How to Say Goodbye

Content: Cursing, adult themes, drinking/alcoholism. No graphic sex or anything like that, though. "I just keep practicing saying goodbye to you" is Tite Kubo's poem from Bleach volume 15. Gin/Kira is featured, so if you don't want to read a fic including a gay pairing, please stop here.

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Wasn't life funny, Rangiku thought. All those years Nanao had spent in university bitching about Kyouraku-senpai, and now she was dancing with him in a wedding dress. They were hardly the most graceful pair, with Nanao's mechanical steps and Kyouraku's lanky legs that took strides twice the size of his bride's, but even so, Rangiku had never seen Nanao looking so beautiful.

Perhaps she should have seen it coming years ago, understood that in both parties' complaints she was actually seeing not dislike but a rather strange and extended mating dance: Nanao liked to scold, and Kyouraku liked to be scolded. It had just been a matter of when Kyouraku decided he wanted the liberty of being scolded every day in the convenience of his own home.

When they'd been planning the wedding, Rangiku had asked if Nanao shouldn't wear contact lenses. Nanao had smiled a little smile and said that, in fact, Kyouraku liked the glasses a lot. That was when Rangiku had known Nanao was really in love.

Kyouraku dipped Nanao, and Nanao's glasses slid down her nose in surprise.

Rangiku was just tipsy enough to be the happy friend and life of the party that Nanao expected her to be. She danced with Kyouraku's cute friend with the long hair, with Nanao's creepy uncle, with their old friends from university (tactfully stepping on Iba's toes when he stared at her cleavage for too long). She teased Kyouraku's niece when she caught the bouquet and found aspirin in her purse for Nanao's mother's stress headache.

After all, this was important. It was Nanao's wedding, and with any luck Nanao would never have another one.

With a few last photographs, Nanao and her husband drove away in Kyouraku's horrible pink car, and the wedding guests started to dissipate.

"You don't need a ride, do you, Rangiku-san?" said a familiar voice by her side. "My car's only a block away, so it's no trouble . . . "

Shuuhei was one who hadn't changed, not at heart. For all the tattoos and piercings he'd been so fond of at university, he'd always been the most responsible among them. He probably had an umbrella in the back seat of his car, too. Now you could still see the marks on his ears and lip from the closed piercings if you looked closely, and his hair was just a little shorter than it had been, just a little bit less wild.

But his ears were still going slightly pink from talking to her; there was always something sweet about that. Confidence was nice, but sometimes it felt like being taken for granted. To Rangiku, that little blush on Shuuhei's ears meant that the conversation mattered to him, that it wasn't just no big deal.

"Oh—thanks," she said. "These shoes are killing me." She made a face.

"It's no trouble," Shuuhei said again, sticking his hands in his pockets, and they headed down the street together. "Uh, I saw your commercial the other day. It was really good."

"The dish soap one?" Rangiku laughed. "I remember filming that. I must have had my hands in the sink for eight hours that day."

"It takes that long?"

"Sometimes even longer!"

It was easy to talk to Shuuhei, too. There was so much to catch up on; five years out of university, and it seemed like he'd gotten to quite a high position at the newspaper, although he wouldn't say so. And she was right: he did have an umbrella in the back seat of his car.

They pulled to a stop at a red light. "It's too bad Ichimaru couldn't come," Shuuhei said. "The group would've been complete."

Rangiku could feel the edge of her buzz giving way to sobriety. "I don't think he returned the RSVP," she said quietly.

The light turned green. "I guess he's always been hard to pin down like that."

"Yeah," Rangiku said. She fiddled with a strand of hair on her shoulder. "When he's around, he comes by. But it's not like we're dating or anything." She gave a little shrug. "Well, you know how it is. He's never been the type to make it official."

"Yeah." Shuuhei pulled into a space in front of her building. "This is it, right?"

"You got it!" She tucked her purse under her arm and unlocked the door. "Thanks again for the ride. I appreciate it—really."

"You're welcome," said Shuuhei. Then, abruptly, he said, "Rangiku-san?"

She took her hand off the door latch. "Mm?"

"I know we've been friends for a long time, so if you don't want to, then I understand, but—do you want to have dinner with me?" Shuuhei said.

Rangiku tucked her hair behind her ear. "Yeah," she said. "Okay."

Shuuhei blinked. "Really?"

She smiled. "You still have my number, right?"

"Sure, yeah." He still looked a little dazed.

Rangiku hopped out of the car. "Call me!"

He nodded, and she waved one last time at him before he pulled back into the traffic.

Fumbling a little, she put the key into the lock of her apartment building. She was pretty certain Shuuhei had had a crush on her ever since they'd first met in university. How could anyone be so devastatingly faithful?

Rangiku had spent a lot of time outside as a kid.

Inside, there was a lot of shouting if her dad was home, and if he wasn't home there was just her mom on the couch—sometimes passed out, sometimes not, but always with glasses and bottles around her. Sometimes the walls of their house felt so small Rangiku thought she was going to suffocate, so she'd slip out, out to the world of fresh air.

She'd only been eight or so on the summer day when she'd realized her crucial mistake in not going home even to grab a piece of fruit to eat. She was sitting on the sidewalk, resting her head on her knees. The buzzing of the cicadas was impossibly loud, and the heat was shimmering from the surface of the street.

"You okay there?"

Someone she'd never seen before. A boy her age, smiling, crouched down to look at her.

Rangiku had mumbled something about being dizzy, and then she was being led down the street. Gin had found leftovers in his refrigerator in his big empty house, and fed her, and talked enough for the both of them. Even now, she remembered how he'd sat cross-legged with his chin on his hand and watched her as though she was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen.

He'd shown up again the next day, and the next, and every day after throughout the summer. Apparently he had a father, although Rangiku never met him; the house was always empty, its expensive electronics humming in repose. Rangiku asked where Gin went to school, and it turned out that he was supposed to go to her school, although he never did.

"You just don't go?"

"Nope!"

"Why not?"

"Don't really need to." Cheerfully. "Maybe I'll start going, though."

She found out in September why he "didn't really need to" when he turned up in uniform and surprised everyone, especially the teachers. It quickly became obvious that he was a genius; the teacher would often catch him daydreaming, staring out of the window with his chin resting on his hand, but Gin always had the right answer even if he didn't even have the book open.

She was more surprised to realize that other people didn't like him.

He never seemed to be interested in making friends with anyone else; he tolerated her friends just as they tolerated him, but he never went out of his way to get to know them. It seemed like he knew exactly what he wanted out of life, and that was to spend time with Rangiku, piss the other kids off, and otherwise do as little work as possible. And since he had all of those things, he was happy. Rangiku wished she could figure her own life out so clearly.

They grew up, and Rangiku grew out, and they moved on to high school, at which Gin continued to be absent about fifty percent of the time but still get better grades than anyone else.

One day when he dropped her off at her house, out of the blue, Gin leaned forward and kissed her goodbye. As they stood in that moment on Rangiku's doorstep, his hand on her bare arm, a few of autumn's first red leaves fluttered past them.

And Rangiku fell in love.

Rangiku hadn't heard from him since two weeks before the wedding. Almost three weeks in total now.

The last time she'd seen him, they hadn't even done anything more than watch a movie together; she'd been so tired that day that she'd fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder. Then, at three a.m., she'd woken up with a sore neck from sleeping awkwardly alone on the couch. The menu screen of the DVD was still playing over and over in a loop, and, since the curtains hadn't been closed, a streetlamp was filling the room with orange half-light.

It wasn't that Gin had to travel for his work. Lots of people had to do that. It was that he'd just come and go, leave her sleeping in the middle of the night and not be seen again for a month, not call and not even answer his phone. When he was gone, it was like he'd vanished off the face of the Earth. Then he'd show up again with a big smile and maybe some piece of tourist junk from wherever he'd been.

He never held her to any obligations toward him. He never asked her if she'd seen other men. Her friends kept saying that he was probably sleeping around, but if he was, it was incidental to his disappearances. She told them it was none of her business, anyway, because he had no obligations to her, either.

But that night, a couple of months ago . . .

That night, at a bar, a young guy had stared at her. At first she'd thought he recognized her from one of her advertisements, but then he'd introduced himself and said he'd worked with Gin on a project last winter. He was surprised to meet her here in person, because he recognized her from a picture Gin had brought with him.

"Ichimaru-san is truly gifted," the kid, Kira, said earnestly. He looked like he was fresh out of university and much drunker than he was used to being. "I learned so much from working with him."

It was so rare to find someone other than herself who actually liked Gin that she found herself feeling pleased on Gin's behalf that he'd found someone who did.

"I'm glad," Rangiku had said. "It's good to know that Gin has friends when he travels."

Kira blushed. But how was Ichimaru-san doing now? Was he okay? Did she think he would be coming back to the area any time soon? Kira himself was traveling on business for the first time, and he'd hoped maybe he would run into Ichimaru-san while he was here . . .

All she could say was that she didn't know (Gin had disappeared two nights before) and eventually bundle him into a taxi to make sure he got home in one piece.

But she was telling the story wrongly, even just to herself. What Kira had said was, "I saw your picture in Ichimaru-san's hotel room." He was probably too drunk to realize what he'd said.

He seemed like a sweet young guy. She hoped Gin hadn't hurt him too badly.

Since their first kiss in high school, Gin and Rangiku had become an unofficial couple. Gin was never possessive or overly demonstrative, that was the interesting thing—but somehow other guys who were interested quickly got the idea and backed away. It wasn't like Rangiku minded, though. It was the happiest time of her life, just because she could hold hands with him or sit next to him as they ate lunch.

By the time they went to university together, he had still not asked her on a real date or said anything about being girlfriend and boyfriend, and especially not anything about love.

She thought she felt it, though. She still remembered lying awake on her futon in her tiny room with Gin still sleeping next to her, slightly amazed at what they had done the night before. Her body felt different: whereas before she'd been shy and stiff, now even her smallest movements felt lithe and sinuous. She had been changed, bared herself in the most absolute way, and now she felt brazen. She could do it again right now, if she wanted. She could do anything.

"Gin," she murmured.

She felt his arm tighten around her waist, and then there was a tiny nip of teeth just where her shoulder met her neck.

She giggled and turned over to face him, and met with a kiss.

He never said I love you, but she felt loved.

It was over a week past the wedding before Rangiku heard Gin letting himself into her apartment. She had given him a key, long ago, and it had just seemed easier to allow him to come in and out whenever he wanted.

"Rangiku," he said, looking as pleased to see her as ever. "I brought dinner." He lifted up a hand to indicate the plastic bag of takeout food therein.

"Hi," she said. "Here, put them on the table—I'll just get some drinks."

He shook off his suit jacket, which was damp around the shoulders; it was drizzling outside. "So, how's Rangiku today?"

"I'm fine." She reached up to get some glasses out of the cupboard. All at once, she decided to say it. "Shuuhei asked me on a date Friday."

She turned around, clutching the glasses, and realized that she hadn't said I'm going on a date. Gin could still say please don't, go out with me instead, I love you . . . anything.

But, of course, he just smiled and said, "Well, that's good. Hisagi always seemed like a nice guy."

And for the first time, she couldn't tell whether his smile was happy or malicious.

"Right," she said. "Well—do you want a beer? I'm having one."

"No thanks," he said, waving his hand, and suddenly things were back to normal. Gin started setting out the food, and Rangiku wished she had taken the chance to cry at the wedding, after the wedding, any night before now.

Instead, she said, "Hey, Gin."

"Mm?" He had rolled up his shirt sleeves.

"Let's dance." She turned on the radio. "Just a quick dance. The food won't get cold."

He actually seemed surprised for a moment, but then got to his feet. "If that's what Rangiku wants," he said lightly.

Rangiku turned the radio to a jazz station and took Gin's hand. "There's really not a lot of room here," he commented with amusement, putting his hand on her waist all the same.

"Just dance around things," Rangiku said. "Please?"

So, for five minutes, until the song ended, they danced. The rain pattered against the window, and the food got cold.

A/N: I don't even know if this fic really makes sense or not, but . . . yeah. Please review if you have any thoughts?