Requested by ravens rising- thank you

Ukitake x Shunsui

Read the canon parallels, they're not very subtle

AU

Legs

Ten years ago, Detective Ukitake had walked into a bloodbath: several gang members slaughtered in an Underground station, their jugulars sliced twice, diagonally, from the left to the right, making an 'x' shape on their lifeless throats. The case had been textbook- two streets away they had found a group of unconscious fellow gang members, drugged up on something that they swore that they hadn't taken. They were all splattered in the blood of the victims, and incomprehensible. They were all cut up themselves, as if there had been some kind of fight- all of them had refused to testify, and the judge at their trial had sent them down.

They had spent these last ten years silent, and Ukitake had spent them occasionally remembering, with a strange feeling of discomfort. He had never had that feeling about any other case- it was if he had missed something, and now he was beginning to think that he maybe had done.

Another bloodbath, another scene to which he was summoned.

This one was something special, though. The entire of the city council, all butchered, with an 'x' to mark the spot on each of their necks.

Strangely similar, but those murderers were locked up, under surveillance. It made no sense, no sense at all. He supposed it could have been a copycat murder, but the first had never been widely publicised. But the image could not leave his mind, the thought just escaping the reach of his fingers.

It had been horrible; a horrible day altogether.

Ukitake hated the murder scenes with a lot of blood, and this one had been bad, even by his experienced standards. Two hundred dead, opened veins, cramped room. Literal pools of blood. What he hated more was clumsy and idiotic reporters trying to get past to get a story, slipping, and having to fall to his knees to catch the idiot before he fell face first into one of the bodies and contaminated the scene.

Blood stains were a bitch to get out of uniform.

It was even worse when they soaked through and left brown dried stains up and down his lower legs.

He sighed as he knelt in the Police Department shower, starting to scrub at the stains. A sing-song voice behind him, calling out his name, made him stop and smile a little as he felt hands on his shoulders and a torso pressing against his back, another man kneeling behind him.

He shifted, moving to sit cross-legged, smiling a little wider.

"Shunsui, what are you doing here?"

"Just got off duty. Heard you were called in to the Council scene- was it bad?"

"Not great, no."

"Turn around."

He did, and Shunsui took a cloth to Jyuushiro's blood-stained legs, slowing rinsing away the copper-coloured flakes of rust. Hot water streamed down his back, soaking his hair to his scalp.

"Got any leads?"

There was a pause, and Shunsui glanced up.

"Jyuu?"

"Do you remember that case, a few years back? Just after I moved to this department. Gang members in an Underground station- the lights went out just as they walked in, looking at the CCTV footage, so we couldn't see who it was. Found a bunch of addicts a few streets over, covered in their blood?"

"Vaguely, I think."

"All the lights went out in the meeting room- the CCTV footage is useless there, too. We found literal vials of blood there, dotted around- and we tested them. The only DNA record that came up was for those murdered gang members, from five years ago."

"Are you serious?"

"Those eight men and women from before, that were convicted? They've been set up, Shunsui, I'm sure."

"Can you prove it?"

"No."

"Then what are you going to do?"

Shunsui had dropped the cloth by now, and Jyuushiro's skin was clean and pink in the billowing steam. The only sound was that of running water, and soft breathing.

"I don't think, Shunsui, there is anything I can do."