When we first met
"Do you remember our first kiss?"
The haze in the bathroom made it difficult to see the other's face. And it was a good thing, because no matter how close they had been those past weeks, Byakuya definitely didn't want his lover to see him blushing, like a young innocent girl!
So he let himself sit a bit lower in the hot water, waiting for the other to carry on the discussion.
But he didn't, and the silence fell around them, allowing the noble to indulge in his memories, as was probably doing his former lieutenant.
This time seemed so far away now...
The time when their lips had met hesitantly, only to jerk backwards the moment after. The two men left breathless by the intensity of the feeling, the fear of what it meant, and the awareness of how the next years would be.
They had run away and tried to avoid each other for what had been months, until the desire and the curiosity overwhelmed the shame and the fear.
Then they had let their feelings for each other grow and fill them slowly through the years, when neither dared to venture further than stolen kisses which were more and more needy and passionate, further than knowing looks and brushing hands in front of others.
Then they had finally given in, in the deep secret of a new moon night, and many of others after this one, but always in the dark, always where no one could disturb those wonderful but so wrong displays of their mutual affection.
Until Renji finally became a captain himself, and made his name worthy enough to walk next to the head of the Kuchiki clan, to share his life and bed officially.
Until they could sit together in the Kuchiki's hot springs like that, allowed to speak freely to each other, as equals, even about very personal matters.
All those years had been known in that blink of time, when their lips first met, as if it had been the first line of a story entirely written at that exact moment when they had moved towards each other.
The warmth of the water made Byakuya feel sleepy, and he let his head fall on his lover's shoulder.
That first kiss had been the beginning of everything, hadn't it?
No it has not.
The thought startled him.
Probably asleep already, he found himself standing in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the darkness, waiting for an explanation.
But the silence had fallen once again. Feeling a bit uneased, he tried to ask this voice, the part of his soul that was his zanpakutou, holding a knowledge far beyond his human consciousness.
Why not ?
Because it wasn't the first time.