Brown Leafed Vertigo #16-1

[foxflare]

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 1/2

"Favorite food?" Izuru asked, idly tracing the tendons on the back of Gin's hand, pressing down lightly when he came to the impasse of a rubbery vein.

"Hoshigaki."

"Ew."

"Eh? 's wrong with hoshigaki?"

"They look like shriveled, moldy. . ."

"Shriveled, moldy what?"

Izuru felt the color rise in his face. "Nothing. Next question."

Gin smirked. "All right. Blood type?"

They had been playing this game for the past third of the half-hour they'd been awake, its first twenty minutes having been spent. . .well, becoming spent. Again. Sex, Izuru had discovered, felt different in the daylight. Sleepy, sore bodies moved more slowly, almost by requisite making the pleasant, warm delirium of morning into something to be savored, and sometime during his languid, post-coital speculations on what else and where else and how else something so more or less canonical could be experienced, Izuru had realized that, while he felt he could safely say he knew Gin fairly well at this point, he really knew very little about him.

"So ask," Gin had said when he'd voiced this observation.

And so Izuru had.

"A," he said now, drawing a leg up, drawing the instep of his foot along the outside of his boyfriend's left calf.

"Naturally. Mine's B."

"Naturally." He pressed his lips together, thinking. "Mundane, but important: favorite color?"

"Indigo blue. Yours?"

"Lately, silver."

"Awww."

"Ouch!" Izuru winced as his cheeks were pinched a couple of pounds-per-square-inch too hard, and pulled away from the assault. "Good grief. Don't make me have to tell people I fell down the stairs again."

"Nah, be honest -- just tell 'em you like it rough."

"That wouldn't be honest," Izuru pointed out, and was surprised when his voice didn't sound as certain as he'd thought it would -- but that was a can of worms he definitely wasn't ready to open yet, and so he cleared his throat, settled back against Gin's chest, and changed the subject, "Where were you born?"

"Ukyou," replied Gin, "in Kyoto. Ever been overseas?"

"Once, when I was four. My family vacationed in Hawaii. I got stung by a jellyfish on the third day, went into anaphylactic shock and ended up in the hospital. My mother wouldn't let me back in the water for the rest of the trip."

"Poor thing."

"Yeah. I think it put me off tentacle porn for life."

"Hah! Izuru-chan's so dirty-minded this mornin'."

"Hmm, I can't imagine why," Izuru smiled. "How did you meet Aizen-san?"

Gin looked smug. "Picked his pocket."

Izuru glanced at him sidelong. "Bullshit."

"Naw, I'm serious. He was doin' some kinda business in town, an' I saw him strollin' along, obviously not a local, an' so I. . ."

He trailed off, and grew very still.

". . .Gin?" Izuru ventured.

"Huh?"

"You saw that Aizen-san wasn't a local, and so you. . .?"

"I got caught," Gin distantly replied.

"Why'd you try to steal it in the first place?"

With a hard double-blink, the CD of Gin's mind played past its skip and resumed its seamless rotation.

"'cause food tastes better when you don' gotta fish it outta the trash first," he said matter-of-factly. "My old man. . .he liked me ta have somethin' ta show for myself at the end o'the day. Said I was old enough ta feed my own mouth, an' if I couldn't, he'd feed it for me." He made a fist and tapped three soft, puckish punches against the bridge of Izuru's nose. "An' not -- with -- food. Believe me, there's worse things than pickin' pockets I could'a been doin' to appease him.

"Anyway," he continued before Izuru could question what those things might have been, "like I said, Sousuke caught me red-handed, bam!" He clapped his hands together for effect. "Clamped his hand around my wrist, like he'd known I was comin' even before I did. But he didn't kick my ass or try ta drag me to the nearest police box like other people would'a. 'stead he takes me ta lunch, talks ta me 'bout my old man, about. . .'bout everything, an' then he asks me if I want him ta do somethin' about it."

Izuru waited for the rest of the story. At Gin's ensuing silence, he prompted, "And?"

But Gin only shrugged. "I said yes."

Sensing that that was as much of the story as he was going to get -- for now, at least -- Izuru didn't give chase to the evasion.

"How old were you?" he asked.

Gin stretched languorously.

"Jus' turned nine."

Izuru tried to picture Gin at nine, black-eyed and scrawny and. . .did he smile even then, even battered and picking warm, half-eaten fruit and stale bread out of a trash can? Was that why he smiled now, because he'd grown so accustomed to his eyes being swollen shut?

The thought made Izuru cringe, made him huddle impossibly closer to Gin at seventeen, now well-fed but still rangy, still a little bit feral around the edges, but bruised only by love bites. For the first time, he felt real gratitude towards Aizen, because Gin was here, now, to hug him back.

"Hey!" said the silver-haired boy, sitting up abruptly as if he'd just remembered something important, causing Izuru to fall back against the pillows. "I'm hungry."

The forgotten blond propped himself up on his elbows and took the opportunity to enjoy the view of Gin's naked back, which, despite their extensive intimacy the night before, he had yet to be in a position to properly admire. Like the rest of him, it was flawlessly smooth -- no moles, no freckles, no blemishes of any kind (well, disregarding the hickeys that spotted his front like the rosettes on a snow leopard's coat). Gin had the sort of skin girls went nuts trying to attain, and he, Izuru, had it all to himself.

"Does Ayasegawa-san have room service?" he asked, not really paying attention to his own words, too busy walking his fingers up the bumps of Gin's spine. He wanted to make the back match the front, wanted to nibble and suck and sink his teeth in. . .

"Hmm, he might, but I dunno if I'd trust what whoever's conscious down there might see fit ta-- gah!" Gin yelped and flinched forward, his precious back bowing out of reach. "That tickles! I don' think we gotta resort ta cannibalism just yet, Izuru-chan."

"Sorry, you just. . .taste really good," Izuru offered lamely, blushing.

"Like glass?"

Snort. "Definitely not like glass."

Grinning, Gin twisted around and pushed his forehead against Izuru's. "Save me for dessert, then, ne?" he suggested, and delivered a playful nip to his kouhai's nose before bounding out of bed.

Leaving the room to forage meant clothes, and Izuru blushed as he dressed -- there could be no explaining away the wrinkles his clothes had incurred during their time spent crumpled up on the floor. Not that it would be difficult for anyone to put two and two together even if his shirt was freshly pressed, but it seemed so. . .obnoxious, to be wearing the previous evening (and morning, he felt obliged to add) quite literally on his sleeve.

--Well, not that literally, thank goodness, because he really wasn't feeling up to washing his clothes in the bathtub. . .

He also learned that putting on clothing could be almost as sexy as taking it off, when all it did was remind you of why it had been removed in the first place.

Gin seemed to agree, if his arms encircling Izuru's bare waist while the blond was midway through tugging on his shirt was any indication. It was like a game, Izuru thought, like The Ground Is Lava, only they had to be touching each other in some way at all times.

Eventually they made it out the door, hand-in-hand, to descend the staircase and survey the damage like reinforcements arrived too late for the battle.

The potted plant Oomaeda Marechiyo had shoved them into the night before had been upset, and was now a limp green archaeology dig of earth and pottery fragments. Paintings hung askew on the walls, and a marble bust had been. . .edited. . .with a Dali mustache drawn on in probably permanent marker. A coffee table in one room had been smashed to smithereens, while on the sofa behind it, a couple slept stacked and snoring one on top of the other. Other furniture, not all of it plush, had been turned into beds that propped up the still-passed-out like bodies on morgue tables awaiting embalmment. They found Rangiku on a loveseat, curled up around a bottle of something-clear-that-was-not-water, and Gin paused to kiss her cheek and cover her with a blanket (curtain?) he swiped from the oblivious form of Ogidou Harunobu. She murmured appreciatively in her sleep and buried her chin further between the tops of her breasts.

"How on Earth," Izuru marveled, shaking his head in dismay, "is Ayasegawa-san going to explain all of this to his parents?"

"Eh," Gin shrugged, "chances are they'll never know. Ayasegawa-kun knows how ta keep his help helpful. Ooh. . ." He sniffed the air, inhaling deeply. "Smells like we're not the only survivors."

They followed his nose to the kitchen, where a motley group of the semi-conscious -- half the Vizored, their host, and Iba -- had assembled. Shuuhei's brother, still shirtless but now sporting a lacy white maid's apron, stood in front of the stove, working his way through frying a tower of sliced bread.

"Vanilla or orange?" he asked them, then cracked another two eggs into a shallow plate, added some orange extract, and whisked both together with a fork.

"Good morning, gentlemen," Yumichika greeted them from the breakfast bar with lazy cheer, a smudged and seedy- but happy-looking remnant of his former self, still dressed in last night's kimono, an already yellowing bruise ornamenting his jaw like a flower. He waved a hand toward the coffee pot resting on the counter. "I trust you enjoyed your evening?"

Gin smiled and pulled up a seat beside him. "We made the most of it."

Izuru crimsoned, and busied himself with the coffee.

"'ood," Yumi nodded around a wide yawn he daintily covered with the back of his hand. "That's good."

"Ohhh, no, nothing is good," came a melodramatic groan from the hall. It was soon followed by the glowering, squinty-eyed face of the Vizored's lead singer peering around the doorframe. "Nothing is good this morning," he feebly declared. Weirdly, his twangy Kansai drawl was even less pronounced than Gin's in plain speech, and Izuru figured his singing style to be hyperbolic showmanship. "Has anyone seen my pants?"

"Hiyori took 'em off you and gave them to Lisa before they went on some girly errand," the afroed bass player replied from behind his sunglasses, exhibiting a total lack of concern for his bandmate's miserable condition, albeit possibly because he was too caught up in his own -- the fop guitarist from the night before was rubbing his back in a soothing rhythm, up-and-down, up-and-down, with one ring-cluttered hand. "L said somethin' about sailor skirts and the snow and not wanting a bloody icicle growing between her legs."

The singer, along with everyone else in the room, cringed.

". . .she can keep 'em."

He meandered into the kitchen in his boxers, socks and shirt, heading directly for the coffee pot. His hair looked like a haystack had met with an electrical socket, and turned the shadows hooking beneath his eyes into reaping sickles.

Izuru self-consciously smoothed down his own blond forelock, then looked at Gin, who had gone strangely pensive again. Izuru nudged him, but was ignored. The feeling from the night before returned twofold, a sick, heavy tension that felt like he'd been hit in the stomach with a baseball.

"Hey, friend," said Gin, addressing the singer, "you're from Osaka, right?"

"Mmf" was the assent, mumbled around the mouth of a mug. "Good ear. Ayep, Shinji from Shinchi -- Tobita Shinchi, that is, where a red light never means 'stop.'" Despite his wretched state, he mustered up an exaggerated wink.

The fop rolled his eyes. "And as you can see," he ajudged, "it's produced no one more incorrigible."

"That's rich, coming from an okama named Rose," Shinji scoffed. "As if you're any stranger to overkill. Why?" The last word was aimed at Gin. "You been there?"

The silver-haired boy leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs. "When I was a kid."

"Uh-huh. That district, or just the city?"

"Oh, yes," Yumi deadpanned. "I'm sure Ichimaru-kun was a great frequenter of brothels as a child."

"Sheesh!" Shinji exclaimed, throwing up his hands in exasperated defense, inadvertently sloshing coffee on the floor as his eyes darted between his host and his guitarist. "What's got you girls so bitchy today? Did you both catch Lisa's rag or what?"

Rose regally regarded the fingernails of his free hand. "I'm telling her you said that."

"Do it an' I'll jizz in your conditioning rinse, I ain't even joking."

From the stove, Shuuhei's brother snorted, muttering, "Yeah, like he's never had come in his hair before."

"Well!" Yumi said briskly, clapping his hands together and eliciting sharp winces from Shinji, the bassist and a hitherto-silent Iba. "Who's hungry? Ikkaku?"

"What?" the bald boy barked, entering the kitchen clothed -- barely -- in a woman's white thigh-length robe, a shiner like an eight ball and--

"What the hell is on your head?" Izuru asked before he could stop himself -- or at least word the question with more civility.

"Houzukimaru," Ikkaku answered, reaching up to scratch the small iguana sunning itself on his smooth skull like a scaly green mohawk on the underside of its chin. "Ain't he cute?"

"Ugh," scoffed Yumi. "It's bad enough that its hutch stinks up your room; if that. . .thing shits in this kitchen I will--"

"Relax, Yumichika, he just went."

"Good." And then, "--Wait. Where?"

But Ikkaku was leaning out the doorway and pretending not to hear him.

"Oi, Hisagi! Come get some nosh!"

Yumichika's face lit up like a Christmas tree. Izuru could practically see the exclamation of "Shuu-chan!" building behind his lips.

"Hey, guys," Shuuhei mumbled. He hovered in the threshold for a moment, looking nervous. "Uh, Ayasegawa? Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Yumi positively glowed. "But of course, Hisagi-san."

Hisagi-san. . .?

They headed out into the hall. Those in the kitchen allowed for approximately three seconds' worth of exchanged glances before they rushed the doorframe and clustered against it like a double set of four-headed totem poles.

". . .woke up in your room," Shuuhei was saying in a low voice. "And, the thing is, I don't really remember much of. . .well, anything past two a.m. And I woke up with my clothes on, which was a relief, but I. . .I just wanna make sure. . .nothing happened, right?"

There was a moment of silence, and then Yumi's stunned, hurt little voice, "I can't believe you don't remember."

Izuru thought he could actually hear Shuuhei's face blanch.

"So. . .so something did happen?"

More silence.

"Jesus," Shuuhei breathed. ". . .okay, look. I was drunk. I was -- I was fucking hammered, and you should know that I would never. . .I mean, just because I let you kiss me--" Four hidden faces lit up with varying levels of surprise, three with barely-stifled amusement, and one with horror. "--that doesn't mean I'm. . .look, I'm not gay, okay?"

"No? You seemed to be having a perfectly good time last night."

"That. . .whatever it was, it wasn't me."

"No, I assure you, it was. I have witnesses."

"Witnesses?" The word sounded hollow, doubtless because it came from a gaping mouth. "Who. . .?"

"Oh, everyone."

"Every. . ."

"Yes, they all saw you. You were very. . .hmm, how best to put it? Very manly. They were all very impressed."

"Oh fuck."

"Fuck? No. . .no, I don't recall any of that happening, more's the pity. But, as you said, you were quite drunk."

"But. . ." Metaphorical gears clunked against one another in Shuuhei's sleep-sandy head, badly in need of oil. Or at least caffeine. "But you said. . ."

"Yes? Tell me, Hisagi-san, what did I say?"

There was, faintly, a ding of arrival as the assembly line between Shuuhei's parietal and temporal lobes completed its cerebral circuit.

"The witnesses were to the fight," he said slowly. "And when I said I wasn't gay, you meant. . ."

"Bright and pleasant. Promoting a feeling of cheer. Full of or showing high-spirited merriment. Yes, Hisagi-san: gay."

"You. . .you asshole!" This was spoken at full volume, and had the unfortunate effect of shattering both the quiet and the composure of the eavesdroppers beyond the door. They toppled like bowling pins into the hall, rolling with laughter at Shuuhei's aghast face. Yumichika, by contrast, did not look the least bit surprised.

"Yo, little bro," chortled Kensei, "you got somethin' you wanna tell me?"

"Yeah, I do," Shuuhei snapped. "You're all fucking assholes!"

Ikkaku raised a pointed finger. "Actually, from the sound of things, you are."

"Oh bite me, all of you! --Ow! What the--"

"Mashiro!" Kensei's mirth morphed at breakneck speed into a snarl directed at the green-haired groupie who had wandered up and attached her mouth to Shuuhei's tricep. She was also-- "Put a fucking top on!"

"Why?" she asked, bouncing blithely into the kitchen. "You're in drag, too."

"It's an apron, Mashiro, not a dress!"

She shrugged, popping a piece of vanilla toast in her mouth. "Looks like a jumperskirt to me."

"Fine, then, we'll switch." He tore off the apron and advanced upon her. She shook her head and skipped, to the delight of their audience, out of his reach.

"No good. If all your friends get to see your boobs, there's no reason for me to keep the sight of mine just for you."

"I do not have boobs!"

"Oh please! Those things are almost bigger than mine!"

"Mashiro!"

She grabbed at a second stack of toast, stuck out her tongue and raced from the room, pursued by her enraged, lacy, and presumably significant other.

Rose looked at Shuuhei.

"You know, if you did turn out to be gay, I don't believe any of us would blame you."

Shuuhei's palm met his forehead with a resonant slap. He looked accusingly around the room.

"How is it that I sometimes feel so vastly outnumbered by what's supposed to be ten percent of any given population?"

"Birds of a feather. . .?" Ikkaku suggested.

"Uh, you do remember you're his best friend, right?" Shuuhei jerked a thumb at Yumi, who looked proud of himself.

"No way," grunted Iba, lighting a second cigarette from the still-smoldering butt of his first one. He had the air of a person clinging desperately to the crow's nest of a sinking ship. "Madarame just hangs around like a rhino waiting to get picked clean by oxpeckers."

"But does that make their relationship symbiotic," Shinji queried, "or parasitic?"

Izuru frowned. "Isn't being mutually parasitic the same thing as symbiosis?"

He was waved off. "Whatever, Academy-san. Quit tryin' to me look bad."

"As if it's a challenge," Izuru grumbled under his breath.

Gin tilted his head to look at him, intrigued.

"What?" Izuru asked.

"Nothin', nothin'. . ."

Izuru shifted his weight and folded his arms across his chest, decided that looked petulant, and lowered them again. The subject, he thought, was again in urgent need of a change.

"Speaking of percentages," he tried, "has anyone seen Abarai-kun?"

"Eh?" said Ikkaku. "What does Abarai have ta do with--"

"No, Kira-kun is right." Yumichika's skill at sliding, Izuru reflected, would likely put him in the running for the title of best base-stealer in history, were he ever to try his hand at sports. "In fact, come to think of it, I haven't seen Abarai-kun since well before midnight. Or Rukia-chan, for that matter."

Ikkaku shrugged. "So they prob'ly bailed and went back to her place."

"Perhaps," Yumi agreed, but sounded unconvinced -- people didn't leave his parties; they were evicted from them.

"If they did," Iba pointed out, "Sousuke'll shit a brick if he finds out, not to mention this'll probably be the last you see any of us before graduation."

Ikkaku knocked a hand against Yumi's arm. "Where's your phone?"

"No one's calling anybody," the androgyne asserted. "I'll drop you all off at Pure Souls and you can tell Aizen-san I did the same for Abarai-kun and Rukia-chan at her apartment. Then when he turns up we can all take turns with a shinai while his thoughtless skull serves as a piñata. All those in favor?"

A chorus of "hais" filled the kitchen.

"All opposed?"

Renji sneezed.

Twice.

Uh-oh. . .

He'd opened his eyes to sunlight -- the nasty, near-noon kind, far too bright for comfort. The kind of sunlight that brought with it a level of color saturation that didn't allow for any shadows in which one might secrete away the previous night's activities. The kind that showed every embarrassing, corner-bound cobweb and dust mote of mockery that hung around in the air like rubber-necking spectators to one's own humiliation.

He'd opened his eyes, sneezed, groaned, and wondered where he was.

Then he'd remembered.

Then he'd remembered more and groaned again, burying his head in the pillows.

He was there now, wishing he could die, and decided to make the attempt after he peed.

Upon failing to find an electrical cord long enough for a noose, he brushed his teeth -- and tongue -- with the little travel-sized toothbrush and paste laid out hotel-style on a decorative towel on the bathroom counter, and figured he would try his luck with the knives in the kitchen downstairs.

Then he started dreaming.

It was, he realized, kind of an ass-backwards way to go about it, but he could think of no other possible explanation, unless his beer last night had been laced with time-release hallucinogens that were only now beginning to blossom into full effect.

But he blinked -- hard -- and rubbed his eyes, and pinched his wrist, and still Byakuya stood in front of the stove in the Kuchiki kitchen, frying pan handle in one hand, spatula in the other, lifting up the edge of a milky yellow omelet to check its progress.

He was dressed again in jeans (!) and heathered cashmere, but more than his clothing it was his feet that captured Renji's attention.

They were bare.

Renji had never been much of a foot-man. Of course, he had never been much of a man-man, either, but his singular fixation with his history professor aside, he'd always thought himself to be fetish-free and quite comfortably conventional: tits, ass, and Byakuya -- but apparently all of Byakuya.

Renji had never before seen a pair of feet so perfectly sculpted, feet that had never so much as tried on a pair of ill-fitting, cheap or second-hand shoes. Hairless, slender, long-toed feet that had practically been designed to stray beneath tables, to follow the lines of someone else's leg up, up, to turn sharply at a knee and push forward with just the right amount of teasing, dexterously curling pressure against--

"Good morning."

"Socks!" Renji yelped in surprise. "I mean, uh," he recovered at the older man's frown, "my socks, and my. . .other clothes--"

"Held all the aromatic appeal of an ashtray. They're in the dryer."

"Oh," said Renji. He nodded. "--Good morning."

With an expert snap of his wrist, Kuchiki-sensei flipped the omelet in the pan sans spatula. Renji's eyebrows raised, impressed.

"You cook?" he asked.

Byakuya gave a noncommittal, one-shouldered shrug. "Apparently."

The redhead rolled his eyes. Ass.

He padded further into the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee in an empty mug set out next to the French press. Kuchiki-sensei eyed him strangely when he dumped a handful of sugar cubes into the mix, but said nothing.

The silence between them was terribly awkward until Byakuya finished with one omelet and began to whip up the eggs for a second one. Imbued with the first-come, first-served habits of an orphanage upbringing, Renji lifted the plate and, when he wasn't immediately reprimanded for the action, brought it up to his nose and inhaled deeply the rich, buttery scent of yellow egg there nestled.

A fork rested nearby. He took both over to the long granite bar that stretched the length of the kitchen and hopped atop one of the half-dozen tall, black leather chairs that lined its outer edge, then cut into the omelet with gusto, took a generous bite, chewed and--

"!!"

--froze.

Unfortunately only figuratively.

"That one's mine," Byakuya said mildly as Renji sprang from stool to sink in a single bound, twisted on the cold tap and stuck his tongue under the running water.

"Hay that hooner!" he barked, rubbing with his fingers in an attempt to scour the five-alarm spice off his tongue.

Byakuya turned off the stove and slid the other omelet neatly onto a plate with another fork, then turned off the tap and handed this second breakfast to Renji, who eyed it suspiciously as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"No peppers in this one, right?"

"None," Byakuya confirmed. "Not being familiar with your tastes, I thought cheese would be adequate."

Renji nodded, and tried not to think about the "something variegated" he had seen in the fridge the night before.

"Cheese is good. I. . .like cheese." He took the plate, and Kuchiki-sensei took Renji's empty chair.

And then Kuchiki-sensei began to eat.

With Renji's fork.

If it were someone like, say, Ikkaku, who had as many qualms about sticking his fingers in other people's food as Renji did (that is to say, none whatsoever), or even someone like Sousuke, who, as the only adult in a house full of teenagers swapping anything and everything back and forth, had grown accustomed to not being terribly picky about what went where and with whom unless someone was sick, Renji could have shrugged it off.

But he'd always figured Kuchiki-sensei to be more like Yumichika -- also known as "swipe one piece of sushi from the center of the table with the wrong end of your chopsticks and suffer the whole meal in the trash and my bellyaching for hours until propriety is restored and your forehead is flattened from begging forgiveness on the floor" -- and so he couldn't quite fathom that the older man had simply failed to notice the indirect kiss, like two people drinking from the same side of a single cup. But if Byakuya had noticed, then what the hell did that mean? That Renji had simply misjudged his adherence to etiquette (unlikely), or. . .

"You are supposed to eat that omelet, Renji, in case my meaning was unclear."

Actually, Renji thought as he mechanically seated himself one chair away from his teacher, it couldn't be any foggier.

And then something happened. Something in his brain rolled over to have its belly scratched.

A more philosophical mind might have called it "the achievement of zen." Renji called it an eerie yet remarkably calm sense of "fuck it."

Things like this didn't happen to people like him. He wasn't lucky like Ikkaku, or have money enough that he didn't need luck, like Yumi. He wasn't even stupid enough, like Kira, to mentally warp the unluckiest of things into feeling like the opposite. He was just Renji. He plowed through life horns first and got all the headaches that could possibly result from that approach. He was a little hungover even now.

But here he was, playing out a scene he had pictured at least a thousand times in his head -- not quite his ideal version of it, true, but that it was happening in any context at all seemed to bear witness to the fact that, although he couldn't always see where he was going, nowhere wasn't it. Fate had already done its worst: Kuchiki-sensei had seen him last night as Renji had never intended to be seen, dependent and disgraced, and had still taken him home. There, he'd been caught trespassing a second time, and still Kuchiki-sensei had made him breakfast the morning after.

A negative plus a negative didn't equal a positive, but two multiplied negatives did; and besides, it wasn't as though he could further damage his odds.

So fuck it. He would bark at the moon; if Kuchiki-sensei was an Ozzy fan (and at this point, Renji wouldn't have been fazed to discover he was), he might even listen in awe.

"Rukia called me not long after she got here." The words were difficult to form at first, but they got rolling quickly, like a snowball. "The way she described this place, she made it sound like a palace."

Byakuya lifted an eyebrow. "My humblest apologies for disappointing you," he dryly averred.

"No," Renji said quickly, shaking his head. "That's not it at all. This place great. Better than I pictured, even. I mean, she had me imagining some vast Taj Mahal with, with a marble garage and gold leaf toilet paper."

"The Taj Mahal isn't a palace," the history professor pointed out. "It's a mausoleum."

"Is it? Imagine that. . .anyway, my point is, this place is a lot. . .cozier, I guess, than she made it out to be. It actually feels like a home. A really fuckin' nice-- sorry. A really nice home. Classy, but comfortable."

Byakuya was silent for a moment as he sipped his coffee. Then, quietly, almost as if the words were an experiment, ". . .Rukia never thought of this place as her home. That was my doing, I'm afraid. Hisana and I had only been married ten months when she located and adopted Rukia. I was. . .still selfish with her. I wasn't yet prepared to share her with a child of our own, let alone a twelve-year-old stranger. And after she. . ." Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head. "To see her face daily reflected in that of her younger sister's. . ."

Holy shit, Renji marveled. Holy shit it was working!

He scrambled to fill in his teacher's dot-dot-dot, to force the conversation further, "It pissed you off."

"It. . ." But Byakuya seemed to catch himself, and receded like a tide. "It is none of your concern."

"Of course it's my concern. I love Rukia."

"Do you?"

"Well yeah. She's my sister, too, y'know. Maybe not on paper, but in all the ways that really count."

"Then she is more so yours than mine."

"Maybe." Renji shrugged. "Maybe not."

And if Kuchiki-sensei wanted to know the meaning behind that one, he was going to have to ask.

Renji inwardly rubbed his hands together, congratulating himself on his finesse.

He stopped sometime around the thirty-second mark of Byakuya's unadventurous silence.

Well, if he had learned nothing else by now, it was that the man was harder to get than an on-camera interview with a yeti.

He would try again.

"Sensei. . .why aren't you riding my ass?"

Chapter XVI-II