A music meme that I found and decided to do. Here are the rules for anybody else who wants to do it.

1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.

2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.

3. Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards!

4. Do ten of these, then post them

Pairing: RenShuu

1. Passion - Utada Hikaru (4:43)

Shuuhei was freaking amazing in the making out sense. I don't know exactly where he learned it, but damn. Was he good at it. Like he had taken classes for it or something. The whole tying-the-cherry-stem into a knot thing all over again. He made me feel. Made me feel more than I ever did with anybody else.

It wasn't only the passion that drew us together, though. It was more like the way he would hold me at night, after a long, hard day at work, and just whisper soft nothings into my ear. Soft nothings that meant the world to me, and would probably mean nothing to anybody else. That was what I liked about Shuuhei. About my senpai. That he was compassionate, that he knew when making out was okay, that he knew when making out wasn't enough. It was a perfect relationship. Except, of course, we were two guys. And Soul Society wasn't exactly keen on making our relationship public, even though God knows plenty of the other men had had gay relationships as well.

So we kept it hidden. We kept it tucked away in the deepest corners of our minds, packaged up in neat little boxes, the contents of which would spill out of their bondage by nightfall. Sometimes, even by dusk or late afternoon.

We needed each other, Shuuhei and I. I was there to hold our relationship together, to stay with him. He was there to hold me at night, to be strong for the both of us when I by myself wasn't enough.

And I learned that Passion and Compassion are two different things, but mixed together, they're very, very nice. Very nice indeed. And that was what Shuuhei was. Very, very nice. That's why I loved him.

2. Manic Monday - Relient K (2:44)

I hated Mondays, and Shuuhei did too. I mean, I hated them with the passion of ten thousand burning suns. Possibly even more than that. I hated them because they woke you up early, brought you to a cold, harsh, unforgiving office (much like the captain that awaited you there, as well) with piles and piles and MOUNTAINS of paperwork that all had to be done that day. It was overwhelming.

I hated paperwork. Hated the taste of ink on my fingers, hated the taste of dryness in my mouth, hated the way the office was a perfect little hollow cube with two desks, a rug, and some chairs. And, of course, the paperwork. No windows, no nothing. Just me, the office, and Kuchiki-taichou, who blended perfectly into his surroundings.

That was why I needed Shuuhei. Needed the night to spend with him. Without him, I would probably have gone insane.

He was like the cheese to my macaroni. He completed me, I completed him. And, of course, we woke each other up on Mondays, when we slammed our alarm clocks into the table, when we just didn't want to wake up. And he was my drug. My secret little drug that I carried to work on those Mondays to help me survive. That was the best part of the whole thing. Nobody knew a single bit about it.

But still. I hated Mondays.

3. Smack That - Akon xD (3:32)

Shuuhei wasn't exactly inappropriate. Nor was he appropriate, exactly. He was good. That I have to admit. He knew when to cuddle, when to caress, but he also knew when to be rough and demanding and all that other dominating shit that he liked. So I let him have his fun. I let him do whatever he wanted to do to me in the dead of night, because, frankly, I was the one who kept him sane and vice versa.

I won't lie. I had fun. Spanking, cosplay, toys, whatever. You name it. I had fun. And so did he. I liked that, liked seeing him smile. Because Gods, he was abominably cute when he smiled like that. And those smiles, they were all for me. For me, and me alone. Not Kira. Not Hinamori. Not Tousen, who wouldn't have appreciated it because he wouldn't have been able to see it anyway. Those perfect, straight, white-toothed, smile was all for me. And I enjoyed it. Every last second of it.

Those were the times that I would remember when I was in battle. Those were the times that helped me control my anger during a particular hard fight. But sometimes, the anger broke free of those memories, and I would just be completely outraged and would destroy everything in my path.

And then, of course, Shuuhei had to go and give me new memories for me to take out with me in combat. After I paid for the damage I had done.

4. Far Away - Nickelback (3:58)

I hated it when Shuuhei went off on missions. I knew he hated it when I went away from him, too, but since I'm not him, I have to say that I especially hated it when he left me home alone. To my own devices, in a sense. Of course, we had cell phones and soul pagers and what not, but it wasn't enough. I can't exactly say that Soul Society's network did a great job of bringing Shuuhei's husky voice over miles and miles of terrain. And I didn't like it when he didn't come back on the deadline. If he came back later than he was supposed to.

It made me worry about him. Yes, me. Abarai Renji. I would worry about him if he was gone for an extra week or more. Of course, I knew that he would come back, but there was still this feeling of dread in the very pit of my stomach. This terrible feeling that kept telling me, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, what if he's dead? What if he doesn't come back? What if I'm here alone? Forever?"

Yup. That's me. Always worrying about others but never worrying about myself. Just look at the whole Rukia-execution thing. I was damn worried, and yet I was willing to sacrifice myself for her. Someday, this is gonna get me killed. I can just imagine the headlines now: "Renji stupidly and bravely attempts to save someone's life and PHAILS."

But he always came back. And that was the best part of the whole mission, his coming back to me. Not to bring back a Hollow's head on a silver platter for Yamamoto-sama, but for me. Coming back with a huge smile on his face, his arms outstretched, and running through a field of flowers towards me. Okay. Maybe not a field of flowers. More like a treeless plain.

But whatever. He came back for me. And me alone. And I loved those parts of the missions.

5. Listen to Your Heart - DHT (4:31)

There was one time that I remember that he freaked me out REALLY BADLY. That was when he went out for another of those missions aka defenseless Hollow smashing in which one of the Hollows wasn't quite as defenseless as everybody had thought it was.

The Hollow nearly killed him. Nearly killed my beloved Shuuhei. And for a moment there, when they brought him back in from the battleground on a stretcher, I seriously thought he had been killed. His beautiful dark-green eyes were closed, his eyebrows were a bit knitted together, as if he was in pain, and there was blood everywhere. I couldn't make out the source of it, but I do know one thing: There had been A LOT OF BLOOD. Like, enough to paint one of the large classrooms in the academy and still have some left over.

I don't really remember much about it, but Shuuhei went into surgery to get his wounds stitched up and everything, and I sat out in the waiting room, Hanatarou trying to console me while I blabbered about random things that Shuuhei and I had done together: how we'd gone to the beach together, how we talked at night together, heck, I think I even said something about that one Internet surfing spree we did together and finding pictures of us together. Pictures that people had drawn of us together.

But yeah. I was pretty devastated. After a few hours of Hanatarou trying to console me and me blabbing out all of my memories to the poor guy, Unohana-taichou came out of the room and clasped her hands, drawing a breath. I burst into a fresh fit of tears. I thought that she had come to deliver the bad news. That Shuuhei had died during operation.

Instead, she said, "Shuuhei's up. You can go and see him now."

I rushed past her, thanking her profusely, rushed into the room where he was now sitting up, half-conscious. He looked at me, looked at the tear stains, smiled, and said, "Stupid. I don't die that easy. I love you too much."

6. Roses and Butterflies - Making April (4:18)

One of our first dates was one of the most memorable ones I had ever been on, with a girl or with a guy. He took me to this little garden-type area down in the living world. It was called Magnolia Pavilion or something like that. We walked around openly, holding hands - we weren't using gigais then, because we didn't really feel like we needed to - and he pointed out different things, different plants and stuff like that. As if the species and families weren't already printed on those handy dandy little plastic signs tacked into the ground. But it was still cute. Heck, whatever Shuuhei did was cute, as far as I was concerned.

A butterfly landed on my hair. I reached up to swat it away, but Shuuhei gently coaxed the white thing into his hands, holding it out for me to see.

"It's a butterfly. Like a Hell one, except albino," he said, grinning up at me. "And, unlike Hell butterflies, this one would have broken really easily if you had swatted it."

I stood with him in the middle of the Magnolia Pavilion. And, if anybody who could see Soul Reapers was in the pavilion that day, they didn't comment. They didn't comment upon seeing two men, one with flaming red hair tied up in a ponytail and with sunglasses perched on his forehead, and the other with thick, dark hair, three scars down the right side of his face, and a 69 tattooed on his cheek holding a butterfly in his hands.

If they were there, they didn't comment upon seeing me pluck a rose from a bush nearby.

If they were there, they didn't say anything or make any statements about the kiss that Shuuhei and I shared in the middle of the pavilion, him holding a butterfly and me a rose.

7. Fall For You - Secondhand Serenade (3:05)

I had started to like him back during academy days. No. Probably not like him. More like lust after him, because at that point, I didn't really know much about him except

a) He was hot
b) He was hot and
C) He was hot.

That was all I knew about Shuuhei back during academy days. I lusted after him. I spent dozens of nights trying to get him out of his mind, his sexy voice, his brilliant green eyes, everything about him haunted me. I took many cold showers. I read really boring books to keep my mind off him.

But it was only after he had assigned that I started to fall for him. Hard. Because, at that point, I had gotten to know him better, had gotten to know him as a person and what he was like. And I knew it was like then. Because we weren't close enough yet to call it love.

And then, when we got to the Soul Society, it was at that point that I knew it was love. A one-sided love, perhaps, but still love nonetheless. We were drinking buddies, best friends, maybe closer than that.

And it was one night when we were both smashed that he pronounced his undying love for me. I remember telling him that he must have been seriously high to say something like that, and then he claimed that he would say it the next day just to prove it.

And, well, he did keep his promise. He told me the very next day, when we were both sober, "I love you." I smiled.

8. Dirty Little Secret - The All-American Rejects (3:15)

Since Soul Society didn't exactly encourage relationships like ours, but, by the same token, didn't really give two cents about them, we kept it a secret. A secret between us. And nobody ever knew.

We had taken a pledge of celibacy to each other, so that we wouldn't have sex before we were married. Of course, since we couldn't exactly get married there, Shuuhei fetched, no, more like begged, Akon to get us two gigais from the 12th division's lab. And, in no time, we were on a plane heading to some remote, rather pretty village in Africa or wherever the hell we were. Of course, this was before the whole fussy business came about and everybody started having a fit about everything.

But yeah. We went to this tiny village and got married there. Then, of course, we had sex. Pretty simple, right? Wrong.

And then a few months later, what happens? The villagers all want to rebuke the whole thing! And then they make this whole big deal about how it's not right and blah blah blah blah blah and how the people who've already been married to each other should now be demoted to a civil union status. So, of course, in order to not be part of all this confusion, Shuuhei and I went back to Soul Society. And I can only imagine that those people were pretty confused when they realized that there was a couple who had gotten married who had not been demoted. Yep. That was us.

And we're keeping that our dirty little secret for now. So don't tell.

9. Apologize - Timbaland (3:04)

He was sick one day. Like, majorly sick. He had a terrible fever, he couldn't keep any food down, he woke up in cold sweat most of the nights. There was nothing I could do about it, and Unohana had tried pretty much everything, and now we could only sit back and watch as he suffered. I wanted to hold him, wanted to tell him everything would be all right. But, of course, then I ran the risk of getting whatever he had, and Unohana vehemently said no to that.

So I would talk to him. Talk into the open air if he was asleep or dreaming. Talk about whatever I wanted to. And one night he woke up, and he apologized.

"I'm sorry I'm sick. I'm sorry we can't cuddle or kiss or hug or anything like that. When I get better, though, we'll make up for all that. And a whole lot more."

And then he flopped back onto the pillows and slept like a log until morning, when Unohana said that his fever had broken and that, after a few days of rest, he would be ready to go back to work and normal life again.

I couldn't help it. I rejoiced. Quite loudly. Which, of course, gave my darling, bedridden Shuuhei a headache. And after chewing me out for a few hours about that, I interrupted him, trying to keep a straight face, and said, "I'm sorry."

And he commented, "Yeah, right."

We smiled together.

10. Where'd You Go - Fort Minor (3:51)

He had never needed me more than when Tousen left. Never in his whole entire life had he needed anyone as much as he needed me then, I assume.

When his captain left him to go to Hueco Mundo to pursue the essence of power or justice or whatever crap that was all about, he broke Shuuhei. Shuuhei, the person I loved, was broken into a thousand million pieces. And there was hardly anything I could do except hold him. Hold him and tell him that everything would be okay.

Of course, it was somewhat hard the first few months. For both of us. He was constantly getting drunk, getting stoned, trying to feel happy again so that he wouldn't be depressed all the time. But I knew what would happen. If he kept this up, he would have eventually drunk himself to oblivion and then would have killed himself doing something utterly stupid. I knew that was what would have happened.

So, even though it pained me to do it, I put him on a ban of no alcohol, no drugs. No nothing. So, instead of throwing a huge fit or tantrum or whatever you would call those rages that he got some times, instead, he made ME his drug. We would kiss until the early hours of the night, would cuddle until he would eventually fall asleep, and soon, no longer did he come home with breath that smelled of sake and marijuana. He didn't come home smelling like that. Instead, he came home smelling like fresh air and happiness, and left home smelling of me.

I didn't care that I was his new drug. I didn't care that he was addicted to me.

Because, in all honesty, I was addicted to him, too. And Shuuhei was the best drug, the best alcohol, that I have ever had, and probably ever will have, in my entire life.

Yeah. It's not my best work. But give me a break. I've never done something with time constraints before.

Also, don't criticize my music tastes. Please don't. PS: Is the little symbol by my penname at the bottom showing up?

Later.
Skyskaterჯ