Prologue: Almost

He lays his head on her lap, eyelids drooping over calm teal eyes, hands sprawled carelessly over her bed.

(Almost vulnerable. Almost.)

She dares to coil her fingers through his unruly white hair, exploring terrain, mapping him out. If he notices, he does nothing. His breathing is regular, tides that crash on a shore and draw back.

She knows the rules of their game.

(Detach but feel. Desire but not love. )

For although they draw close, so close in this dance of theirs, they pull away. Passion gives its way to cold greetings and formal inquiry, almost, almost, as if her memory was a continual delusion.

Kuchiki Rukia wishes, just once, it wasn't this difficult. He was here, with her, he was bare –

(Almost bare. Almost.)

But there were laws, there were traditions, there were rules.

The cold grips her like a vise, knots and lets go.

She closes her eyes.

(The games we play.)


He was a man of sparse words.

Careful, rational, cold.

(This is their third night)

He tries to understand why, meditating on the cold and the way her fingers thread through his hair. Why this crash course to disaster? Why he, why her-

For what are they, except broken? What do they say- the broken put themselves together?

Well, that was bullshit. They seemed only to dance at the brink of oblivion and he would be damned if he said it didn't hurt when she looked away from him by day, so casual, so much like a perfect stranger.

As if nothing could get through to her.

She is perfect in her distance. She is so achingly close.

(Almost, almost, almost)