Train Wreck

Note: This is my first try at writing Matsumoto or Ichimaru-taichou, so definitely my first stab at writing them together. I like how it came out, even though I had originally intended for this to be much creepier and less angsty. It was inspired by a personal challenge I'm doing with a friend of mine, with the theme "one more time".

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach, I am making no personal profit from the creation of these fanworks, etc.

Warnings: Violence. Sex. Violent sex. Angst.

It wasn't right, and they both knew it. Every time they slipped into the darkness of the night and gave into the treacherous yearning was the last time until opportunity called again and they leaped headfirst back into the glorious danger. Each stolen touch was more desperate than the last, until their kisses were no longer tender, their touches turned painfully urgent before outright violent, and what they did could no longer be confused with love or the making thereof. What was right and wrong no longer mattered, only the desperation of knowing one another so well that letting go was no longer possible; only the helpless way they surrendered their ideals to the dark alleys, hidden corridors, and pent-up passion.

It never occured to the higher ups of either side to question where their warriors stole away to in the night, nor to wonder about the faint glow that surrounded them when they returned. It was simply unthinkable for either to be fraternizing with the enemy. It started first as negotiations between their respective sides and later for no reason but to see one another, regardless of the excuses they gave so often that they almost believed their own lies. This night was no different: a casual encounter to the unknowing eye that never bothered to follow their distinctive shadows into the darkness. For them, it was anything but casual.

His eerie grin split the darkness in mockery of her when he surprised her by seizing her from behind. She jumped and had half-drawn her zanpakutou before realizing it was him and slid the blade back into its sheath with a half-relieved sigh. Her heart twisted painfully at the sight of him when she turned her body to face his; when he took a sweeping analysis of her and noted that she looked weary. She nodded, but didn't elaborate on the reason why (it was him, and he knew it, anyway) skirting the small talk in order to get to what they both knew they were there for: a shallow ghost of what they had once had.

His hands were colder than she remembered, but the way they crept across her silhouette and pulled away her sword reminded her of shrewd spiders. It didn't matter; she seized him closer and, having long since abandoning naïve hopes for romance, pressed her lips to his. He shoved her against the stone wall more out of desperation than any actual ill-feeling, pinning her hands with his own and returning the kiss with the same recklessness that it required for him to be there anyway. She struggled at first, but he pulled away and met her eyes with relentless urgency. She wanted to plead with him, even to give in and follow him, but that was nothing new to her and so she held his hands tightly, desperately hoping that if she could only warm those frozen hands, she could reach his isolated heart again.

Finally, he let go of her hands to allow his own to resume their roaming, hesitating only for an instant at the carelessly tied belt of her hakama. She seized the neck of his robe, pulling him closer still and staring him down with the same sense of necessity as he had given her. Whatever previous caution they had was abandoned to the destruction of the superficial things which were meant to define their wildly dissimilar identities. He ripped the strings of her hakama as she tore at the neck of his robe, shedding that which still identified them as who they were. The white of his robe fell to the ground in stark contrast beside her hakama, and he carelessly tore away the patch which identified her seat in her division, throwing it to the ground before reaching for the belt she wore atop her kimono. She found the strings to his own hakama and tugged them apart delicately, before losing herself to her frustrations and tearing them as violently as he had done to hers.

When he slid the kimono off her shoulders and threw it aside to the ground at long last, he had already lost the eerie smile in lieu of grim neutrality. It was possible to pretend they weren't enemies so long as the incriminating clothes were scattered at their feet. He promised her—promised himself—that this would be the last time, but he knew that the promise was already broken; he was already looking forward to the next time. Her fingernails dug into the skin of his back, slashing bloody streaks across the pale of his moonlit skin. He mused aloud whether or not she was angry at him, but his bruising grip was no more merciful as he crushed her petite wrist and ghosted breaths and kisses along her neck, falling dangerously closer still to the exposed swell of her breasts. For a long moment, she wanted to seize her sword from the ground, to strike back at him for all he was doing to her (stripping her of her dignity, tearing out her heart, forcing doubt into what was left of her mind), but all she managed was a long moan of his name.

Pausing, he looked down at her with careful concealment of emotion before closing his eyes and continuing. He had never wanted their encounters to become anonymous, but they had and now he wished she had never said that sacred word, had never attached his name (his identity) to the same person who had betrayed her and cheapened their relationship to this. She missed the hesitation in his touch before the urgency returned as he tried to make her forget his name in the haze of sensation and desperation. Possessing her became that much more important, and he lifted her easily, thrusted in and felt the dig of her fingernails again as she ripped her hands from his and wrapped her long arms around his neck. Balancing their combined weight against the wall in time to his movements, he took a fistful of her hair and pulled. She cried out, returning the aggressive torrent of fury in retaliation for everything he had ever done to her.

Their passions escalated, building on one another's rage until they were tearing at one another with as much violence as erotic fervor, blurring the lines indefinitely between the two. She moaned in pleasure or pain (not that it mattered, the two were one and the same), and he caught himself unexpectedly mimicking the groan (whether it was pain or pleasure didn't matter, the two were already one and the same). Giving a final shove, the will to fight her anymore was drained from him and he collapsed his head against her heaving chest.

They only ever allowed themselves a few minutes to bask in the afterglow of momentary truce, and as one they separated to their respective existence, no longer part of one another any more than they had been for last few months since his betrayal. Without meeting her eyes, he redressed and tucked his zanpakutou into the belt of his hakama, noting with a faint flutter that she had done damage to the fabric itself. He looked up and saw that he had done much the same to her own clothes, but somehow she looked more disheveled than he.

Opening his mouth to bid her farewell, she cut him off and told him she was tired of seeing his retreating back as he abandoned her again and again; she was tired of the desolate feeling that he left in her heart when she had to return. He thought she would tell him that she wanted to go with him, and prepared to tell her once more that he couldn't let her come. However, she was (as she was so often these days) full of surprises.

Turning her back on him this time, she spoke over her shoulder with more strength than she knew she had possessed. Too long she had watched him leave her; too long she had spent crying over his betrayal. She had betrayed her ideals, her dignity, and her treasured love for him by meeting him in dark corridors and cold alleys. For this one time, for this last time, she would walk away from him and leave him to watch her retreating back.

He had thought he hadn't enough of a heart left to break, until she told him that the next time she would see him would be at the opposite end of her sword. For the first time, his cool, controlled demeanor shattered around him as she left him alone in the darkness with the accusing glare of the moon to shine on his silver hair. For the first time, he expressed regret for neglecting her, for never expressing anything more than casual acquaintence. He choked first on the sound of her name (a terrible taste of his own medicine, he supposed) before he managed to string the sounds together into coherent syllables that ricocheted around the alley before striking him like a thousand pricks of her sword.

It had never been a question of whether or not the whole, fragile mess would come crashing down around him, simply a matter of time before it happened. It had been, as it had always been, a train wreck waiting to happen; waiting for her to lose her patience with heartbreak and try to heal herself.

"Ran… gi… ku."

But the only ones who could hear the confession of guilt in his tone were the cold stars that kept him his solitary company.

End