It had been a terrible week for Byakuya.
He'd managed to botch his training and disappoint is grandfather, he couldn't sleep, he'd ruined his bedsheets, and spent the day before locked in his room and afraid to leave. Now he looked back fondly on the days not so long ago, a mere decade maybe, when he was unfazed by the feminine wiles of his forced playmate. And as he prepared for a drastic course of action which he couldn't be sure wouldn't worsen things, he longed for the ability to bring himself back to that innocent state of mind.
A time before his grandfather had reintroduced them to one another, after a decade-long separation that felt like it'd passed him by in a week.
"Well, well," she'd said even before hello, and without even bothering to bow, "look how tall Little Byakuya's gotten so fast." She eyed him like the cat she was looking upon a helplessly flopping fish out of water. But even worse, she'd crossed her arms beneath her breasts so that they were pushed up to crowd Byakuya's field of view too much. "Looks like you'll be as tall as me soon," she teased.
"Grandfather," Byakuya said as an excuse to look away from her, turning instead to face his alibi, "I don't need assistance from her anymore. It would only undo the progress I've already made."
He hoped speaking like a man would convince his face to stop blushing like a boy.
"Byakuya, I have matters with the Sixth that need attending to. You should be grateful that Yoruichi-san was willing to take time out of her own Captaincy to oversee your training in my place," Grandfather said. It was a polite explanation with all the bite of a reprimand, at which Byakuya recoiled.
"I apologize, Grandfather," he said, shame colouring his tone. However, once Grandfather had taken his leave, that shame was the first thing to leave Byakuya. "Grandfather gives you too much credit, catbeast," he sniped. "You spend so little time doing your job, I'd be luckier to see you put time in than take time out."
Then Byakuya reached up, undid his hair tie, and tossed it unceremoniously aside, letting his hair fall into the arms of the passing breeze. "You cannot irk me with your childish games anymore. I have nothing else for you to take, and nothing more to take from your teachings. Please leave, I'll train by mys—"
...Kyuukyuu...
Byakuya felt himself tip backwards like a tapped domino, longing for the chance to be knocked unconscious by hitting the ground below—except Yoruichi pinched the folds of his gi with her fingers, keeping him at a forty-five degree angle from the ground. It was his misfortune, then, to stay conscious as her mischievous golden eyes mocked him while gravity continued to pull at the blood from his nose, sending it streaking down his left cheek slowly, disgustingly, embarrassingly.
She'd sped up to him before he'd even finished speaking. However, the way she'd bent slightly at the waist in order to lock eyes with him better had also put her bosom on a trajectory destined to end right in his hand, still outstretched from his discarding of the hair tie. Two entirely involuntary twitches later, and here he was, completely at her mercy in multiple ways.
Dear lord, just let me fall.
Byakuya felt his soles reconnect with the ground and decided to make the best of a horrible situation by swiping at his blood-painted cheek with his forearm, clearing away the testament to his shame.
"Looks like you could still use a little training, bo-ya," Yoruichi said as she came to full height. The advantage it afforded her was not wasted, as she reached out and placed her hand atop Byakuya's head. He was utterly humiliated. "Your concentration is bad," she continued, before looking down at the breast he had squeezed, then seeming to gaze thoughtfully up at the sky before finishing, "although your reaction time was pretty quick..."
Then something slipped through Byakuya's gritted teeth and barely squeezed passed his pursed lips, so that only animals, and those like them, could hear it: the phrase I'm sorry.
Yoruichi responded to the apology by pushing on Byakuya's head to that he wobbled precariously before straightening. "Forget it," she said. "So you groped me a little; it's natural for a young man," she waved off nonchalantly.
"Not so loudly," demanded the flustered Byakuya. "And don't use a word like that! It was a mistake!"
A mistake that would haunt him every night for the rest of that week.
Byakuya supposed that what made Yoruichi a superlative warrior was her skill at discerning and then ruthlessly targeting an opponent's weaknesses. He'd have admired that, had it not been turned on him so jarringly. Every time he seemed to get the upper hand in their sparring that day, she'd switch hats, from instructor to seductress. It didn't matter whether she lunged suddenly forward to nearly graze his face with her endowment, or feign a fall just before the finishing blow, placing herself in front of him with her back arched and her hind held high—either way, Byakuya was reminded to keep his wandering gaze in check with a painful counterattack.
That lesson having been beaten into him more than thrice, Byakuya did eventually manage to avoid any further incidents of the kind that day. It had started miserably, but at last, as the world around them faded into twilight, Yoruichi's concussive training methods seemed to pay off, and her reluctant student soon dodged and struck back with Onmitsukido-like precision. Byakuya was feeling quite pleased with himself until his youthful Captain of an instructor threw him the last curve he could handle that day.
"Alright, it's time to get serious." That was what she'd said before letting her Captain's haori slide off her shoulders and fall around her ankles. A whole new world was opened to Byakuya then: a fleshy, milk chocolatey world of beautiful exposed shoulders, thighs, and exquisitely-sculpted backs. Before Yoruichi had even returned to her combat stance, Byakuya had already rushed inside, his parting words narrowly making it out the closing door behind him: "I'm done for today."
But he wasn't done for the night – much to his dismay.
Images and memories, vivid and visceral, assaulted Byakuya during any attempts he made to sleep, which were many. However, bodily exhaustion always won the war against cerebral raging. But Byakuya ended up with so little sleep that week that his mind was cloudy during training sessions with his grandfather. Eventually the man even left prematurely one afternoon, having given up on his slow, lethargic grandson. And Byakuya thought that was the worst of it.
Poor, naïve Byakuya...
Lack of sleep was not the last tactic his body had prepared to sabotage him with, it seemed. Contrarily, the final betrayal came during one of the precious escapes he did manage to make into the world of dreams. For he dreamed of her, all of her, too much of her. And when he awoke with a start in the wee hours of the following morning, he felt the cold shame that had come to rest in his lap that night.
He'd never found himself in a worse situation before! And the too-diligent servants of the Kuchiki estate always replaced the bedding each morning while the nobles were out, the blankets and sheets constantly rotating to avoid...the monotonous bedding routines of the commonfolk? It didn't matter. No servant was going to stumble upon his shame when he left, and they couldn't, so long as he didn't leave.
Byakuya ended up spending most of that day sitting with his face in his knees and his back to the expansive door to his bedroom, refusing to come out at all under the pretense of being ill, which he thought wasn't altogether untrue. Only when everyone else had retired for the night did he chance stripping his bed and washing the offending sheets and blanket, by hand, in the bathtub of his connected bathroom. But no matter how hard he scrubbed the fabric, the stains on his pride refused to come out so easily. He wouldn't forgive himself his weakness and its disgusting results. And he knew something had to be done, lest he resign himself forever to a life of secretive nighttime laundering.
Yes, it had been a terrible week for Byakuya. And now, he was here.
And so was she.
He'd broken down and come to her after that night, pleading, without letting it show, for her to help him in some way. Somehow he'd managed to confess to her the awful happenings of his week following their training session, his face hot and red, his words stammered out like those of some nervous schoolboy.
"And what would you have me do, L'il Byakuya," she responded with, causing his heart to fall into his gut. "Want me to bind my boobs so you feel more comfortable?" The innocent tone the question came in only served to fuel Byakuya's rising anger. How could she joke at a time when he was in such crisis?
Honestly, Byakuya didn't know how to answer. He found it hard just then to even answer his own mental question of why he'd sought out the source of his problems instead of a proper solution. He sat still and silent through the rest of their meeting until Yoruichi was pulled away on some business, after which he continued to sit there in her office like a sculpture of a man tormented, until leaving a good while later.
But when he got back to his bedroom, there she was, sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed like a little girl waiting for her playdate to be done his chores.
She made, and needed, little explanation. "Is this what you had in mind?"
"No."
"Oh? You didn't even want to try it?"
"...Yes. Please."
If her proposition before had been one of her usual jokes meant to tease him, than the woman was incredibly committed to the bit. Byakuya kept expecting her to flick him in the nose, bringing an end to the charade as she had many times before, but she simply kept removing clothing. He waited for her to stop after each article hit the floor, but soon she was completely...indecent...in his bedroom.
He felt her hand on his back, which he'd turned to her before he could fully confirm anything his dream had shown him. "Have you changed your mind?" she asked, perhaps tauntingly. Byakuya slowly found the will to shake his head. "We don't have to if you're scared," she said. Again, perhaps because he'd known her for so long, her tone seemed to skim the razor's edge between playfulness and sincerity.
"I'm not scared."
Yoruichi could tell the young man was lying. "It's fine," she gave him, "I was too."
She knew all too well how tough the life of a noble truly was in matters other than bed comfort and mealtime menu selection, which admittedly was enviable. She'd come across this possible solution to Byakuya's troubles by looking to her own past as a maiden of nobility.
A while ago, she'd overheard conversations the adults were having about arranging her marriage to another noble, a complete stranger. The thought of having to share her first time to someone she didn't even know filled her with terror, an emotion she wasn't familiar or comfortable with. But as a noble, one was expected to follow rules such as that, to be an exemplar, and always be polite and perfect – which for her meant being unable to object to a betrothal, and for poor Byakuya meant being made to be very hard on himself over his emerging urges. The constrictive nature of being raised noble had all but repressed him.
Fortunately for her, the solution to her dilemma had been readily at hand in the form of her closest childhood friend, Kisuke. It took weeks to muster the courage to propose the arrangement with him, but in the end, he'd proven himself to be a very giving friend indeed. The adults never found out, and her arranged marriage never did go through, but she was glad anyway. Even if it had taken a while for things to stop feeling weird between her and Kisuke.
Not that her father ever did stop pressuring her to get married anyway. And that was something her friend couldn't help with.
But that time of fear, and those following weeks of self-doubt and desperation leading up to the solution, had together been the worst experience of her young life, and she saw history repeating with Byakuya as its pawn now. He needed to know that that everything would be okay, that this was normal and wouldn't rule him forever; but for that he needed two things: companionship and release, and now that he wasn't a boy anymore, she could provide both.
Still, she'd never actually thought he'd say yes.
She laid in bed waiting for however long it took for him to crawl in with her with a choked, "Forgive me". She didn't take offence as other women might at the shameful look he gave her, for she knew he was only watching himself, reflected in her golden eyes.
"Byakuya, the point of this is for you to relax," she cooed. She caressed his face as a pretence for guiding it down toward hers, but he jerked away before her lips could do their reassuring work.
"No," he said, not to the kiss, but in response to her last statement. "I'll do my best for you as well." That seemed to calm him down a little. Yoruichi figured he didn't want to feel like he was only using her medicinally.
It soon became clear that he also hadn't wanted to accept the kiss either, however. As he went about doing his level best as a beginner, he'd often bite his bottom lip, or even look away from her completely. When he quickened enough that such tactics started failing him, he actually resorted to burying his face in the pillow her head laid on, and she thought he was biting it.
Her hands on his glistening shoulders made him stop immediately – an odd reaction given the situation. He came up and searched her face, shame still written on his own.
"You can kiss me if you like," Yoruichi offered, knowing that the body liked to put forth a concerted effort in these situations, meaning that the actions of the hips affected the urges of the lips.
Byakuya turned away from her to talk at the far wall to his left. "We're not lovers," he pointed out.
"For pity's sake, Byakuya, we're making love."
Now he faced her, his expression suddenly serious. "No, we're not. We're lying together in congress." She could tell by his tone that the distinction was something very thoroughly thought-out, and extremely important to him.
"Well I'm still pretty sure you're not supposed to hide your face in the pillow to avoid kissing me."
"Yoruichi, I'm..." and then he paused for a long time. "I'm...not only doing this because it was offered to me. You were the one who offered it."
"Byakuya?"
"I consider you the closest thing I have to a friend," he admitted. That was almost sad, and she could tell he knew it too. "I trust you. I feel safe with you. I am...afraid how that might change if I kiss you..."
The last part he thought he whispered to himself, but Yoruichi had better hearing than he ever gave her credit for: "...I do not wish to want you even more."
"...What if we got married?"
"What?"
"Would you feel better about me if we were engaged, Byakuya?"
"Yoruichi—"
"I'll bet our families would approve. I bet they've even tried to pair you off before now, right?"
"Yes," he answered, growing redder by the second, "to a Shiba girl..."
"Do you want to marry her?"
"...No. I don't know her."
"Do you want to marry me?"
"Yoruichi, this is—"
"Byakuya," she interrupted, flicking his nose. "Would you like to be my husband?"
Then, suddenly, just as Yoruichi expected, all traces of shame melted away from the young man's expression, replaced with peace. "I will," he said, not exactly happily, but contentedly.
And finally, they kissed.
Hey, readers! So, I originally planned to do a romantic one-shot involving these two, but then I heard Yoruichi do the impromptu marriage proposal in my head and it just stuck. From there I thought of how an entire alternate Bleach universe might arise from this course of events: Byakuya wouldn't marry Hisana, or adopt Rukia...and it just spun out from there.
So I'm publishing this as a one-shot for now. But I still have all these ideas for what could possibly be a long-running Bleach romance-drama where all the characters would be as you remembered them, but with their lives having taken radically different courses to make them that way (and of course, it'd be rife with new pairings). Byakuya would still end up being his wife-less, uptight self as he is at the start of the manga, but for entirely different reasons. If that sounds interesting to anyone, I'll consider expanding this.