Notes: This is for mysocalledhell on LJ's Birthday and her prompt included a go on the rating, "Dance in the Moonlight", and she let me indulge in either Tenpou and Byakuya or Urahara and Grimmjow. I guess Tenpou was louder with what he wanted. The funny thing is that this has mixed up with stuff I've learned from the Zanpakutou Arc in Bleach, rereading how Tenpou died in Gaiden, and seeing Byakuya be pretty much the central character in the two big filler arcs in the anime, both Bounto and the Zanpakutou. It's intriguing seeing how much they rely on him, though given how popular he is.

I've edited this so that there is no completely explicit stuff, so it's more R rated than X or PG. If you want the fully explicit versions you'll have to go to my livejournal (just liralen) or my y!gallery for the full version. I've changed the rating on the whole fic to accommodate this chapter.

- Liralen Li

It was my hair tie that undid me.

I had been just fine for the rest of the day after Kuchiki-sama's tea ceremony. We'd finished off a second sipping of a thinner version of the powdered tea, had a few light, sweet snacks, and packed up all his equipment to take back with us to his mansion. I'd changed back into my everyday clothing of jeans, button shirt, tie, and a lab coat; and with nothing specific to do, had gone to the garden to smoke.

I was barefoot indoors, having left my shoes at the front door, and I don't like tabi on wood floors, as much as tradition dictates it. I hate it when my feet slide on the floor. I found my way to the garden in the center. The four hallways of the Kuchiki main building were all built around a central garden with trees, stones, flowers, plants, and a small pond with a bridge. I slid open an inner wall, and sat on the polished wooden walkway under the trees.

The sakura were just beginning to bloom. The dark buds had just begun to open, showing pink and white edges. There was still snow piled in the shade of the north sides of the trees, the building, the walls. The fragrance crept through the winter black branches, and I could close my eyes and pretend the air was filled with the soft, floating petals, the death of the flowers, delicate, and ephemeral, brushed and crushed by the slightest of touches.

My long hair floated in a breeze, brushing against my face, my mouth, and even crept under my glasses, so I reached into one of the lab coat pockets and pulled out my hair tie and had it halfway twisted about my hair when I remembered.

Remembered my bare feet on a wooden floor, the blood splatter across paper walls, dried ramen stacked in the cupboard, empty pockets, and my extra pair of glasses that I never could find. I remembered the feel of the katana grip in my hands, and how beautiful the thread of blood along the opened throat of the solder had seemed to me. The precise storm of cuts I had laid down, destroying most of the Western Army of Heaven, the numbing fire of the cuts they landed on me, and then I flashed to the feeling of my guts bursting from my stomach. I wrapped my arms around myself, knowing the scar was still there. I grinned without humor. Twice, now.

Twice I'd felt my own intestines squirm between my fingers. Everyone dies alone: it's only when someone comes that you live. I remembered Gojyo finding me the second time on the road in the rain, and my grip relaxed a little.

I felt in my pocket. My goddamned pockets. So many in this lab coat, and I pulled out the packet of cigarettes, knocked out a smoke. I found a metal lighter in another, and with a rasp of steel against flint, I had flame.

I pulled the flame into the tube of paper and tobacco and lit the cigarette. I breathed the smoke in deep, and let the clarity and calm it gave me take the shakes away. It was almost like I wanted to commit seppeku the old-fashioned way, blade through the gut... but no one to back me up, each time.

I was always backing you up. Kanaan's soft voice reminded me of soft arms and softer lips all hiding a fate as sharp as cloud-edged steel. I hefted her grip quietly.

I hadn't always been alone. Not always, but I ached with that loneliness of meeting my death again only surrounded by my enemies and my weapon, of knowing that I'd probably have to die again, soon, to make this place safe from invasion by the Armies of Heaven.

"The moon is beautiful tonight."

The low voice startled me. I looked up. The moon hung low by the roof, looking huge and silvery pale.

"It is." I knew it to be a short answer, but I couldn't trust my voice. I sucked another long, slow drag from the cigarette, letting the smoke flow slowly from my lungs to drift into the dark.

I leaned back against the pillar, and the shadow of Kuchiki Byakuya settled beside me. The pale beauty of his face could have rivaled that of the moon.

I knew my Gojun was a jealous lover, but what dragon isn't possessive? They think in terms of keeping things for centuries, but even marriage vows end with death. For an immortal and many-lived dragon, however, death was as impermanent as tissue paper. He'd forgiven me my marriage with Kanaan, as I had been simply mortal, forgetful of previous lives as I should be; and Kanaan had been my other half, completing my soul in a way that I now realized was just a shadow of what could be.

Gojun was not here. None of my companions were here. I was once again alone, as alone as I had been in that mountain castle, surrounded by the thousand dead I had created in my rage, as alone as I had been in that wooden compound in Heaven, sliding on the wetness of my own blood as I'd savored one last cigarette.

I savored the last of this one, letting the calm clarity it gave me flow through me, and I watched those pale features as I stubbed out the last coal and slipped the stub into my pocket.

If I touched this cool noble, it would be with all my memories intact. I hungered for contact. Gojun knew my nature, knew my flaws. I starved for all the good things Byakuya shown me that afternoon, everything from the delicacies of his kitchen to the silken texture of his skin. This close to him, I could sense that there was something under that cool, hard exterior, like the shadow of fish swimming under ice.

I suddenly realized that the hunger, the loneliness of being so different, the pain over losing the people that were closest to me were not just my emotions. They were his as well.

My eyes widened, and they must have caught the moon, as Byakuya turned toward me.

I could see his pupils were blown, as dark as the night sky, edged in pewter gray. He desired me, he wanted me against that yawning loss. I let my longing guide me, touched two fingertips along the edge of his jaw and then down his throat, feeling the steady strength of his pulse. His skin felt as smooth as I had imagined, newly shaven. I leaned in close and breathed in that wild rich hint of sakura.

I hesitated, looking into his eyes. He looked back, glanced down at my lips, closed the gap, and touched his lips to mine, so gently, like the touch of flower petals drifting on a breeze, sweet but warm with life.

I took a shaking breath and kissed him back, trying to meet gentleness with gentleness, but my loneliness, my hunger made me groan. I kissed him far more deeply and roughly than I intended. His mouth parted under mine and I delved deep, his breathing grew as ragged as mine, and his slid fingers up into my hair to pull me closer and kiss me with a hunger that equaled mine.

When the kiss broke we were both breathing heavily, and I looked deeply into his eyes. He didn't flinch away, didn't look down, and met my look evenly.

"Do you want this?" he asked quietly.

I gave an abrupt nod. "Yes. I want you."

The words drew the corner of his lip up and I laughed. I'd made him smile. I kissed him again, my hands sliding along his slenderness, pulling his body close to mine. This time he was the one that moaned a moan that sounded as if it were dragged involuntarily from him. The edged pain of loneliness that had filled the air about us both flared and crisped in the heat of his sudden need. My fingers flew to the fastenings of his kimono and yanking at the formal knot in his obi. He stilled, so I stopped to look at him.

"Here?" he asked. "My bedroom is warmer."

"It is also filled with memories, is it not?" I asked.

His breath caught, his eyes closed for a moment, and suddenly he was on me. Hands brushing away my lab coat, pulling off my tie, working at my shirt beneath until he growled and yanked. Buttons popped and bounced everywhere on the wood, and then his hands were against my skin, trying to stroke everywhere. I laughed softly, and teased away at the knot that had frustrated my every yank. It came loose, silk sliding in a whisper, and I peeled away his hakama before parting the robes underneath.

His fingers were at the fastening of my jeans, and with a sudden burst of reiatsu, the top button came right off.

"You're going to have to get me new clothing after this," I said breathlessly.

He didn't answer, and the zipper for my pants came reluctantly undone. I closed my eyes and could feel that normally hidden runnel of humor running fast and hot now with unheard laughter. His intent as sharp as it had been on the battlefield with the monster. He moved as quickly and decisively in this as he had in the fight. He peeled the stiff denim down and tossed my pants and underwear to the side. He bent, and his silken hair brushed against my already tight belly and then...

"Oh gods!" I cried and arched. I hadn't known he was into men, but between the earlier look and this, I now had no doubt.

Youth has certain characteristics that one forgets when one gets older. "Ku-- Byakuya, if you keep... ngh... that's so good... I'm gonna... oh, gods... Byakuya..."

He read my growing tension, my bewildered surge of sexual need, and moved faster, harder over me. I snapped and came, bucking, crying out, my hands hard against his shoulder.

I lay back dazed, as he kissed along the scar on my belly, moved further up and pausing to nuzzle at cold and desire hardened nipples. I whimpered softly at the sensation, and he sighed as he slid to lie completely over me. His opened silks settling about us like a cloud, even as the hard heat of his body rested against mine. Chest to chest, belly to belly, his arousal nudging hotly against my thigh.

"You're not wearing one of those damned cloth things," I observed sleepily, knowing that the release was loosening my tongue and not giving much of a damn.

He chuckled, "No, I am not."

"You planned this, didn't you?"

Another of those silences and I could feel him studying me. "I had... hoped." That last word sounded so reluctant, that my throat tightened at the thought of how many things this man hadn't allowed himself to hope.

I wrapped my arms around his slender strength, and opened my hands to slide them both down his back, feeling every inch of his smooth, silken skin enveloping hard muscle. His longing and delight at being so deliberately touched wrapped about me. I didn't stop at his narrow waist, instead moving all the way down to caress the hard muscles of his ass, and then pull him closer. He gasped, his aching need flashing high, and he bit off a moan even as he rubbed up against me.

"Maybe it's the moonlight," I said whimsically. "I'm willing. Do you want me? With a present like what you just gave me, I'm willing to give you that." I felt him shudder in my hold, disbelief falling to wonder. "You have oils?"

"Aye," he said softly.

"Good tactical planning," I said with a laugh. "Have you done this to a man before, Kuchiki-sama?"

"Just... call me Byakuya, as you did before" he returned evenly. "I believe we have become intimate enough to use given names, Tenpou. And, yes, I have, though more in my youth than at present."

"Ah," I sighed and lay back, his regard so clear and sharp I could close my eyes and still know how and where he looked at me.

His hands were cool, steady and sure on me, and I head his soft intake of breath, felt the heat of his wonder and desire, as his hands made me twist and moan. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. "I want you, Byakuya, please," I let the hint of begging show amid my thread-bare control. "Now. Before I go again. I want you in me."

He lowered his mouth to mine again and I kissed back. I slid my hand up against his jaw, feeling the pulse hammering in the slim column of his throat, letting myself feel all my need of him, my want of his strength on me. I positioned myself, and cried out even as he moaned, and for just a moment I couldn't breathe, couldn't say a word, my body shuddering, bucking with the pleasure that was echoed back from him. His lips bent to mine, and he kissed me, slow and sweet, tasting the frantic flutter of my gasps.

"A--… all right," I whispered. "Now. You can… ahhh."

He moved, and the rhythm and purpose behind the motions took my breath away. He went on and on and on until I lost all track of everything about me. I finally reached for myself, and at the motion, he moved, slender long fingers under mine. He caught on quickly, pulling and stroking until I could do nothing but keen as my tension built again, stroke after stroke in me and on me.

"Come, beautiful one, come with me," Byakuya murmured, the strain of holding his own release off suddenly clear to my hearing. His need to please me as clear as the fraying of his own control.

My body tightened to the point of snapping, and I arced there for one slice of forever before I broke, shattered, crying out Byakuya's name as my body bucked and heaved around him, and that was when I felt him snap as well, coming silently.

He collapsed on top of me, body still moving, once, twice, thrice, to stop with a shudder. I wrapped my legs, my arms about him, pulling him close, hands stroking his back soothing now instead of urging him on. He sighed against my throat and I slid my fingers into this thick, long hair.

There was something that tasted like the edge of tears in his power, of something contained so long and now cracked like the ice on the spring pond, and I held him, wondering. I felt his lips brush my collarbone, his eyelids rub against my pulse, and while he was still utterly silent, I felt the trickle of tears down my skin. I didn't dare acknowledge it, it was too much like acknowledging his pleasure at the tea. Instead, I just held him, trying to wrap the comfort of my sated desire, my content about him, relaxing into his warm weight upon me.

When he finally sighed again, rubbing his face against my throat to dry off the tears, I had my eyes closed when I felt him draw back to look at me. The feeling of him laughing softly at me was so strong that when his fingertips touched my face, I opened my eyes and saw, clearly, the amusement within his and a care I hadn't realized I wanted until tears stung my eyes as well.

He leaned down over me, smooth lips brushing my ear rim so that I shivered as he breathed, "Thank you."

He pulled from my body, gently, but inevitably. I unbent and sighed, feeling glad, all of a sudden, to be alive. I laughed suddenly at that thought. "I'm dead, aren't I?" I asked. "And here I was thinking that I was so glad to be alive to share this moment with you."

Byakuya looked at me as he sat up, draping some of his robes over my bare skin, the warmth from his body caressing mine. "Alive or dead, we have shared this moment. It may not matter which you are, so long as you are," he said slowly.

I nodded, reaching up to stroke one lock of his long black hair, admiring how the moonlight shone from the glossy strands. "I am glad you invited me, and that I was curious enough to follow your desire. Otherwise I would probably be chained somewhere in the Emperor's Heaven awaiting the judgment I asked for when I was mortal."

Byakuya's eyes narrowed and one hand caught my jaw. "Do you deserve such treatment?"

I met his eyes. "Yes."

He didn't seem surprised at all. That surprised me.

"I killed a lot of people that didn't deserve to die, along with those that did," I said quietly. "I wanted the death, the ending that I thought awaited me, so that I could join those that I had lost." The keen, flickering edge of the rage I'd felt both times came back to life within me, and I felt Kanaan sigh a low sigh. "I was given absolution by the gods, by a priest, and yet... I still can't forgive myself for not having followed them."

"What would be enough for you?" he asked.

I startled at the curiosity within him and the feeling that he was looking for some kind of answer for himself as well. Confronted with the fact that he had lost others as well, I bit my tongue on my answer: I enjoyed this time with you, but send me on to find them. I would be a bad example for him.

Instead I asked, "You, do you have someone you wish to avenge?"

He frowned. "No, I do not."

"But you lost someone..."

He nodded. "It was not my fault," he said as if he'd practiced saying it often enough that he could.

I closed my eyes against the pain that still stabbed through his emotions. "Why don't you believe what you say?"

"How can you know that?"

"I don't... I feel..." I opened my eyes to spread my hand over his heart. "You hurt so badly, and I don't understand why I can feel it, why I feel nearly everything you feel."

"She died of an illness, and I nearly killed her sister, my adopted sister, in pursuit of the law as it was given to me by a... rebel, one who had killed my true superiors," he said quietly, and I had to take a deep breath against the agony that ripped through him at that, none of which showed on his face. "I was stopped from doing the will of the rebel by a boy who said that the law be damned, if it would hurt his sister."

I laughed. "I loved my sister, did you know?"

He shook his head. "I did not know."

"I married my sister," I said, evenly, and met his shocked gaze. "We were twins, orphans that had been placed in two different families, but when I found her again, I married her. We were very happy."

Kanaan laughed softly within my head, connected even more closely to me than when she'd been alive. I stroked her hilt.

"What happened?"

"A youkai king stole her and raped her and begat a child upon her. When the men of my village would not help me save her, I killed them, and then I went up and killed the nine hundred and ninety nine youkai in the castle that held her, whereupon she killed herself. I still don't know why she did that. I think... in some way it was part of my payment that I did that. That I loved like that. I don't know. Now I have her again." I proffered the hilt.

"Your zanpakutou?" Byakuya frowned, but did not reach to touch her. "That is..."

"... like the rest of my life," I said softly and laughed as I sheathed her again. "Very fucked up." I looked at him with my head tilted a little to the side. "I am not your answer, Kuchiki-sama. I am very fond of you, and enjoy your beauty as much as you have enjoyed mine, but my answer should not be yours."

He simply sat there in the moonlight, beautiful lips frowning. I leaned forward and kissed him lightly on those lips, and he sighed and leaned into the gentle caress, his hand warm against my skin. I broke the kiss and said, "Even shudo bows to the needs and demands of family and clan."

I felt him freeze. The control suddenly forming once again over all those feelings and needs. I drew back.

"It does," he said softly and pulled his robes back over his shoulders before sitting in the moonlight for a moment longer. He looked at me and then asked, "Has anyone ever provided for you the mentoring that is involved in shudo?"

I blinked in surprise and thought for a long moment before answering, "Yes." Gojun had taught me as well as he could, both in the bedroom and in the political world of Heaven. I had simply been a very reluctant scholar of the politics, and both of us had felt there was little I could learn in terms of battle capability.

"And they did not correct you with respect to your activities?" Byakuya asked, cool eyes watching me.

I laughed softly. "I think he tried, but when the full horror of what they had been done was clear to him, I like to think that he joined us in our little rebellion, though it was not so clear. We tried..." My voice broke on the word and I coughed to regain my control. "Tried to keep him clear of it, but he ended up writing a report to his superiors."

"Did he write the truth?"

"As he saw it." I nibbled the edge of my thumbnail, longing for another smoke. "But it didn't stop... anything. One of my friends was imprisoned for hundreds of years, the others thrown into mortality from Heaven, and he..." I had to take a breath. "He was so physically crushed he died within weeks of writing the report and no one saved him. There were gods and goddesses that could have healed him with the hem of their gown; but he died."

"Do you know if he chose to or was left to die?" The question was asked so dispassionately I glanced up at Byakuya, but the ice was back and more solid than before. I could not tell what he was thinking or feeling anymore.

"He chose so, I believe. Without justice, he felt no need to stay."

"So he did provide you an example. He chose death instead of duty to a flawed ruler."

I hadn't thought of it that way.

"So we return to my original question, what would be enough? You died twice already, and even your spirit form holds onto this scar." Byakuya's fingers ran over the skin of my scar on my belly. "How many deaths will finally appease you, if not your Heaven?"

"A thousand?" I asked, as I finally thought it through. "That... that doesn't make any sense, does it? Some deserved what they got, but to start counting and to not stop makes no sense."

"Do your old companions still need you?"

That gave me pause as well. "Their lives no longer hang on my presence, no, but..."

The silence was as patient as the moon above us, and as clear.

I sighed and felt Kanaan whisper in my mind. You have everything you need here. You have me. Our inner world is beautiful here. You should see it, it's like the cottage we set up together when we were married. You don't have to go back to that messed up universe. What would them waiting a few years do? They'll still exist. Like you they are as unlikely to find enlightenment so soon. Here we could be together again, and I'd be happy if you had this handsome man as your sword brother as well. Gojun can have you when he gets you again, but this one... wouldn't he be worth having for a while as well?

The temptation was terrible. I had never felt at all guilty about my relationship with Kanaan, we'd loved each other far too much for it to be wrong in my mind, but to take advantage of this man and this stability we'd found...

"... but I would endanger you and yours. My mere presence here would bring a kind of conflict you haven't seen before from another heaven. A collision of two worlds that weren't meant to meet."

There, the words were out of my mouth.

He looked at me. "You have no idea what kinds of conflict I have seen, Tenpou."

I gaped at him like a fish. He raised one eyebrow and then ran a finger down my jaw and lifted my chin. I finally closed my mouth and shivered a little as I was cold, as nude as I was in the early spring chill. I pulled on my lab coat, the only thing still whole in the pile of my clothing, and stilled as he pulled off one of his robes to cover me as well.

Finally I said, "You are correct. I do not know anything about what you have fought, only that I think you would do it well. For all I know you could have taken thousands of foes down without blinking one of those long eyelashes of yours."

The runnel of humor was there again, and I relaxed. "Perhaps you know more than you think."

I looked at him, thinking of him in a running battle with a thousand of his hungry ghosts. It fit his fighting style more than I'd realized. "Perhaps. Would you trust me if I said that it would be easier, all around, if you let me actually kill myself?"

"That which is easy is not always worth doing," he said, maddeningly. "Do you not ask that of your sister sometime? Why did she kill herself instead of staying with you?"

Why did you do that? I asked inside my head. I felt Kanaan shrink away for a bit and then sigh.

Because I had no place in that life of yours, there were powers that would not allow you to be happy after what had happened in Heaven, and I was one of the pieces of their revenge upon you.

Rage flared within me, cold and edged, and I saw Byakuya's nostrils flare in the wake of it. So he really could sense my mood as well.

It doesn't have to be that way anymore, she said softly. This way we're both out of their hands.

But what of the others, will they not suffer the consequences of having me out of reach?

I do not know, but I do know that many regarded your harsh journey and the prize you regained in return as payment enough. You can't blame the others for a choice you make to remain in pain. You killed the most souls in Heaven, there are reasons your life was that harsh, but it is done.

Then why do they still haunt me? The memory of the two goons from yesterday was still vivid in my mind.

I said most were satisfied, but you know how things get in Heaven even better than I do.

I did, indeed. Not everyone moved simply to the Emperor's whims, everyone had their own agenda, their own reasons. Maybe sending those two back would be all there would be.

And what did Sanzo, Gojyo, and Goku teach you, Tenpou? What is the best thing you remember of your companions?

I bowed my head. To survive. To live and to savor life. That no matter what life threw at us, we'd beat it by going on.

I'd spent a whole lifetime surviving at all cost, and the habit was hard to break, for all my talk. I looked at the man before me, he might make survival possible.

"Are you suggesting that I become an apprentice shinigami, and serve here until I get killed in the line of duty?" I asked feeling the press of approval from Kanaan.

"I am," Byakuya said quietly.

I closed my eyes. "Will you be my mentor and accept a shudo relationship with me?"

"So long as you do not report directly to me, yes."

"What?" I opened my eyes at that.

"There are still too many emotions fraught in shudo, and there are plenty of other Captains you could serve in a military sense. You didn't..." He trailed off, looking at me uncertainly.

I didn't say anything about serving under Kenren. At all. However, I suspect that my own amusement must have shown as he covered his eyes with one hand.

"We will not go there, Tenpou."

"Right." I sat there a moment, still getting used to the whole idea. The feeling that this man wanted to bring me into his society, be a part of his universe, with rules of conduct I'd probably never even realize I broke until I was well over the line.

I wondered if he knew how distant I felt from most of humanity, how set apart I'd always been. Then I remembered how lonely he'd felt when we first started our love-making, how everyone in his compound treated him, and having seen his capacity for battle, I had to rethink that. Maybe this man, of all men, knew what it was like.

"I will stay then, Kuchiki Byakuya, for as long as my strength holds out."

"Our strength, Tenpou Gensui, for you will have mine to support you as well." Byakuya stretched and sighed. "Will you not come inside now? For all that the moonlight is beautiful, I would find a warmer place to share with you."

I stood, shrugging off my lab coat, and putting on the robe he'd set on me. I emptied the pockets deliberately, and put what I found into the sleeves of the silken kimono I now wore. With only two I wouldn't lose things into them. New ways, new duties, and a new life along with a new possibility at a connection I could cherish.

Perhaps it would be as transient as the blooming of a cherry tree, but it would be just as worthwhile to savor while I had it.

"Let's go."