Written for the March round of bleachflashfic at LJ.

Title: Tritone
Author's Name: norrowa
Requester's Name: lilapotter
Characters/Pairings: Renji and Kira. No pairings (Kira's observation on Renji's appearance at the end is meant to be more of a removed aesthetic judgment than physical attraction.)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst. But a fluffy/happy ending (well, okay—more hopeful than fluffy). Spoilers for the end of the Soul Society arc. Foul language (aka the standard Renji warning). Also, LOTS of character introspection. I would not call his fic concise, or elegant in its simplicity. The terms I would affix to the writing would be more along the lines of "dense" or even "messy".
Word Count: 3436
Author's Note: About the title—a tritone is a musical interval of six semitones. It's a very dissonant interval, and is harmonically unstable since it contains both of the tendency tones—tones which naturally "want" to resolve to the first and the third notes of a scale (both of which are part of the tonic triad.) So that might not make sense... let's just say a tritone is an unstable, dissonant interval.

Tritone

The bastard had stolen his hairbrush.

The bastard. Had stolen. His fucking. Hairbrush.

No, wait. Amend that. That should be: the fucking bastard had stolen his fucking hairbrush.

As he barreled down the hallways of the academy, Renji ignored the confused and disapproving glances the other students directed his way. He barely registered them, for that matter; his eyes were fixed straight ahead, and his attention was utterly undivided, fixed on one Kira Izuru, because nobody, that's nobody, fucked with Abarai Renji. Or with his hairbrush. Well, not without getting the ass-kicking of their life.

The early morning sun streamed in through the windows which lined the corridor wall. Renji dodged around a trio of girls who were gossiping in the middle of the hall, ignoring their glares just as he had ignored everybody else's looks. In ordinary circumstances, he would have paused to tell everybody to mind their own damn business. But right now, Renji had decided that Kira Izuru needed a lesson—the guy had been the most annoying jerk ever lately, and it had gotten to the point where Renji twitched every time Kira opened his mouth.

"The hell's been wrong with that guy lately, anyways?" Renji grumbled underneath his breath. The walls were just a blur in his peripheral vision, and he nearly missed his turning, which only served to increase his frustration. "He's been a fucking pain in the ass. Polite-and-Sweet-and-Proper-Kira-kun, sure."

Renji ground to a halt after a few more breaths, coming to the familiar print of a shinigami-killing-hollow scene. Kira complained frequently about the rather gory picture, which hung right next to his door, but never bothered to move it. Renji raised his fist and rapped, loudly, insistently and repeatedly, at the door. It slid open, finally, with a soft rumbling, grinding sound. Kira's face was pleasant, inquisitive, perhaps surprised, with its raised eyebrows and tiny smile. His eyes had a knowing glint in them. "Abarai-kun," he said in that soft, sly voice of his. "How good of you to visit me. It's such a rare occurance."

"Quit it, Kira," snarled Renji. "You can drop the fucking act and give me my hairbrush."

"Your hairbrush...? Oh!" said Kira, eyeing Renji's messy, frizzy ponytail. "So that's why your hair is so... disordered today. Usually it's the only thing you're actually careful about." He smiled, needle-sharp, and Renji's anger boiled, scalding hot and burning him from the inside out.

"Just give me the fucking brush, Kira!" he said. His voice came out louder than he had intended (except it wasn't, that was exactly how you intended it to be, wasn't it, and who's the jerk now?) though, rushing out of him too sharp and hot, like a cudgel, like a knife. And Kira shrank away and Renji felt something inside him shrink and contract into a tight hard knot digging into his breastbone.

They stared at each other for a few moments.

"Fine, Abarai-san," said Kira quietly, and stepped aside. Renji wished that he could grab the words back, knock them out of the air and out of Kira's ears. Instead, he entered Kira's room and paused in the center, looking around for his brush. "It's over there," said Kira, and Renji looked over his shoulder to see him gesture to one of the low tables shoved up against the wall to his right.

"Thanks," he muttered, his voice low—there were, surely, two bright spots of colour on his cheeks, with how he felt: flustered, embarrassed, too big and rough and out of place. Renji glanced around the room, fully taking it in for the first time. He hadn't visited Kira's room yet, which surprised him, thinking about it; but it looked just as he had expected it to. Neat. Orderly. The bed was perfectly perpendicular to the wall, its sheets creaseless. The floor was meticulously free of any clutter, and the whole room was stark, bare. Empty.

Renji felt something twisted, impossibly contorted, in the space between his heart and gut, a knot of emotion he couldn't unravel. He looked down at his fist, at the hairbrush—such a tiny, inconsequential thing. He had come to Kira's room over a hairbrush? The idea seemed absurd suddenly, like something out of one of his bizarrer dreams—he had never thought to visit Kira's room before, but now he came charging in because of a... a hairbrush?

"What the hell," he muttered.

"What was that, Abarai-san?" asked Kira. His voice was quiet, timid, like a shy wild animal taking a few tentative steps towards an outstretched palm.

"Why have you been such a fucking pest lately, Kira?" demanded Renji, looking up, his hand falling to his side, the brush bumping against his thigh. Well, okay, so maybe, just maybe, that wasn't exactly the right way to go about asking are you all right?, but Renji would be damned if he had ever been good at girly shit like that.

"I'm sorry."

"That wasn't what I asked, idiot!"

"I'm sorry."

"Y—Fu—dammit, Kira, I aske—"

"I'm sorry!" yelled Kira, and Renji took a step back. Kira's face, contorted with something Renji couldn't for the life of him put a name to (wasn't good at girly shit like that, never had been, never would be) took him by surprise. Wide eyes, furrowed eyebrows (how the hell did Kira manage to contort his face like that? Wide eyes but furrowed eyebrows? What the hell?), something desperate in his voice and the set of his jaw. "That's the problem! I'm sorry!"

"..."

That was the only appropriate response, that and a shocked stare. That had to be the only appropriate response to such a sudden violent outpouring of emotion. Renji sure as hell couldn't think of another one (and he'd be damned if he started doubting himself—the day he started doing that was the day he died, of that he was sure).

"... sorry?" repeated Renji finally, blankly. "What the—"

"Nothing."

"... Kira—"

"It's nothing, Abarai-sa—"

"Would you stop fucking well interrupting me?!"

Kira stared at him, silent. Renji's fingers tightened around the brush. "Uh. Yeah." He had the urge to shift his weight from foot to foot, to scratch at his neck, to look away, but instead took a deep breath. "Just... what the hell, Kira? And don't say 'nothing' and treat me like a fucking idiot. That pisses me off."

"It's... just..."

"Yeah?"

"I couldn't... I couldn't do anything..." Kira's gaze dropped to the floor, and the lines of his face relaxed into something sorrowful, regretful. "I'm just not good enough." His voice was just a whisper, a ragged sandpaper shred of noise. "I'm sorry."

"... this is about that disaster with the hollows, isn't it?"

"Yes..." Kira lowered his head further. He looked limp, lank, like a wilted flower. Renji remembered, once, seeing a flower back in Rukongai, during the fall—the sight of it, all faded and lonely, had struck him with a sudden uncharacteristic wave of undiluted, snow-tundra grief, and he had hurried on by. But now, looking at Kira, a wrench twisting his heart tighter and tighter in upon itself, he found that he couldn't move—there was too much gravity to this.

But though he didn't run as he might have liked to, Renji didn't know what to say, what to do. His hands felt heavy and overlarge, clumsy. "Look... Kira... fuck. You're not. I was terrified. Hell, we were all terrified..." He trailed off. He wished he knew—wished he knew how to communicate his heavy sorrow and sympathy and confusion and maybe even—maybe even—? No. He wouldn't touch that word. He wasn't ready yet.

Renji remembered a bastard who was too good at kidou, bright-eyed and brimming with youngness, but now he saw someone old. A cliff, made of too-soft stone, and deeply, dangerously weathered by the wind. Or maybe a man, bent under the weight of all the luggage which he was carrying—other peoples' thoughts packed into his suitcases, and he couldn't let go of them—god. All Renji could think was, What a nightmare. He wanted that sly spry quick-fingered silver-tongued bastard back because that sly spry quick-fingered silver-tongued bastard had been a friend.

Renji couldn't bear to lose his friends, not the sort of friends whom he could get into a brawl with knowing that they would both just forgive and forget later (until the next time) because the friend—the friend knew that Renji cared about him even if Renji acted rough and coarse and bluntly hurtful like a steel baton or pumice stone. But now that certainty Renji had always sensed in Kira—that rare, rare knack Kira had of knowing what you felt, of knowing if you lo... liked him, that perhaps too finely attuned sensitivity—was gone. It had fled in a morass of doubt and self-blame, and Renji knew that Kira just didn't know any more.

But what Renji didn't know was how to reassure him—could you just come out and say Look, Kira, I care about ya? Girly shit again. Fuck. Just, fuck.

"Kira—"

Then Kira shook his head and smiled, and hell, even Renji could tell how fake that smile was. "I'm fine, Abarai-san! I'm very sorry to have bothered you and I'm sorry I stole your hairbrush! But we should really get to classes now!" There was an exclamation point, a sharp fragment of sound, tacked on to the end of each of Kira's sentences, and before Renji could say another word he disappeared out the door in a flash of red and white robes, leaving Renji staring after him, not quite sure what had just happened, for it had happened too fast. The fragments of sound seemed to have lodged under his fingernails, and Renji stared at the floor with a strange sort of horror in his gaze, knowing he had lost a chance, and would the floor please tell him how many he had left?

The hairbrush wasn't the same one he had stolen all those years ago. That one, no doubt, had broken, or else perhaps Renji had discarded it. Izuru wasn't sure. Renji's hairbrushes—it wasn't a subject they spoke about often. Then again, they spoke only rarely. When was the last time they had just sat and talked—argued, teased? Back in the academy, no doubt.

The concept of desolation was not, to Izuru, an unfamiliar one. His parents had died when he was nearing forty—such a young age for a boy to lose his mother and father, so the people had said, poor thing, poor thing.

Poor thing. Po' thing.

The brush creaked as Izuru's fist tightened around it, a squeak of wood and glue. The wall was mercilessly hard against the curve of his back, and he rested his chin on his knees, one arm hugging them close to his chest, the other resting on the floor with the brush clenched in his hand. As he stared at the door to his room, Izuru wondered vaguely if Renji even remembered that time during the academy when he had come barging to his room (the first time he ever visited me) to reclaim his brush. It was a doubtful proposition; Renji wasn't the sort to remember those sort of things.

Besides, Izuru wasn't the sort of person you remembered.

His mother was in the room with him, and his father too; Izuru could feel them, had been able to feel them ever since Ichimaru(-taichou, -sama, -dono, all though all these suffixes were only whispered deep deep down in the lower levels of Izuru's mind) had left. They were watching him with their sad empty eyes and they were disappointed. Why, Izuru? his mother asked, her voice gentle as ever and sadly resigned—he knew that tone, that tone of endless why? That tone of being wronged. I told you to be good. To be a dutiful son and a dutiful man, to do your best, why did you have to disappoint us? You've always disappointed us. Why can't you be good enough?

I tried, Izuru told them silently. I tried, I really did. It was all for you. I did everything I could for him, for my taichou—I did my duty, because you, you lived duty, breathed it and slept it and thought in its hallowed rigid paths. And I loved you. I would have done anything for you, my parents, my duty. Died for you. Killed for you. Why did you leave me? How did you fail me? But tit for tat, as they say, butter for fat, you kill my dog and I'll kill your cat—I failed you. Otherwise you wouldn't have left, would you?

Desolation was not an unfamiliar concept to Izuru, but right now he felt like a desert. All the layers, all the worlds above it, with their flowers and brooks and forests, rich and blooming and alive, had been stripped away, blown away, and now the barren tundra at his core was raw and exposed and bleeding. The truth had been outed and Izuru wanted to cry but couldn't seem to find the tears. Where, where? Why, why?

Why? His mother's phrase, and one of his, too. But his mother owned it just as his mother had owned him.

Izuru felt blighted—stricken by drought. Izuru felt blighted—cursed, cursed to always fail.

Failure. You bring shame to your parents' memory (and deep down, something more personal and selfish and more Izuru cried, Ichimaru-taichou, why? Why did you hurt me?)

Bang bang thud bang thud. "Kira! Open the fucking door!"

But Izuru couldn't move; his limbs felt like lead weights and the brush was an infinity of heaviness in his hand.

The door slid open, banging loudly, a sharp noise like a judge's hammer coming down. Izuru didn't look up at Renji; he couldn't bring himself to. He waited for Renji to yell at him, to demand his hairbrush back. It didn't happen.

"Oi, Kira."

Izuru blinked. "Abarai-fukutaichou." Was he dreaming? Hallucinating, maybe. Maybe his needy, selfish longing had become so strong and aching that it had manifested itself as an illusion of what he wanted.

"It's Renji to you, dumbass." There was a rustle of cloth to his left and in his peripheral vision Izuru saw Renji settle himself next to him. There was a brush of a hand against his hand and then Renji pried the brush from him. "So."

"... so?"

"Look, I'm not a complete moron. This is about Ichimaru, right?"

Izuru couldn't speak. There was something in his throat and something in his mind and he couldn't speak. Ichimaru. Ichimaru had left him because it wasn't good enough. There they were, the bare incontrovertible facts, like a skeleton, white and gleaming and full of grief and something lost.

The sensation of an arm settling over his shoulder went unregistered at first. Then the feeling of pressure and warmth sunk in, and Izuru sat bolt upright, tensing. "What the—calm down, Kira."

"Izuru." The word tumbled out of him before he could stop it and, mortified, Izuru looked down, huddling in upon himself. Why had he said that?

"... what?"

"If I call you Renji," Izuru said, each word a monumental effort of will, "then you call me Izuru." Please. Please. Of course Renji was going to stare at him, laugh at him—it was stupid, it was silly—but he couldn't help it.

"Okay then. Izuru."

Izuru felt a pang of something—a shy tremor of surprised warmth and also an ache of longing. It had always been all or nothing and because he was too weak, too pathetic to fight for it all he had settled on nothing. But now Renji was forcing him into that halfway stage where he had a little but not all and it hurt because he wanted more and he knew that he would always keep on wanting more because he was selfish and bad. A bad friend (after all, why else would they never have visited him, never have just started a conversation with him?), a bad son (you failed us), a bad fuku-taichou (Ichimaru-taichou, why?).

"This is about Ichimaru-tai—Ichimaru," Izuru blurted out.

"Let me guess." Abarai (no, Renji)'s tone was laced with sarcasm and Izuru looked down, waiting. Waiting. "You're thinking oh, I wasn't good enough or he wouldn't have left, oh, it's my fault, right?"

Izuru was silent. He wanted to speak, had so many thoughts and just raw emotions, but he couldn't find the words or the courage.

"I know that feeling," said Renji flatly.

Silence.

"I think everybody knows that feeling."

"But—"

"And I'm sorry." The words were pushed out sharply, abruptly, with the air of someone saying something they were half opposed to saying—with the air of someone going against their nature, with the air of someone trying to make one last sally swimming to the surface of a lake, hoping, just hoping that they'd come up to air.

"... what?"

"I'm a fucking idiot." Renji snorted, the self-deprecation thick in his voice, and Izuru stared at him.

"No you're n—"

"Oh yeah? So why didn't I come to visit you earlier? Only a fucking idiot wouldn't realize that you can't be all right right now. You just can't be. I mean, you had to steal my hairbrush for me to even notice you. So, uh." Renji looked uncomfortable, staring down at the floor and picking at a stray thread in his robe with one hand. "Yeah. Sorry." He coughed, and Izuru just blinked at him, once, twice.

I'm sorry.

A strange noise cut through the silence, a choking gasping keening noise, and it took Izuru a moment to realize that it was him. His eyes started to sting, his throat constricting painfully, his vision blurred. He started to cry and then he turned to the side and grabbed Renji's shoulders and sobbed into his chest. His world narrowed down to a strip of dark cloth, some vibrant red hair. The tears that rolled onto his lips tasted salty when he licked them off.

Finally, his crying stopped. He straightened up, moved back, looking at Renji warily, waiting for—waiting for whatever it was that he always waited for. He had been an idiot. Made a fool of himself. What would Renji think of him now?

And then Renji told him to talk. Just to talk. It wasn't something anybody had asked him before and he was half-opposed to the idea—but eventually, unbelievingly, he talked. Haltingly, in stops and starts, and he didn't tell everything of course—there were things he wasn't ready to talk about and probably never would be. Renji prodded him frequently verbally, with rough and colourful language, but Izuru found he didn't much mind because Renji, with his loud voice and loud hair and masked uncertainty and clumsiness, was nothing like Ichimaru. Ichimaru with his fox smiles and sidelong not-quite-looks, because how could they be looks when his eyes were closed?

Sometime during his crying, Izuru's fingers had gotten tangled in Renji's messy ponytail, dragging out his hairtie—Izuru couldn't remember doing it but then, that wasn't surprising. As he spoke, he stared at Renji's hair, and thought vaguely that Renji looked quite nice with his hair down, and maybe next time he would steal his hairties rather than his hairbrush, just for variety.

Then another thought struck him—maybe next time...

... he wouldn't have to steal anything.

It wasn't a notion Izuru was ready to believe—not yet. Not just yet. But as he talked—as he said "it's your turn now, Renji"—he glanced down at the brush clasped in Renji's hand, and he thought that maybe, one day, he would be able to.