1Summary: Here are the days that strike slowly. (The inner wounds are taken most to heart. Renji gathers pieces of himself that he may have not known were there.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.
Pairings: Renji/Ichigo
- - - -
I was the very reverend Freud.
You were the manual orgasm,
I was the dirty little boy.
And is this what you wanted
to live in a house that is haunted
by the ghost of you and me?-'Is This What You Wanted?', Leonard Cohen
- - - -
.heart attack
The pressure on his chest is disconcerting, a little choke that runs from the top of his belly button to the back of his throat, and he rubs at it uncomfortably as he looks at Ichigo across from him. They are both seated, and this way they are both about the same height.
Ichigo glances back at him for a moment, uncomfortable, before developing a sudden interest in his fingernails, each a light shade of bruise-purple– the room is cold, and if Renji were to look down at his own hands, they would probably be in a similar state. He takes a moment to think something like 'How fucking cold do the Kurosaki's like it in their house?', but when Ichigo opens his mouth all of his mind goes into a pleasant, fuzzing blankness, like a video tape in a VCR the moment before the screen goes black. "It's not..."
"Not what? You never gonna take responsibility?" Renji continues rubbing absently at his throat, as he speaks in a voice loud enough to possibly disturb the rest of the house. He pauses, for an instant, and swallows back a louder tone before he goes on. "Whether or not you like it, whether or not you feel up to it, you're the damn deal breaker, Ichigo." (His voice is slightly mocking, like a name could be an insult– and there is a distinct possibility that it is because he can come up with no better one.)
"This isn't like with Rukia, you know?" Renji goes on, oblivious to Ichigo's eyes on the hand that goes on massaging his neck. "There are people who care about Orihime, but..."
"I know." Ichigo interrupts, and Renji looks up at him for a brief second in surprise to see that his hands are shaking, fists clenched into knots over the black of his shinigami uniform. It's probably about time to replace him back in his body– Kon is still in the flesh, at the moment, pretending to be a normal son-brother-teenager, eating whatever meal Yuzu had cooked for the family that night. It smells good. "I...know."
Ichigo gives a shaky grin, "Maybe it's my responsibility, but Hell if I let you stay here without earning your keep." It is Ichigo's odd way of saying 'Come with me?' Renji nods.
"I know." He smirks back at other boy, and the quiet is penetrating in the room for a minute.
"So, uhh...Do you need a cough drop or something?"
- - - -
.ease
The choke in the back of his throat has receded, replaced by a lump that makes it hard to swallow, and he is always self-conscious of drooling, for he hardly dares to swallow much anymore. It is what asthmatics must feel like, or the people on the verge of tears (or perhaps something else?– you are certain it would be too much to consider if it was more than simplicity that kept your breath caught somewhere between your rib cage and your tonsils, and that it why you are content with your absent-minded sentimentality, because it hardly ever passes beyond that)– Renji considers for a moment if it is what the captain of the thirteenth squad feels before a flare-up of his illness, but quickly waves away the thought.
It is unhealthy to think so much, at least for he, who depends on his small comforts within his acceptability– the slick ease with which Renji can separate details and even the larger difficulties into categories of black and white, and who is who and what is what seems so easy to tell to him (if maybe not to everyone else).
Byakuya is black for his impurities, his unease, and Kira is white for his awkwardness which does not slip up into suspicion, and Ukitake is black even if only for the thing which plagues him, because even if it is not his fault, it is still his to deal with. Whether or not he would change categories without the disease is inconsequential.
Rukia remains a rather yellowed white, like the aged pages of books or scrolls, and Ichigo– Ichigo...
"Oi, what do you think you're still doing in here?" Ichigo pokes his head into the room, slightly aggravated but mostly curious, like an irritated 'Is there something wrong or something?', even if it is unspoken. "You were supposed to be down five minutes ago."
Renji snorts. "I'm coming, I'm coming."
And if their shoulders meet briefly for a moment as they exit out the door, it is not significant.
- - - -
.timing
Much of Renji's life revolves around timing. When he gets the papers to Captain Kuchiki in or what hour of their afternoons that Renji will go drinking with the few friends he has, has managed to hold onto (you used to have many, and people were transfixed on your blatant meanings and brightness, your wry grins that split your face into three separate segments you still can't solve). Even his moods have a schedule– the false irritability that comes with morning and the slight negativity and cynicism once the clock hands in his office wind down to four and he is eager to escape the boundaries of the whitewashed walls, the unbroken stem of carpeting underneath his feet.
Here, his time is all wrong.
Renji finds the frown plastered to his face more often than not, no matter how hard he will tug at it in frustration– he is certain Byakuya has the sour, moody face that he does because it was stuck that way, just like the fables say, and he is utterly determined to not follow his captain's path.
With the awkward, sort of malaise sense that comes with being off schedule for the first time in however-many-years, Renji's clumsiness is brought to light from where it had hidden within himself, quiet and waiting. As a child he had constantly had bumps and bruises on shins, knees, palms and elbows– but it had left him once he had begun training as a shinigami, almost pointedly.
Since being in the Kurosaki's house, he has broken two glasses and tripped over the little pink umbrella Yuzu has left by the doorstep numerous times.
It is unsettling how many occurances have brought him clutching Ichigo's shoulder to steady himself, how many times he has awkwardly tugged back down his sleeves to fall over his wrists or insides or elbows, pulled down the hem of his pant legs to cover up bruises before Ichigo could ask.
The accidents are slightly shameful, but he finds himself able to grin past it endearingly, looking righteously embarrassed but not suspiciously avoiding (as if, as if with a purpose).
- - - -
.leash
There is a certain tightness of skin and stretch of particles (humanism– and is it so wrong to admit that you are not used to living, so you simply do not want to?) that makes the body given to him uncomfortable, makes Renji prefer being out of it.
Ichigo keeps him on an invisible, hypothetical leash short enough to perhaps only be able to wind around his wrist once, twice– it is terribly, frighteningly easy to lose a man who is invisible, who, to most people, does not exist, and Ichigo seems almost obsessively aware of the fact. Renji teases him for it, how fretful he seems over the prospect of being lost (or moreover, running away– that would be the type of Ichigo-Fear, at least for now, because it would be a perfect mockery of the way Orihime handed herself over– you would not do that to him, and in the realization you lighten your teasing of it, if only a little), but Ichigo waves it off with a snort or a shove or a rude word back.
He feels like a dog, and Ichigo his master, walking side by side (so short no passing car will see you, so see-through no one would be able to tell you were there), one dragged by the other perhaps not by a line of rough fabric, but by obligation.
(Or perhaps it is the small, minuscule tug of concern in the pit of your stomach, like 'poor guy', or 'if I could help him more than this, I would throw myself into it'– which one it is is of no true concern to Renji, because it all means the same thing in the end.)
"You're so paranoid." Renji groans out, and watches Ichigo's face twist and harden next to him, as they take another handful of steps forward on a walk and Ichigo makes noticeably sure to keep his stride as long or short as Renji makes his own.
When Ichigo's movements break a moment later, and he takes three lengthy steps in front of Renji, as if to make a statement, Renji says a variety of things to himself in a low, grumbling tone before he murmurs "Sorry.", even if Ichigo will not hear it.
Hypothetically, Ichigo's back is not a nice thing to look at (it makes you feel abandoned, because you are accustomed to his concern, his obsessive, compulsive concern just as much as you are accustomed to death, and you do not tell him this, but it leaves an ache in your chest as he takes another two long strides down the road).
(Could you lie to yourself about it, you would.)
- - - -
.sugar cane
The Kurosaki family, in general, has a lot of sweets. There are the occasional batches of pastries that Yuzu will bake (one of which will always disappear mysteriously as her back is turned, a thing for which has almost become routine, which has seemed less and less alarming and more and more amusing to the household, and Yuzu has began to keep her back turned for more time than is needed to dig out the mixing spoon or retrieve another baking sheet), the highly sugary sweets that Isshin will often bring home after his working days in brown paper bags, and most of all the candies in their colorful wrappers held throughout the house.
Renji sucks on what seems to be an orange flavored candy in his mouth, twisting the golden wrapper in his hands consideringly. "Oi, Ichigo– if it's orange flavoring, why isn't it in an orange wrapper?"
Ichigo looked at him strangely for a moment and Renji waved the little crinkly wrapper from where he was seated on the ground, before leaning his back against the bed behind him. "I don't know. Why would you ask moronic things like that?"
Renji mumbled out something like 'just wondering' before sighing and idly clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He wondered when Yuzu would bake things again, and through the open door Renji could hear down the near-by staircase, the loud, in-tune humming as Yuzu presumably cooked or cleaned or fussed over one of the other members of the family.
Wryly, he wonders what it would be like– someone so concerned with his well being, to the point of almost being compulsive. It must be nice, he thinks, and eyes Ichigo from across the room where the other boy is studying seemingly intently on a math book.
Renji suspects it is possibly turned upside down, by the way Ichigo is squinting at it and the distracted tapping of the fingers on his left hand against the wooden desk surface.
Renji pops a lemon flavored candy into his mouth. This one's wrapper is pink.
Puzzling.
While he is busy wondering if whether perhaps there is simply just a very quirky man who runs the candy design company, Ichigo interrupts his thoughts by abruptly shoving his chair back against the floor where it runs, momentarily, the risk of toppling over. "I bet you're wondering," he says, chest heaving– out of nervousness? Anxiety? Extreme discomfort? It is for the first time in days that Renji notices how close they are, in truth– the room is small and there really isn't any one way to position one's self to be far enough apart for a comfortable fort of personal bubble-space in it. "When we're going to save her. Orihime."
Renji is about to respond with an honest 'Not really.', but decides against it, and closes his mouth with a small snap.
"I just...I don't...I don't know what to do. I don't have a plan yet, or a way, or..." Ichigo's hard stare fades out as he closes his eyes and the tremble in his fists clenched by his sides increases until it completely stops.
Ichigo looks as if his knees are about to give out, possibly, and so Renji says, "It's alright. Here, catch." and flicks a candy over where it sails to hit Ichigo's chest. Ichigo's eyes flicker open and he bends down to pick it up off where it landed on the floor, and when he sees it his frown dully deepens.
It is strawberry, with an orange wrapper.
Renji snickers.
- - - -
.peace of mind
The days pass hesitantly, painfully, with jagged edges like a knife brought slowly over skin. The flesh that rips and tears underneath his hands is easy to produce more of– unnecessary things, like the longing way his smile drips off his face or the tentative touch he will perform on Ichigo's shoulder when the boy sleeps easy and he does not.
The latter occurs quite often, and the touches along with it.
It is difficult to not puzzle about the strong curve of Ichigo's jaw, the twisting tendrils of his light hair, and what it would be like to run his fingers through it (like sand, or perhaps the sea– this is easy to assume).
"You're not sleeping." Ichigo looks awkward, uncomfortable– hesitant, as though Renji's well-ness is not something he would willingly discuss, but Renji doesn't mind and is content watching him with expressions slightly hardened. "Much, I mean." he adds.
"Times s'different. Jet lag, I guess you could call it." Renji rubs the back of his neck out of nerves, because he is not used to lying through his teeth. Watching Ichigo nod, he thinks absently that he must be good at it anyway.
"Yeah, I guess so..." Ichigo frowns and plays half-heartedly with the tassles on one of the spare quilts he has on his bed. Normally it is draped over Renji's shoulders. "But, doesn't jet lag make a person sleep more, not less?"
"I don't know." Renji says, laughing. It feels choking, the edge of something else that is twice as silent and bitter as he is now. He feels old, watching the corner of Ichigo's lips tilt upwards in more of a smirk than a smile, and would momentarily like to go home.
He cannot sleep here.
- - - -
.leaving and entering
Renji begins to take a liking towards afternoon naps, long ones that can last hours or minutes or moments, and the rest is light but amounts to enough to keep his eyes open for the rest of the time. He wonders what Ichigo thinks when the other boy has to step over his sleeping body laid out on the futon on his bedroom floor, but he doesn't ponder it for long, because it is too mind-boggling, too ridiculous.
Ichigo does not dislike him, but Renji understands that Ichigo does not care for him half as much as he would care for anyone else. Had they met differently, at a different time, when the edges of both their worlds were not crumbling and the ground had been a little more solid beneath their feet, perhaps then they would've been more (and are you really concerned, anyway?– you have heard of a man, so preoccupied with other's loving him, that he had yet to realize he had never loved them at all, and maybe that is you, just hid well underneath your rough mannerisms and penchant for light-heartedness).
He closes his eyes tightly and tugs the edges of the blanket a bit more over his body before he can ask himself what he means by 'more'. The quilting smells like Ichigo.
(The very house is coated in his smell, of course, and you've been nauseous for days and days with it, however it is overwhelming you, whatever way it is happening. Yesterday you had retched into the Kurosaki's bathroom toilet and felt no better for it, and your stomach twists and curls in on itself now, even though it is not because of a problem you can fix.)
"What? Oh, you're going to nap again?" Ichigo is leaning on the side of the doorway, arm propped on the wood to keep himself up at the angle. "I'll just go do my homework downstairs."
As he is preparing to leave, Renji lazily waves him back in, closing his eyes again to the sudden feeling of drowning. He can feel that choke in his throat again, thick and unescapable, and he reminds himself to ask Ichigo for another one of those cough drops once he wakes. He will probably not remember.
He never remembers his dreams, if he has them any longer, and nor does he remember his thoughts or conversations in the minutes before he drifts off. He is in a combined mixture of being annoyed by it and being grateful, because there are some thoughts that he does not want to remember even if they will come of their own accord later on again.
"It's not like I talk when I'm sleeping, idiot. Don't go downstairs to work and disturb Yuzu– I think she's baking today." Ichigo gives a crooked smile at his response and plops down in the chair he has by his desk. Renji can feel his eyes on him for many moments afterwards, and it gives a creeping sensation that is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. If it is what attention feels like, then he would prefer not to have it.
Renji thinks before he is completely un-awake that he can hear Ichigo murmur something, something like "You do. You say a lot of things."
Renji's follows it with a simple request to himself, silent and ashamed.
Forget it. Forget it. Forget it.
- - - -
.idioteque
Renji realizes a day later with slight surprise that Ichigo would allow himself to be killed for Orihime. It is a simple thought, one that has probably bubbled up before– and he would've done the same thing for Rukia, or for Ishida, or for Chad or his sisters, so it doesn't really matter.
It is acceptable, if not slightly flattering, to most people by now.
But Renji realizes that Ichigo would be more likely to die for Orihime than he ever was for anyone else– perhaps not for any preference, but because he has changed, in the ways that all that time ago, he did everything grudgingly, stubbornly.
If he sacrificed himself now, he would do it in an instant– regretful but accepting, as if he had given up the idea of living long far before he had even lived shortly, and it depresses Renji, more than he can say, or would like to say (you are certain that heroes are supposed to be brave and wonderful and determined, who would fight until they were bruised and bloodied but would always live, and always rescue those who needed to be saved and then pretend it was effortless afterward– and Ichigo was that once, a short, boyish period that you remember so vividly– and is it a wonder that you do not want to remember this new situation now?).
Renji has to slip back into his assigned body regularly, for a few short stretches of time, so that it is able to function properly again if he does come to needing it once more. In those times, with the skin tight and stretched painfully over himself, the prospect of death is suddenly frightening, agonizing.
Momentarily, he realizes this concern is not for himself.
- - - -
.clouded-hazy
Most people, Renji thinks, do not have any particular color. It is more and more often that they don't even have a color of preference, much less one that suits him– and if he were a poetic man, he would describe Ichigo as something close to the shades of sunsets.
Instead, he says, "We're running out of time, Ichigo. It's–"
Ichigo cuts him off as he tugs a shirt down over his head, and Renji watches the skin disappear underneath the fabric for a moment before he blinks away the image. It is distracting. "It's my responsibility, I know! I just...I just need a little more time."
Renji understands perfectly well that Ichigo is disgusted and ashamed of himself more than he can pressure him into being– that this lack of action is not from lack of motivation, but from lack of understanding. There are certainly loop holes, but they are unclear, and neither of them has the heart to say it.
Ishida has disappeared into his father and Chad has disappeared into a sort of thinly veiled solitude that is absent of any type of impression, as Chad is so skilled at doing, and Tatsuki has disappeared into her anger and her loneliness, and Chizuru has disappeared into her worry but gotten no more disheveled for it. Isshin eyes his son with a sort of calm pity-understanding, and if Ichigo sees it, he does not mention it back.
Renji feels rather naked, standing solitary in the middle of a sixteen year old boy's room, clothed and blanketed and determined, but he cannot figure out how to make the feeling go away. The lump in his throat rises again, teasing (you feel nauseous, and if you threw up all of your body's organs onto Ichigo's floor, you would be no more empty for it than you were before).
Renji knows all this, but he still doesn't stop himself from saying it:
"But how much time do you have?"
Ichigo shakes his head, lost in thought again.
- - - -
.frail
It is easy to assume the place of authority when Ichigo crumbles. It feels unnatural, but slick and lubricated, as if planned before he ever questioned it.
Renji wants to give a cheeky smirk and ask something like 'Are you going to make me wipe your mouth for you next?', but Ichigo is already smearing the perspiration from his upper lip onto the loose sleeve around his wrist, and Renji feels he doesn't have the heart.
The days are spent quietly, for the most part, except for the occasional conversation that Renji feels obligated to start, just as he feels obligated to take care of Ichigo in some form. He forgets how young Ichigo is– that the boy-man-teenager sitting in front of him is only sixteen and Renji has seen so many more lives and deaths than he probably ever will.
It is not something he is proud of, but he is able to hold his chin up until it points towards the sun (and when you stop by your captain's house, the gardens planted outside hold many flowers, all of which tilt towards the direction of the sunlight– never fooled by mediocrity, and if you were to place a fake lamplight next to them they would shy away with a sort of arrogance that should not be seen by things that do not even have the lungs to breathe; in your spare time, you wonder, lungs and all, if you should be able to also tell the difference in truth and lies, because there are times when you still get breathless).
(Your breathlessness is no truth, but you blink heavily against the yellow light of the ceiling fan and smile as your lungs constrict and your heart stops. In a hypothetical sense, you do not even need a heart to keep on living, and you see it so painfully much in the men around you.
Ichigo, too, is one of those men.)
- - - -
.in direction
"I'm going," Ichigo says, "tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?"
"Urahara has a way to get where Orihime is. To Hueco Mundo."
"And you're prepared?"
Ichigo laughs, and asks another question. Renji assumes it is the answer. "You coming with?"
For a small moment, there is doubt in Ichigo's eyes. Small, meaningless, ordinary– something that anyone would have had they been asking the question to a man who hides behind his dislike and his sarcasm, his sharp tongue and ability to not tell truths. He feels young all over again, in a way that erases all the cobwebs and the wrinkles of his personality, and he is smeared out flat and ironed to a crispness that makes him feel both tense and incredibly at ease.
It would be easy to kiss Ichigo now, to press his own lips against the other's and feel no shame for it. But it would feel as unjustified as a plant reaching towards candle light– out of place, ignorant.
Renji has known since the beginning that he did not belong in the place where life is so prominent and where age is a part of sentimentalism (the lump in your throat goes down easily, and your breathlessness lies to you– you are no grand man and you make no effort to be one, because you do not want to be one).
"You honestly think I would've stayed here just for your good hospitality?"
Ichigo rubs the back of his neck. "Kinda, yeah." his smirk is just barely visible, slightly sloppy with the shadows of the room overlapping it like ocean waves and a tide to compare. "I mean, it's something you'd do, isn't it?"
"I would've said the same for you," Renji mumbles, and flicks an empty candy wrapper around on the floor with his fingers.
"That," Ichigo announces, lying back with his hands beneath his head against the pillows, "Wasn't even a good response."
"Yeah?" Renji watches the curve of Ichigo's cheek before he leans over and cups it in his hand (you wonder what the callouses on your fingers feel like against the softness of his skin– but you do not think that is why he will flinch).
By the time Ichigo is kissing back, his thoughts have dissolved into sentence fragments.
(You are a simple man, because you want to be one.)
- - - -
.XII
Forget it. Forget it. Forget it.
The taste of Ichigo is salty-sweet, and Renji thinks about the flowers.
- - - -
Author's Note: For Addie– Happy Christmas, honey. If my beta gets back to me with the edited version of this, I'll go ahead and repost this, I'd suppose! But I had to get this up before Christmas was over, as it is indeed a Christmas request fic.