Disclaimer: Kubo Tite owns Bleach. I borrow his characters for entertainment purposes only.
Duty
In the first few seconds of consciousness, when his mind is still muddled with sleep, Ichigo does the natural thing and turns his head towards where his husband should be. It always breaks his heart a little more when even in those few precious seconds, the bed is empty where a warm sleep body should lay. It still shatters him like a shock, crawling under his skin until he wants to scream in frustration. Not that Byakuya has slept in their bed for some time now.
He almost chokes on the pain for that infinitesimal second when he wishes he could see Byakuya's body right next to him, where their legs could fall tangled and warm breath would caress damp skin and his tongue would taste the salty skin, mapping certain features that only his husband has. There would be the big shoulders, which cover Ichigo in a protective stance, melting his bone in possessive embraces and soothingly shouldering his burdens. He could taste muscles made by God and worshipped by him, he would trace that inconspicuous flavor next to the collarbone, and he would melt that heart under shy fingertips pressing gently against it, muscles above muscles. Then he would press furthermore into the wild grey eyes that even now mesmerize him completely. He would find his husband. His soul mate. Or maybe not.
Ichigo sighs and wakes up now for good in an almost robotic way. For the past year, it is the only he has managed to live. Seven paces from his husband's bedroom. He knows this because he has counted them one night when Byakuya slept somewhere else. In another's bed. Away from him. And maybe he deserves this. Maybe they both deserve this, lying in the ruins of what was once the most beautiful love story. But people grow out of love, right? They fall in and then fall out.
Not them.
Not us. It shouldn't happen to us.
He shouldn't look at his husband and see a stranger under those beloved features. He shouldn't see those eyes looking at him in a blank expression.
You taste like everything I ever wanted, his husband once told him and Ichigo believed him. He believed himself when he said that oath. For better or for worse, for richer, or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.
Or until we let the moronic routine of an every day's existence change our souls and love forever, transforming us into simple robots with no illusion that this right here would end sooner or later. That paying bills and going for work, sometimes ten to twelve hours a day, eats at the core of everything we have ever been until we don't even know ourselves.
He jumps under the shower, letting the cool water drain his thoughts. Like this would be possible. Even this despondency is part of the routine for the last year. It chews at his soul everyday. Even Chad told him to fuck off home and forget about everything else. Like that was possible.
It shouldn't hurt so badly by now. He should have been numb with all this pain, dozed up by unassuming rel- whatever this has turned to.
"It's over," he whispered the other night to Renji in a fit of despair, petrified that saying this out loud might really turn it into a reality. What a joke!
"You can't be serious." Renji looked at him incredulous. "It's you, the legendary lovey-dovey couple. If you don't resist then I am done. Fuck love and all this bullshit."
"It was beautiful while it lasted." Ichigo philosophized under another cup of sake.
"Do you even hear yourself?" Renji pushed a little bit the volume of the last sentence. "Ichigo, I know you for twenty fucking years. Out of those twenty years, more than fifteen you have spent loving this guy. And now you tell me this?" His anger shimmered brightly in those velvety eyes. Renji had always been beautiful in his moments of passion. "Fuck you! Both of you, for that matter! You don't even fight against whatever got into you."
"We have never had to fight. It has always been easy for us."
"Well, maybe this has been the wrong thing all along right there." Renji took that cup of sake, drank it, and then looked fiercely at Ichigo: "You have to fight for it, Ichigo. Don't give up. Just… do what you have to do. You have always been my hope, man. Don't take that away from me."
Ichigo shakes his head under the spray. He wishes he could have found something wise to tell Renji but the truth is he didn't know what happened either. Maybe they married too young, but then again, for them everything has gone so easily. Now he is thirty-three, with a vet cabinet and nice co-workers, doing the thing he loved, with a nice house and a nice car, and he can brag about his husband who is an engineer, creating fantastical metal structures for others to build.
They worked. They always worked, even in those first years where Ichigo had been only seventeen and almost stuttered when he said 'hello' back to the older man sitting in front of him and looking at Ichigo as if he was the eighth wonder of the world. By the end of the that first night, people would laugh at them for being sappily in love at first sight, but Byakuya would just smile mysteriously, take Ichigo's hand and kissing it, before let it fall into his.
They have always fallen into each other, more profusely than it should normally happen to two ordinary human beings. They supported each other and carried each other through so many things. They fought for everything they had and even when their families didn't agree upon their relationship, they moved on, loved each other more, compelling all the others to believe in them. They moved in together, picking everything with such care that their friends laughed at them. It's like you're nesting, they used to joke. However, Byakuya would take his hand in that familiar gesture of his and kissed it and Ichigo would feel the king of the world.
And when Byakuya proposed marriage at his graduation ceremony, that right there had been the most glorious moment in Ichigo's life. Now here they are: one house, two nice cars, a ten year old marriage and seven steps of a distance between them which feels like the worst black hole in the entire universe.
Ichigo gets out of the shower, rubbing furiously his body. He is angry with himself. He hasn't seen this coming, he hasn't seen when his husband has stopped touching him, when Byakuya forgot to mention that he would be late for work, when Ichigo would stay up late for a small furry patient of his. He didn't notice when the tight hugs became small pats on the back, then small caresses of hands and then nothing. It didn't occur to him to ask why his husband hasn't slept with him for more than half a year before moving down the hall, ignoring the solitude which crept silently around them. He stopped talking, stopped breathing whenever he was around his husband.
Until death do us part.
Or whenever we decided that what we had wasn't worth fighting anymore.
He steps into some sweats and a black t-shirt, ignoring his unmade bed. It's Saturday anyway and Chad told him he would take care of everything this weekend. Ichigo feels like wallow in self-pity. That always works. He gets out of his room, looks further down the hall. He could take those seven steps. What is so hard about it anyways? They should forget about choosing the guilty one or a moment when they ruined everything they had. They should let that anger out and talk about it, find a common ground, if they are both willing to do this step.
Both. But what if Byakuya isn't?
Ichigo shakes his head again, choosing the opposite direction, and going downstairs for some cereals and some cartoons in the morning. Why should he take the first step? Why can't his husband for once break that vow of silence and stop punish Ichigo for whatever he has done and just tell him that he doesn't love him anymore in stead of playing this charade?
He eats his cereals in front of the TV, knowing full well that his husband is already gone. Maybe he hasn't even spent his night at home, but those things are beyond his control now. Or are they?
"You should eat something healthier. You got thinner." The gravely voice startles him so bad that he almost chokes on his cereals while Byakuya watches him with a surprised look on his face. It takes him several breaths and a sore throat to whisper.
"You know me, always a lazy lump on Saturdays and Sundays."
"It hasn't happened that for a while." His husband replies and for the first time Ichigo notices he is dressed just like him, which brings a certain grim satisfaction. He bites back that bitter 'how would you know?' and observes rather maturely, he might say.
"I thought you weren't at home."
"Where would I be?" There is genuine confusion on Byakuya's face and Ichigo bites back again that anger.
Where indeed. Rukia's apartment. Your parents' country home. Renji's rented flat. A stranger's bed.
His husband pulls something from the fridge and makes himself a sandwich, which he eats alone at the countertop, not saying anything else to Ichigo and all of a sudden, he is not hungry anymore. He puts the bowl down on the black coffee table biting his lips harshly and trying to draw his breath in. Tears of frustration and loneliness whirl in his eyes making him dizzy with the need to cry out all his pain.
Byakuya is almost out of the room, Ichigo with his back at him. It is now or never. There might never be a moment like this. And if he doesn't speak now… sixteen years. Half of his life.
"You know," Ichigo turns and looks at his husband letting every little feeling readable on his face and stunning his husband into silence, "when I said until death do us part, I immediately thought and beyond. I wasn't going to let something like death come between us. I was going to face God and tell him something like: Look here, God, now I know that you might think little of me, after all I am just a damn mortal, but see this man here? My existence has no sense without him and there is nothing you can do to stop me from spending eternity with him. You got that? And he would laugh to my face because you know, he's God and all that, but he would let me have you because God is love and he would admire a love like ours."
Tears fall one by one on his cheeks, his husband still petrified in the doorway, looking as if he doesn't know what to believe.
"So I need you now to tell me where I have done wrong. When was that moment when you thought that you can't be with me anymore, that you hated me so much that you had to move into another room because this… this distance between us is killing me, Byakuya. It is literally killing me. So tell me, I just want to know."
"Why now?"
"Because if I don't speak now, then this is it, Byakuya. There won't be another chance to this." The grey eyes widen a little in shock and for several seconds they stare at each other, somehow Ichigo praying that his husband still has enough affection for him to be willing to do this.
Please.
"I don't hate you, Ichigo." Byakuya finally whispers, taking a deep breath and slowly moving away from the doorway, which Ichigo takes as a positive sign. At least his husband is willing to discuss it with him. "I never did." He sits down on the couch but doesn't touch Ichigo and there's barely space between them but there's so much more than this. How can two people that love each other so much fail so spectacularly at being together?
"Then what is it? What have I done?"
"I don't think there is just you into his department. It is just that we both let it fall, believing that it will always be easy to regroup. And to a certain extent it has been. But then we stopped all together from trying and I believe I more than you.
"Why? What happened?" Ichigo wipes his tears trying to man up a little. "We used to be so great together."
"I think guilt had something to do with it."
"Guilt?" Ichigo's heart is gripped tight and pushed all back down to his stomach, making his all body churn with anxiety.
"At the beginning there were the small things. You have been with me since high school, never had another man in your life and you haven't experimented much during your college years either. Then we got married right after graduation and for a while, I thought that this was what you wanted. By then I was working for that firm, I was earning quite nicely, you started your practice as a vet, and for a while I thought that this was it. This was paradise."
"It was for me." Ichigo murmurs and Byakuya smiles shallowly, never reaching his eyes.
"But then when I moved at this firm about three years ago, I started working a lot and coming back home late but I thought it was all right. I could buy you more things, give you more, anything to keep you next to me. However, the more things I bought, the more distanced you became. And gradually I became frustrated: why couldn't you see that I worked for you, that I wanted to offer you all the things that your parents denied you."
"But I didn't want things." Ichigo interrupts him. "All I wanted was you. Remember when we used to live during my college years in that small ratty apartment with those horrible neighbors of ours, which kept us awake at night with their stupid music? That was heaven for me. I still remember those times fondly because there was just you and me learning so much about each other and dreaming of something more. I still pass by that building from time to time, remembering the days, wishing sometimes to go back in time and do everything again."
"I know. But by then it was too late. You resented me for always being late, for forgetting anniversaries, and I resented you for not seeing through my eyes, for not understanding what I was trying to do."
"Have you slept with somebody else?" Ichigo blurts out, letting everything out. Byakuya sighs and slips his hands through his hair.
Please, don't. Pretty please, don't.
"I didn't, but I thought about it."
Well, that hurts.
Byakuya's honest eyes look at him and there's a new vulnerability in his eyes, which wasn't there before.
"I didn't go trough because I thought that if I did that, there wouldn't be any way to get back to you."
Analyze, analyze, get past this searing pain just thinking that his husband, his soul mate thought about someone else even for a second.
"What about you?" The question comes abruptly and rather possessively and Ichigo is startled but he smiles sadly.
"Nope, didn't even cross my mind."
It is a low blow for the honesty, with which they are discussing this, but it hurts. So much. Indeed Byakuya has been the only man in his life and that counts for something in his book. However to know that those grey eyes were blown with lust for even just a second at the prospect of having someone else instead of him, well, it rips something deep within Ichigo.
"Maybe there's no hope for us anymore." He mumbles disgusted with the words themselves.
"You really think that?"
"Well, look at us. We are two strangers. There is nothing left for us anymore. We sleep in different rooms, eat at different hours, come and go as we please. Not even roommates do that. We don't talk, we don't touch. We are just two entities living in the same house. That is all."
"I miss your touch." Byakuya says and little by little comes closer to Ichigo. One elegant finger touches Ichigo's hand, just a minute touch but it feels like heaven. "I miss the way you would feel under me. I miss the way your hand would wrap around mine, fingers intertwined. I miss everything about you, Ichigo. Never doubt that."
And there is that gesture again. Hand taken to those incredible lips, hand kissed gently like a promise oath that everything would turn for the better.
"We got comfortable," Byakuya says softly. "We got comfortable and we didn't work for it anymore. But if I thought even for a second that this was over, I would have moved out of the house completely. But my duty as a soul mate is to stay here. Right beside you, even if you don't need me anymore."
"I need you, I need you so much." Ichigo chokes on his own words even as Byakuya takes him in his arms, protecting him, holding him just like always. "Let's try to work this out." He whispers brokenly in his husband's neck, savoring the taste he takes with each brush of lips. "I still plan to tell my discourse to God and I really think we shouldn't give this up."
"It's not too late." Byakuya agrees with a certain wonder in his voice.
"It really isn't."
"Seal it with a kiss?" Byakuya asks and Ichigo chuckles brokenly because honestly it would be impossible to love anybody else. He looks at his husband and gently cups his face. There are new expression lines that are unknown to him. There are dark shadows under his eyes and a permanent frown, yet in those grey eyes, there is still so much love he can barely breathe.
There is nothing gentle about the kiss, only pure passion, and love and longing. And love. It takes some time to pull apart and when they do, Ichigo looks full of wonder to Byakuya who smiles for the first time in months.
"Come and sleep with me." He suggests. "I haven't slept well in months. Since you moved."
"Me neither."
Byakuya kisses him again and then they get up and go back upstairs. The bed is waiting for them and they comfortably settle, facing each other, somehow not being able to believe that it could be so easy. They aren't fine. Not by a long shot and there's still so much to say, so much to rebuild and restore. But then again when sleep overcomes the both of them, their hands are still clasped together.
They wake up a couple of hours later, legs tangled, a mass of sleep warm skin, not knowing where one ends and the other one begins, but with the conviction that they are going to make it.