Title: Never Speak of this Again (Part 2)
Pairing: Abarai Renji x Ishida Uryuu
Rating: M
Spoiler: Best if you've seen the anime through #79.
Notes: Mostly just angsty and snuggly. Nudity and sex are mentioned, but never more than in passing.
Disclaimer:Bleach is the property of Kubo Tite. I just borrow his characters and play with them.
Author's Note: I appear to have lied about this being complete. It's now gnawing my ass off again, so you get another chapter, and as soon as I can write it, a third chapter as well.
Funny how these oneshots so rarely end as they began.
Renji woke the next morning to find the Quincy wrapped around his body, one leg still between his own, the other leg up with the knee hooked over his hip. He wondered how long he'd slept through the rather uncomfortable pressure on his groin where Ishida's sharp hip rested. Irrelevant! some part of him insisted. After all, his arms were still resting on the back of the fantastic dream he was sure he'd wake up without.
The birdlike boy mumbled something incoherent and flinched in his sleep. His thin fingers dug into Renji's chest beside the lips that still moved in some silent protestation.
He twitched at the sudden pain, but felt a deeper one. Ishida had finally allowed himself to begin to feel a love that was not based in simple respect, like that he semed to hold for his friends, but in admiration. And then the woman had died — been destroyed, really, consumed and reformed in some bizarre cannibalistic ritual while the boy watched. The Quincy was ill, to say the least. Heartsick and broken, with nothing left to hold on to. Renji couldn't see a way that this wouldn't end poorly.
Ishida woke with a stifled squeak of despair as the dream fell away and he found himself clutching Renji's tattooed chest. He looked up in absolute confusion as he tried to remember what had happened and what was just a dream. He ran his fingertips over the dents they'd left as if trying to smooth them away, then squeezed his eyes shut, apparently against the one tear that dripped, unseen, onto the black line below.
Crying? Oh, crap. Um… what do I… He'd never dealt well with this sort of thing, and it was the first time he'd had to handle it without any pants on. He tried to remember what Rukia had told him, long ago, about what crying girls expected. He'd been slapped, that day, and Nanao never spoke to him civilly, afterward. The advice wouldn't be right, but at least it would be something. It would also be the first time he'd have put it to use. Gently, he tightened his grip on the boy slightly, moving one hand up to a shoulder and the other down to a hip.
"Hey, you're going to be alright," he lied, comfortingly, hoping the words sounded less false to Ishida than they did to him. He tilted his head up, a real effort, he noticed, when one is laying on one's own hair, and pressed his lips against the crown of the Quincy's head.
Ishida shivered and bit his lip before falling into nearly silent tears. His hands splayed against Renji's chest, seeking contact with the radiant warmth. There was no sound but the faint hitching of his breath as every muscle in his body tensed as if to keep his heart in his chest, where it belonged. He made a faint mewling sound in the back of his closed throat as Renji gently stroked his back.
He knew this needed to happen. This was probably the first time Ishida had really felt the loss, instead of rationalising it away. Unfortunately, when the boy tensed up, his hip had been driven even more uncomfortably into Renji's nether regions. It was now time to try something that, whether it ended in death or success, would alleviate that crippling pain.
"Ishida-kun, look at me." He removed one hand from the boy's shoulder and used it to tilt his chin up. "Show me those brilliant blue eyes so I know that you're listening to me."
"Flattery," the Quincy hissed, as his eyes shot open in surprise and his cheeks tinted. "Don't… I'm not… It isn't…"
He was struck again by the boy's exotic features. Blue eyes were not a common complement to black hair, and the way Ishida's skin glowed in the first hints of light leaking into the room made him seem to be made of thickly glazed porcelain. His breath left him in a rush as he tried to regather his thoughts.
"It's not flattery. You… I've just completely forgotten what I meant to say to you." He looked somewhat petulant. "You look like…" a starry night. the first dawn of summer. the western sky as night settles. a dream come true. "Why aren't more girls…" because, you idiot, you're the first one to ever witness this. they've never seen him waking to a broken heart at the break of day.
you should be ashamed of yourself. pain should not be this beautiful.
…but, it is.
Ishida watched as Renji's brain ground to a stumbling halt. The Shinigami's eyes burned as he wrestled with internal inconsistencies that he'd never noticed before, first among them that despite the swelling protestation of his recently damaged naughty bits, he'd never before been interested in anything that wasn't female. The Quincy blushed even more brightly as he noticed the beginning of those spirited protestations against his belly, and reached down, intending to do something dramatic and mood destroying.
Instead, as Ishida's fingers brushed across the hot flesh, Renji made a soft sound between terror and ecstasy, a wordless plea not to be hurt for something he couldn't control, even if he wasn't certain he wanted to control it. The Quincy stopped and studied the scene before him. Here was a Shinigami, a vice captain nearly ten times his age, defenseless and afraid of the touch of just the tips of his fingers. His body responded swiftly to the power he had gained. This, then, was what it meant to be able to take what you wanted and know that you would get it without question.
But did he want it?
Ishida was rather disgusted at the idea of sex. Nevermind sex with a man. Nevermind sex with a male Shinigami.
