
“The first time?” Rangiku laughed, too loudly but not in a drunken way, somehow prettily. “We were young. Very young, and basically idiotic. Or, he was idiotic. Not a clue what he was doing, not then. I finally just had to get on top myself, before we managed to get anywhere, and even then it was still bad.”
Izuru was gaping. There was really no other word for it. And she couldn’t help snickering a bit at his expression. “Can’t quite imagine him so inept, can you?”
He only continued to gape.
“Yeah, your face really says it all.” She was grinning, letting herself be caught up in the moment and the memories and the alcohol. “But still, even as bad as it was…I still wanted it, didn’t want it to stop. We were - all we had was each other. There were no parents or siblings or other friends to touch us, ever, and so we couldn’t touch each other enough. We were always just starved little children, no matter how old we got, for affection as much as anything else.
“Really, sometimes I think we still are.”
Her smile faded, and as much as Izuru wanted to hate her for her casual use of the word we, he still couldn’t stop himself from reaching out again and taking her hand.
“I think you were right, last time.”
“Hm?” Her forehead creased in slight confusion, and he suddenly regretted speaking at all. They never spoke of their talks, not after, and what if that was because she never remembered them? But still, it was too late to stop now.
“About - him. More than anything else, I think you were right; he is like a child.”
Recognition flashed in her eyes, and her breathy sigh was a sad yes. “There’s nothing he likes better than playing with things, even now. Especially now. And if he manages to break them, so much the better.”
Her eyes on him were clinical, appraising. “But you know, I don’t think he’s quite broken you. Not yet. There’s more to you than you think, Kira Izuru.”
He opened his mouth to protest, and she tossed her head in an emphatic no. “You don’t know Gin like I do.” It was not challenging, it was not hurtful; it was just a mere fact. “He gets bored very easily. He doesn’t choose toys that will break too quickly, that won’t be a challenge. He likes his games to last.”
Those eyes raked over him, and he wanted to shy away, but the unexpected warmth in them made him wait. “Kira, clearly he thought you would.”
The next question was the hardest. “If I’m not - if he hasn’t - if I’m not broken, then what the hell am I? What are we?”
Her answer was too quick, and he realised she’d asked herself this far too many times before. “Addicted.”
“Addicted?”
“It’ll probably kill us both in the end, you know. But sometimes, the highs you get just make everything worth it.”
Gin is like that hung heavy in the air, unspoken and painfully loud.
“Do you regret it? Any of it?”
“Everything. And I still couldn’t bring myself to take back a moment.”
Rangiku was sitting sprawled on the floor, limbs heavy with drink, but the corners of her lips still turned up quickly enough. “That’s probably a good answer.”
Izuru tried to smile back.
“Do you still want him?”
The blossoming smile quickly faded, lips pressing into a thin distressed line. “I can’t, I can’t--”
“You can’t not.”
“No.”
He wanted to be embarrassed, he wanted to be angry, he wanted to get up, leave, go hide - and all he could manage was relief that someone else understood.
The next question was the strangest yet, and there was the strangest gleam to her eyes to accompany it.
“Where was the last place?”
“Where was - what?” Izuru blinked, and he thought he’d be a little lost on this one even if he wasn’t quite so drunk.
“The last place,” Rangiku hissed, surging to her feet, an agitated swell of hair and breasts, “that he touched you.”
He thought he’d been done with the embarrassment. Apparently, he had sorely underestimated his capacity for just that. “I - ah - Matsumoto?”
“Just tell me.”
He didn’t want to anger her, didn’t want to alienate the only other person who could possibly understand. (There was Hinamori, and he had desperately wanted to confide in her and let her do the same, but her captain wasn’t his and he had come to realise that his words would have fallen on sympathetic but deaf ears. There was nothing that existed that in Hinamori Momo’s world that was not Aizen Sousuke, and he knew better than to intrude.) And so, cringing, he managed.
“His office. Desk. Ah.”
“No, no, no!” Her hands actually flapped at him, and for a split second, Izuru was almost amused. “On you. What part of you did he last touch?”
“Oh.” He didn’t make another sound, and she didn’t move, waiting.
And finally, he gave in. He was good at that, after all.
He touched the side of his neck, lightly, with nervous fingers, and he knew she would notice the faint scar there, generally obscured by hair. “Always. Always after. Teeth or nails.”
“Claiming you.”
“Of course.”
His face was perfectly still, because he had no idea what sort of expression was appropriate for something like this (and because he was desperately trying to resist the one that was so blatantly pride), but his body was fidgeting worse than when he was in the academy and Hinamori would smile and Abarai would give him a Don’t fuck this up stare.
It really didn’t come as a surprise when lips found their way to that mark, hot and opened and wet with sake.
And he wanted to stop her because that was Gin’s and he was Gin’s; but then, she was too, wasn’t she? And those lips had been all over his captain’s skin too, so how could it be that wrong?
Closest we’re going to get, he thought, and shut his eyes and let her.
After that, he didn’t let her have her mouth on him again. She agreed and understood instantly: She didn’t smile, not like that, and so her lips felt far too foreign against his skin.
But her hand, the hand that had last been on his captain, that he allowed. It petted him, sometimes lazily and sometimes with an odd fervor, drunkenly tracing the trails Gin had left on his skin.
“He never did anything like that to me,” Rangiku commented, peering at a scarred patch of chest she’d peeled just enough robes back to reveal. For a fleeting instant she looked almost envious, and then she grinned, wickedly and flashing fangs like a cat. “Bastard knew I’d kill him if he ever marred my breasts.”
Neither of them really spoke of, or apologised for, the inebriated touching. It wasn’t about them, anyway, not really. It was all yet another futile attempt to bring themselves closer, once again, to Gin.
(Izuru thought about the leftover robes, still stored in his office, and about the shameful way he’d been so tempted to curl into them, just for their lingering smell. And he thought this was probably a much better alternative.)
Rangiku asked, and forced out answers, and stroked the scars on his arms, on his collar, on his upper chest.
She left the one on his neck alone, and he was grateful.
“He has a thing with necks, I think,” she told him. “He loved my necklace. Bought it for me, actually, birthday present and anniversary present all in one. Gin had a habit of grabbing it, tugging it, then letting it fall back and tracing it with his fingers.”
Rangiku didn’t look at him, didn’t say another word, but he still knew. And when terrified fingers finally skimmed over metal, dipped just slightly into the curve between breasts, she smiled.
They were getting closer to him while claiming back pieces of themselves.
It was probably the only way to stay sane.
“So has he been the only one, then?” she finally asked.
“The only one I’ve ever..? Yes.”
“Me, too. Gods, how embarrassing.” She shuddered, and he let them both pretend that it was with shame or revulsion, and not the memories of want.
There was a long pause.
“…Kira, do you want him to be?”
Theoretically, this shouldn’t be strange. He’d always planned to do this - not with Matsumoto, but with a girl, a nice girl, someone who was not his captain and therefore highly inappropriate. (Someone who he could bring to his parents’ grave and who wouldn’t smile.)
But his captain had a spectacular talent of getting in the way, and Izuru’s plans were nothing compared to his.
He thought maybe this was why Rangiku was able to stand beside him for so long and not simply behind: She had plans of her own, and she made them happen.
And she splayed both hands on his shoulders, fingers firm but not digging, and he allowed himself to be pushed backwards, clothes being haphazardly shed along the way.
She was beautiful, Izuru thought, and he knew why his captain would have wanted her, even if they hadn’t shared such a past, even if they hadn’t been one another’s worlds. He wanted to tell her this, in his captain’s stead -- If he’s ever been capable of loving anything, I’m sure it was you. But the words would have been too painful for them both (because Izuru knew that he had never earned such a level of affection himself, and because Rangiku could not believe that Gin had been capable of love), and so he stifled them and offered her a tentative smile instead.
She rocked her hips and laughed, and with the tossing of her head she let her hair fall and hide her eyes.
It was strangely quiet. She did not demand anything of him, did not demand him to say things just to watch the way he blushed and squirmed. She kept her lower lip between her teeth as if she was trying fiercely to stifle herself, and he wanted to pull her down and lick away the blood that formed there, but he kept his hands still.
Neither of them breathed a word. Neither of them tried to fill the silence, to pretend that they were anything less than empty.
They did not have to accidentally say his name to make his presence felt.
But afterwards, she pushed her fingers through his and squeezed, and Izuru felt more himself than he had in years, and her smile was bright and strong. She shifted, lowered, and snuggled against him, and he stiffened in momentary confusion. It didn’t escape her notice, and Rangiku hummed softly in the back of her throat and ran a soothing hand down his chest, as if to say I know you’re not used to this, but it’s all right. It wasn’t until he calmed that she actually spoke.
“We’ll tell him, when he comes back. He’ll probably want to join in.”
“He’ll come back?”
“Always does,” Rangiku murmured confidently, and fell asleep at his side.
Pairing :: Matsukira, but don’t let that fool you. For them, it’s all about Gin.
Rating :: PG-13
Wordcount :: 2,700
Summary :: “Might help you forget, for a while.”
She asked him if he wanted to drink with her, again:
“Might help you forget, for a while.”
He said he didn’t want to, not now, not ever implied and hovering at the tip of his tongue, just waiting to jump, and he knew she heard.
He went anyway.
She was strangely beautiful when she was drunk (not that she wasn’t lovely to begin with), all unnaturally glowing and wet lips forming cruel words they both knew she didn’t mean. He watched her openly (not that she really noticed nor cared), in a vague, detached way, fascinated despite himself.
“You were the last one,” he finally announced, randomly interrupting one of her tirades, drunkenly pleased with his deduction.
“I - what?”
“To touch him,” Izuru whispered, almost shy now but still too inebriated to care, and too envious to stop.
“Oh,” she said, and her hand curled into a fist at her side. “Oh.”
He looked at her hand, followed the movements of her fingers, and he knew that had been the last thing his captain had touched before leaving the Soul Society behind. He hadn’t been there to see, of course, but he’d heard, and he was achingly jealous and somehow strangely relieved. He knew, everyone knew, that he wouldn’t have been able to let go, and being forced away would have been…
Best not to think of that, he supposed.
And then she was talking again, and suddenly shaking her head. “But, no. Not really. Not the last one to touch him like I really wanted. That -- that’d be you.”
He choked on his mouthful of drink, and he didn’t know whether his throat burned hotter or his face. “You - how did you -”
“It’s Gin,” Rangiku said, and shrugged as if this explained everything. And really, Izuru supposed, it did.
“And you don’t…”
“Hate you? How the hell’s it your fault? It’s Gin.”
At least someone else understands what passes for my logic, he thought, and nodded mournfully. “It’s…yes.”
“Can’t say m’not jealous, though.” Her full lips curled down into a blatant pout, and she stared at him through tipsy, half-lidded eyes.
He opened his mouth to apologise, and then found that he couldn’t.
“When was the last time?” she demanded, and this time he startled so badly his drink nearly spilled, and he immediately began to stutter panicked protests.
But when he saw the look on her face, he stopped. If he couldn’t even apologise, then didn’t he at least owe her this?
“It was…it was…” Izuru was shaking, and he had no idea whether it was from embarrassment or guilt or grief or ill-disguised lust, even now. “Right after he…right after he took me from that jail cell. In the middle of everything, he stopped me for - that. Everything that was happening, was about to happen, and we…” He swallowed down bile, and hoped he’d drank enough that he’d be throwing up later. He’d need it, once this conversation was over.
“Fucking bastard,” Rangiku whispered, and Izuru was beyond relieved to realise she didn’t mean him. “He really couldn’t leave without getting his hands on you one last time.”
Izuru drew his knees to his chest, rested his forehead on them, and tried not to be proud.
He tried even harder not to be sick.
He did not look up for a long time.
He was beginning to hope that he’d drunk himself halfway to catatonia, when a hand startled him by resting lightly on his hair. It stroked down, over the long taut line of his jaw, pausing briefly on his throat and finally coming to rest on his forearm, just above his wrist.
“Matsumoto.” Her name came out on a small puff of air, somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. He didn’t even have to ask, the sharp clarity strangling him at once. (Whatever else had happened, whatever else he had become, Izuru had always been exceptionally bright, and he needed to be told few things twice, if at all.)
“We were before, anyway,” she said carefully, tonelessly, the tips of her nails pressing just slightly against his skin.
“Sharing him.”
“Yes.”
Izuru didn’t answer, but he shifted, turned his own hand palm-upwards, and grasped.
He held onto that hand like a lifeline, just like it had done to Gin, and neither of them quite knew what else to do.
It was less awkward, the next time.
Or maybe they were both just more drunk.
Same end result, either way.
And somehow, this was easier, Izuru thought, inasmuch as he could think anything with this much alcohol in him. Everything his captain had done had always mortified him, for rather good reason. (And he’d always gone along with it, anyway.) But here, with Matsumoto, the shame was less intense - because she knew, because in a way she was just as helpless as he.
So here, like this, he could get answers he never would have normally.
“The first time?” Rangiku laughed, too loudly but not in a drunken way, somehow prettily. “We were young. Very young, and basically idiotic. Or, he was idiotic. Not a clue what he was doing, not then. I finally just had to get on top myself, before we managed to get anywhere, and even then it was still bad.”
Izuru was gaping. There was really no other word for it. And she couldn’t help snickering a bit at his expression. “Can’t quite imagine him so inept, can you?”
He only continued to gape.
“Yeah, your face really says it all.” She was grinning, letting herself be caught up in the moment and the memories and the alcohol. “But still, even as bad as it was…I still wanted it, didn’t want it to stop. We were - all we had was each other. There were no parents or siblings or other friends to touch us, ever, and so we couldn’t touch each other enough. We were always just starved little children, no matter how old we got, for affection as much as anything else.
“Really, sometimes I think we still are.”
Her smile faded, and as much as Izuru wanted to hate her for her casual use of the word we, he still couldn’t stop himself from reaching out again and taking her hand.
“I think you were right, last time.”
“Hm?” Her forehead creased in slight confusion, and he suddenly regretted speaking at all. They never spoke of their talks, not after, and what if that was because she never remembered them? But still, it was too late to stop now.
“About - him. More than anything else, I think you were right; he is like a child.”
Recognition flashed in her eyes, and her breathy sigh was a sad yes. “There’s nothing he likes better than playing with things, even now. Especially now. And if he manages to break them, so much the better.”
Her eyes on him were clinical, appraising. “But you know, I don’t think he’s quite broken you. Not yet. There’s more to you than you think, Kira Izuru.”
He opened his mouth to protest, and she tossed her head in an emphatic no. “You don’t know Gin like I do.” It was not challenging, it was not hurtful; it was just a mere fact. “He gets bored very easily. He doesn’t choose toys that will break too quickly, that won’t be a challenge. He likes his games to last.”
Those eyes raked over him, and he wanted to shy away, but the unexpected warmth in them made him wait. “Kira, clearly he thought you would.”
The next question was the hardest. “If I’m not - if he hasn’t - if I’m not broken, then what the hell am I? What are we?”
Her answer was too quick, and he realised she’d asked herself this far too many times before. “Addicted.”
“Addicted?”
“It’ll probably kill us both in the end, you know. But sometimes, the highs you get just make everything worth it.”
Gin is like that hung heavy in the air, unspoken and painfully loud.
“Do you regret it? Any of it?”
“Everything. And I still couldn’t bring myself to take back a moment.”
Rangiku was sitting sprawled on the floor, limbs heavy with drink, but the corners of her lips still turned up quickly enough. “That’s probably a good answer.”
Izuru tried to smile back.
“Do you still want him?”
The blossoming smile quickly faded, lips pressing into a thin distressed line. “I can’t, I can’t--”
“You can’t not.”
“No.”
He wanted to be embarrassed, he wanted to be angry, he wanted to get up, leave, go hide - and all he could manage was relief that someone else understood.
The next question was the strangest yet, and there was the strangest gleam to her eyes to accompany it.
“Where was the last place?”
“Where was - what?” Izuru blinked, and he thought he’d be a little lost on this one even if he wasn’t quite so drunk.
“The last place,” Rangiku hissed, surging to her feet, an agitated swell of hair and breasts, “that he touched you.”
He thought he’d been done with the embarrassment. Apparently, he had sorely underestimated his capacity for just that. “I - ah - Matsumoto?”
“Just tell me.”
He didn’t want to anger her, didn’t want to alienate the only other person who could possibly understand. (There was Hinamori, and he had desperately wanted to confide in her and let her do the same, but her captain wasn’t his and he had come to realise that his words would have fallen on sympathetic but deaf ears. There was nothing that existed that in Hinamori Momo’s world that was not Aizen Sousuke, and he knew better than to intrude.) And so, cringing, he managed.
“His office. Desk. Ah.”
“No, no, no!” Her hands actually flapped at him, and for a split second, Izuru was almost amused. “On you. What part of you did he last touch?”
“Oh.” He didn’t make another sound, and she didn’t move, waiting.
And finally, he gave in. He was good at that, after all.
He touched the side of his neck, lightly, with nervous fingers, and he knew she would notice the faint scar there, generally obscured by hair. “Always. Always after. Teeth or nails.”
“Claiming you.”
“Of course.”
His face was perfectly still, because he had no idea what sort of expression was appropriate for something like this (and because he was desperately trying to resist the one that was so blatantly pride), but his body was fidgeting worse than when he was in the academy and Hinamori would smile and Abarai would give him a Don’t fuck this up stare.
It really didn’t come as a surprise when lips found their way to that mark, hot and opened and wet with sake.
And he wanted to stop her because that was Gin’s and he was Gin’s; but then, she was too, wasn’t she? And those lips had been all over his captain’s skin too, so how could it be that wrong?
Closest we’re going to get, he thought, and shut his eyes and let her.
After that, he didn’t let her have her mouth on him again. She agreed and understood instantly: She didn’t smile, not like that, and so her lips felt far too foreign against his skin.
But her hand, the hand that had last been on his captain, that he allowed. It petted him, sometimes lazily and sometimes with an odd fervor, drunkenly tracing the trails Gin had left on his skin.
“He never did anything like that to me,” Rangiku commented, peering at a scarred patch of chest she’d peeled just enough robes back to reveal. For a fleeting instant she looked almost envious, and then she grinned, wickedly and flashing fangs like a cat. “Bastard knew I’d kill him if he ever marred my breasts.”
Neither of them really spoke of, or apologised for, the inebriated touching. It wasn’t about them, anyway, not really. It was all yet another futile attempt to bring themselves closer, once again, to Gin.
(Izuru thought about the leftover robes, still stored in his office, and about the shameful way he’d been so tempted to curl into them, just for their lingering smell. And he thought this was probably a much better alternative.)
Rangiku asked, and forced out answers, and stroked the scars on his arms, on his collar, on his upper chest.
She left the one on his neck alone, and he was grateful.
“He has a thing with necks, I think,” she told him. “He loved my necklace. Bought it for me, actually, birthday present and anniversary present all in one. Gin had a habit of grabbing it, tugging it, then letting it fall back and tracing it with his fingers.”
Rangiku didn’t look at him, didn’t say another word, but he still knew. And when terrified fingers finally skimmed over metal, dipped just slightly into the curve between breasts, she smiled.
They were getting closer to him while claiming back pieces of themselves.
It was probably the only way to stay sane.
“So has he been the only one, then?” she finally asked.
“The only one I’ve ever..? Yes.”
“Me, too. Gods, how embarrassing.” She shuddered, and he let them both pretend that it was with shame or revulsion, and not the memories of want.
There was a long pause.
“…Kira, do you want him to be?”
Theoretically, this shouldn’t be strange. He’d always planned to do this - not with Matsumoto, but with a girl, a nice girl, someone who was not his captain and therefore highly inappropriate. (Someone who he could bring to his parents’ grave and who wouldn’t smile.)
But his captain had a spectacular talent of getting in the way, and Izuru’s plans were nothing compared to his.
He thought maybe this was why Rangiku was able to stand beside him for so long and not simply behind: She had plans of her own, and she made them happen.
And she splayed both hands on his shoulders, fingers firm but not digging, and he allowed himself to be pushed backwards, clothes being haphazardly shed along the way.
She was beautiful, Izuru thought, and he knew why his captain would have wanted her, even if they hadn’t shared such a past, even if they hadn’t been one another’s worlds. He wanted to tell her this, in his captain’s stead -- If he’s ever been capable of loving anything, I’m sure it was you. But the words would have been too painful for them both (because Izuru knew that he had never earned such a level of affection himself, and because Rangiku could not believe that Gin had been capable of love), and so he stifled them and offered her a tentative smile instead.
She rocked her hips and laughed, and with the tossing of her head she let her hair fall and hide her eyes.
It was strangely quiet. She did not demand anything of him, did not demand him to say things just to watch the way he blushed and squirmed. She kept her lower lip between her teeth as if she was trying fiercely to stifle herself, and he wanted to pull her down and lick away the blood that formed there, but he kept his hands still.
Neither of them breathed a word. Neither of them tried to fill the silence, to pretend that they were anything less than empty.
They did not have to accidentally say his name to make his presence felt.
But afterwards, she pushed her fingers through his and squeezed, and Izuru felt more himself than he had in years, and her smile was bright and strong. She shifted, lowered, and snuggled against him, and he stiffened in momentary confusion. It didn’t escape her notice, and Rangiku hummed softly in the back of her throat and ran a soothing hand down his chest, as if to say I know you’re not used to this, but it’s all right. It wasn’t until he calmed that she actually spoke.
“We’ll tell him, when he comes back. He’ll probably want to join in.”
“He’ll come back?”
“Always does,” Rangiku murmured confidently, and fell asleep at his side.