Title: The Span of a Relationship, part four
Fandom: Bleach
Pairing: Ikkaku x Nemu
Rating: R for implied stuff
Warning: Spoilers toward the end for beginning of Soul Society arc. Some angst and vague adult situations.
Summary: A series of short drabbles using themes at IkkaNemu community
Disclaimer: I am not Kubo Tite, thus I do not own Bleach. I do not own these characters. I am only borrowing them for my own enjoyment.
Author's Note: First time I've added one of these, but just a couple of quick notes: I wanted to thank all of you who reviewed the previous three chapters; it was very kind of you to take the time to do so. A brief note on this chapter--I've switched to writing in present tense, mostly because of school and term papers requiring present instead of past tense. I kind of prefer writing in this tense, it turns out, and so I will be going back and editing the first three chapters to reflect this change. I just wanted to warn the readers ahead of time and apologize for the inconsistency since I have a feeling it will be a few days until I have the time to make the changes to reflect this preference in the earlier chapters. Hope you enjoy!
1. Consequences
"Have you thought through the consequences of these actions?" His voice contains no hint of his thinking as he holds his vice-captain's gaze.
She nods, once.
"Are you sure this is something you want?"
She nods again, more firmly this time.
His cigarette droops a bit and he pulls it from between his lips, his gaze changing slightly, seeming to focus on her more clearly.
"Why do you want this?"
She looks away now, eyes dropping to the floor as her hands unclasp before weaving back together again.
He waits, forehead wrinkling that implies the movement of an eyebrow up toward his horns, cigarette burning down between his thumb and forefinger.
"I would rather not say, Akon-san."
He thinks he might know, but he won't press. Still, it's an odd request and even if she seems to have no hesitation, he's not sure that he is ready to do this. He lifts the cigarette, taking another long, slow drag before speaking again.
"I'm not too sure about this, Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou."
She examines her interlocked fingers, licking her lips and taking a deep breath before she speaks.
"I am asking you this as a favor, Akon-san."
He pauses, trying to tilt his head to catch her eyes. He doesn't talk to the vice-captain much, has no reason to, and for her to suddenly come to him and request this...
So he does the only thing he can think to do. He drops his cigarette to the ground, snuffing it out with his heel, still trying to get her to look at him.
"If you're certain..."
She nods.
2. Blatant Hesitation
She may have sounded certain, but there is blatant hesitation in her movements. He kneels over her, deep furrows of concern forming between his eyes as he stared at her. Her head is turned away from him, her hands resting limp at her sides. She looks as if she is merely there, as if her soul has vacated this body and is far from this place. The line between his eyes deepens as he watches her, grazing his hands over her body. He has a technical knowledge of female anatomy, knows what touches will elicit what responses, and knows that his motions should be received with some acknowledgement.
"Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou?" He skims his palm over her bare thigh, leaning down so that she is forced to look at him, forced to see the man whose bare body is against her own.
Limpid green eyes stare back at him, unblinking, staring at him, past him, beyond him. She's not in this room, she's not under him, she's not feeling the sweep of his fingers over her body.
He wonders why she asked for this, why she stripped herself bare and laid herself down in front of him, if this is not what she really wanted. He can't begin to understand her reasoning, what would have driven her to think this was the right decision.
He tries, touching his mouth to the sensitive points on her body--the curve of her neck, the dip of her collarbone, the swell of a breast, the tip of her nipple--he attempts to draw her back. He strives to bring her back to herself, to feel him moving against her the way she asked him to, worked to evoke a reaction within her body to tempt her soul back to the surface.
He starts to slide inside her and winces at the lack of moisture, withdrawing and spitting into his palm, gliding it over his flesh before attempting the maneuver again. He buries himself in her, pressing and caressing in all the correct locations.
She doesn't respond, hasn't moved at all in the entire time he's touched her. The slight rise and fall of her chest is the only indication that she is still living.
He leans over her again, touching the side of her face gently.
"Are you done?"
He starts when she speaks. She's still not focused on him, still lost wherever she has escaped to, beyond his reach. This time he hesitates, trying to decide how he should answer her, what he should say to her. What she wants him to say to her.
"Hai, Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou." He pulls himself from her as he lies, sliding off her bed and tugging on his pants before she can note the evidence of his falsity. Tugging on the remainder of his uniform quickly he leaves, looking over his shoulder at her once to see that she hasn't moved. He's not sure she even noticed that he left her.
3. This heart
At some point after Akon has left she finally moves, turning onto her side slowly, tucking her arms against her chest and drawing her knees up close to her chest. She folds her body into the smallest shape possible, taking up a tiny corner of her bed.
Slowly her vision blurs, tears pooling to drop from her lashes and onto her pillow, but she makes no move to stop herself. She doesn't try and hide this weakness, safe in the privacy of her room from the judgmental eyes of her father. She allows herself this flaw, lets her tears fall in hopes that this will somehow let the pain leak out of her body.
This heart, she decides, is deficient. It hurts too much, though there is nothing physically wrong with it. Her father runs a scan of her systems every six weeks, and at her last check-up all of her systems were working as perfectly as they could ever be expected to. No, the problem with this heart is not physiological, she knows that much. The problem with this heart, this traitorous, broken heart, is that it longs for the one thing she will not let it have.
Her deviant, defecting heart will not let him go, yearns for the man she will not let herself have. Logic does not sway it; reasoning has no effect on it. No amount of cajoling, pleading, explaining will appease this heart. It holds her prisoner, aching and hurting in never ending reminder of her mistake.
Yes. It was a mistake. She should not have given in to her father's demands so easily. Nemu should have tried harder, tried to conceal it from her father. She should have tried to reason with him. And, even after she'd ended what they'd had, she should have tried harder to bridge the distance she'd put between them.
She's tried to forget him, but she cannot erase the memory of him from her soul. She's tried to numb herself against his effect on her and, as she has failed at everything else, she is unsuccessful at this endeavor as well.
Akon had been a final experiment, to see if she could bury the memory of Ikkaku's touch under the feel of Akon. But the sensation of the other man moving over her, touching her, kissing her, only made her heart ache more. It rebelled, raging at this imposter that she let near her, refusing to be gratified by a man who was, at best, a poor substitute for the 11th division 3rd seat.
Nemu is an imperfect creature, and knows that all of these mistakes are a result of her inadequacy. So she lives with this pain, this heart and it;s aching, because it is what she deserves for the decisions she's made.
4. Followed Without Question
The vice-captains follow their captains without question. It is a matter of duty, of loyalty. There is no vice-captain that will not follow his superior officers off the edge of a cliff. There is not a single vice captain who will not, without hesitation, throw their life away to protect the head of their division.
Perhaps this is why her father had insisted that she not form attachments to anyone. Attachments complicated. Attachments blur the certainty with which a vice-captain should act. Attachments create unnecessary difficulty within an officer's life, and Nemu marvels that anyone has ever before been capable of doing their job under the bonds of these multiple attachments.
She wonders to herself if she is really willing to do this to herself. Is she really going to allow affection for someone that is not her captain to ensnare her, to pull her in another direction? Is she going to let this heart, this soul, make a decision that her mind knows is illogical, dangerous, and hazardous?
She sits across from him in the next meeting, soul shattered and scattered, unable to think of anything except that she wants him to smile again.
And she realizes that it's not a matter of deciding that she will split her loyalty. Because that decision has long ago been made.
5. Fear That Which You Can't See
"Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou...can we talk?"
She doesn't look up from the table as people move around them, exiting the building where the vice-captain meeting is held. It's too dangerous too look at him, because she knows the power of his gaze will overcome the weakness of her will.
"Is there something wrong, Madarame-san?"
She feels more than sees him glance around the quickly emptying room, then watches out of the corner of her eye as the seat next to her--normally Kotetsu-san's spot--is pulled out and occupied by a much longer, leaner body.
"Sorta, yeah."
Her stomach knots painfully, excitingly, at his proximity and she drops her shaking hands into her lap, digging the nail of her thumb into her opposite palm.
"Oh, Madarame-san?"
He clears his throat, scooting his chair a bit closer to hers and rubbing his palms over his thighs. She watches this movement, eyes following the sweep of powerful hands over dark hakama. She hates herself for being so feeble, so easily captivated by things she shouldn't. She's always loved his hands--large, wide, rough, callused, strong, gentle, possessive, adoring. His hands had always been, for her, a map to his personality--everything that you wanted to know about him could be found in the lines and pattern and feel of his hands.
She tears her gaze back to her own tiny, ineffectual hands.
"Yeah. See..." He clears his throat again, one hand disappearing as he reaches up--to rub his neck, she knows, because she remembers that is one of his nervous habits.
She doesn't need to ask why he's nervous.
"Well, the thing is..." He lowers his voice and scoots his chair closer, and the space between them is so small now that when he turns his body toward her his knee grazes her own. She jumps, not for fear of the contact but afraid of the overwhelming desire for him to repeat the motion.
"...I miss you."
Her heart breaks and she shakes her head, a silent denial of his words.
"Why are ya shakin' your head? Are you saying no, I don't miss ya?"
She shakes her head again, trying to force the muscles of her throat to relax long enough to let her speak.
"So what're ya shakin' your head for?"
"You...you shouldn't be saying that, Madarame-san." Saying this hurts her more than anything in her life ever has. It seems that, when it comes to Ikkaku, she feels everything a bit too clearly, a bit more strongly.
"I had to tell ya." He reaches out, trying to touch her, but she stands so quickly her chair topples over behind her, keeping her head bowed low to obscure her eyes from his sight.
"Please..."
He stands, moving close to her but not trying to touch her again, and she can't decide if this new pain is from relief or disappointment.
"I just...I wanted to ask you if...if you might miss me too."
She's visibly shaking now and she knows that she needs to tell him that she doesn't. She needs to lie, to save him from that which he can't see. He might have thought he knew her father, knew what he was capable of, but he doesn't. And if it means destroying her heart, shattering the small pieces of her soul, she will lie to him to protect him from that.
"I..." Her voice breaks and she shakes her head, but the words won't leave her, remain trapped inside her chest. Nemu doesn't know when she started crying but the tears are dripping off her cheeks and she rubs at them, trying to destroy this evidence of her feelings.
This time when he reaches for her she can't pull away--knows that she should but can't--crying harder as he smoothes his thumbs over her damp cheeks and tilts her head back.
"Ya don't have ta say it." His words play over her cheeks and his lips graze hers once, softly, touching his forehead to her own as if this will help him to read her thoughts.
She squeezes her eyes shut, standing still for one long, endless, painfully short moment, before she jerks away, grabbing her paperwork and almost sprinting out of the building.
6. Intuition
Before everything happened...
...before he lost her...
...before he'd destroyed them...
...before he'd acknowledged his goal...
...before he'd reached for her...
...before she'd leaned into him...
...before she'd run away...
...he'd known her. Known her as he could only claim to know himself, and his zanpakuto. He'd been able to read her--before the end it had been as easy and effortless as knowing his own thoughts. There had been brief times when she would throw him for a loop, when she would surprise him, but those instances were usually her engineering, done on purpose to surprise him, and he'd learned to like that.
Ikkaku had known Nemu, could speak her silent language, could hear her unspoken desires, and listened to her as he listened to few others. And he could read her, read the slight play of her lips, the minor tilt of her eyebrows, the expressive yet hooded shade of her eyes. There was a time--before it all happened--that he would have felt, confidently, that he knew what she was thinking.
Now, slowly exiting the vice captain building and watching her shadow fade from view, he thinks about what she's said. He studies the memory of her body language, the inflection of her voice, the tension in her body at his touch, the feel of her reiatsu as he'd held her. He remembers the slide of her tears down her cheeks as she cried, and even though it hurts to remember that, he knows he needs to in order to hope to fully understand her.
She'd been hesitant, and withdrawn. She'd pulled away from him, and been tense. But in that brief moment, when he held her, she'd leaned into him. And when he'd kissed her, she had not flinched.
He files this information away to examine later, sensing a familiar presence and looking up at Yumichika's silhouette on the roof above him.
"Wha'dya want?"
"You look lost in thought. I know it's unfamiliar territory for you--perhaps I should draw you a map?"
Ikkaku scowls and leaps up onto the roof to glare down at the 5th seat, hand on the hilt of his zanpakuto. "Ya got a reason fer bein' here, asshole, or ya jus' here ta piss me off?"
The other man shrugs slightly, his expression an odd mix of serious and curious. "There's a captain's meeting right now."
"Yeah. So?"
"About the intruders."
Ikkaku sits, settling Houzukimaru across his lap as he eyes Yumichika, trying to decide if his friend wants information, reassurances, or simply someone to chatter to as they wait.
"Are you worried?"
Ikkaku's intuition tells him that he should be--worried about the intruders, worried about Nemu, worried about what might happen when everything comes together again--but he merely lays back, tucking his hands behind his head and watching the clouds move over the sky.
"Naw."