"Warm and alive, I'm all over you
Would you smother me?"

He's everything I am not. Everything that I dream about at night, but cast away in the morning. He is warmth. Pure heat, burning souls and bodies alike. E uses that warmth so carelessly…. No, he doesn't use it at all, because he isn't aware that he has such a power within him… Within him, in his skin, lingering in his clothes. He isn't aware that I know him better then anything I've ever known in my life.

I watch him now as he so thoughtlessly griped with the other squad members, playfully shoving an elbow, an arm in their shoulders. He laughs, he frowns, he pouts, he leers. He is life. I envy him that he looks warm. Everything with him is tan skin and fire hair and blank inky lines that are still brighter then anything I've ever seen.

I wonder what he thinks about. I wonder what's going on in his mind right at his time, as he's watching me watch him.

He actually manages to startle me as seemingly instantly, he's left the conversation of his comrades and found his way to my side.

"Captain…" He gives me his little deferential nod, the closest he's ever come to a bow. He doesn't bow. And after months of silent arguing, it is the one concession I allow him in front of others.

I look him over. "Renji… Have you finished the paper work you received?"

I try not to stare so obviously at his lips as he opens his mouth to speak, his posture shifting into easy familiarity as he spoke in a soft voice reserved only for me. "Yes, I have, Captain. Took fuc- forever-" he amends with a quick nod in apology, "but I finished in time. I've sent it off."

He suffocates me with his voice and the look in his eyes that catches me still. How can he look at me so wantonly, and still manage to hide it from the others? Maybe it's the light ever-present in them. They mask that look of fire and heat.

Surly, such a look would be easily detected on my own face, where emotions are not the norm. My fingers itch to clasp him to me, to bring his careless red hair to my throat and suffocate myself with its length; just to see if there is life yet within me.

"Captain?" A touch to my shoulder makes my eyes jerk up to his, and he almost flinches, because I never show my surprise, and yet that's what he's done, he's startled me because e distracts me as easily as a soft-spoke word distracts him. "Captain?" Again, his voice soft and careful.

"Renji… You'll come tonight?" I don't look at him as I speak, I look through him, because that's where he truly is, embedded in flesh and bone as a flame that will never end.

The smile he gives me takes my breath away, causes all rational though to leave my mind, causes me to choke a little more on the smoke that wafts from him.

He doesn't reply in words, he doesn't have to. Instead, quicker then anyone could ever imagine of him, a single hand closes over my throat, a caress of fingers and a tightening of muscles, and then he's gone.

Oh yes, he's going to kill me one day, he going to smother me with the brightness of his eyes and the fire of his mouth.

song: "Smother Me"
pairing: Renji and Byakuya