5. On Repeat

Pairing: Rangiku x Gin (slightly AU).

Written per KupoStiltzken and Kuroaki's request.

Often their exchanges occurred within the camouflages of night, a violet-saturated one with a smattering of moon at the tips of the sky.

Lips cerise, she drank in the sounds of his approach. Footsteps light like air, fluid as water. Easily disguised beneath the crickets' chatter, they were audible only to those listening in wait. He appeared some distance before her veranda steps, clothes dripping wet from god knows where he's been.

She pretended she hadn't been waiting long. He pretended he hasn't a clue of it.

"Yo. Seems our moon's hidin' again." His dagger of a chin pointed up to the sphere behind the silver sheets of cloud. Ichimaru Gin always said his hellos like that. It was a sort of dance he seemed to indulge in, circling her with his random, obscure wit and that trademark saccharine smile.

The wood railing was splintering pieces into her hands. Rangiku endured leaning, ignoring how they bore deep into her skin. Reflexes which normal people had, she didn't. Nothing in her body told her to withdraw from the sting; that part malfunctioned, but the part that allowed her pain didn't.

Her heart wasn't as black as she liked it to appear. And neither was her skin gray steel.

"Was it raining wherever you were at?" she chided, carefully cold and lightly amused.

"No Ran-chan. Where I was at, there was this pond that I had to fish myself outta," he chuckled, explanation bringing more questions than answers. "But being rained on does sound less embarrassing than falling into a pond." It took those who knew him—not knew him well, for there were few if any of those, but knew him just enough—to understand such seemingly sarcastic a statement from Ichimaru Gin was in fact a truthful one. To accuse him of being too ambiguous in explicating, however, would not be an exaggerated assertion. "Hm, it's cold," he tacked on mindfully.

"It's summer," retorted she, finally off the rail and folding her arms across her white-robed breasts.

"For a fellow in wet clothes," and pinching them between forefinger and thumb, Gin raised the fabric adhering to his flimsy shoulders, "summer it ain't." When she stayed unbudging, he pointed his black-sleeved arm to the leaves that rustled in the trees. "It's windy, ya see?"

"So it is," she flat toned. "So it is." In effect the man below grinned back more plastic than before.

"Then Ran-chan," he beamed in a slightly sad way, another piece from his montage of contradictions. "See ya around." One light motion and the limber arm he raised above his head flicked at the wrist in good bye.

The pain of the slivers in her skin dulled out. She blinked hard. Bit her lips. And she, not able to bear the sight of his retreating back, surrendered. Was she forever doomed to live the nights yearning for him and the days cursing herself for it?

"GIN."

His figure, tall and, stern—a rarity for his form, paused, silhouetted black against the white birches lining the yard. The green on its branches shivered and trembled in the passing breeze. She watched the slight turn of his head and caught the words he mouthed.

Don't

Her strawberry blond tresses wafted with the summer drafts,

Keep

Tided against the small of her back,

Letting

Its ends flitting, twisting and curling near her waist.

Me

"Gin," she said again, but this time softer and quieter.

Don't keep letting me, he continued to mouth.

"GIN!"

The crickets ceased in their song.

He let out a drawn out sigh. "I believe we have a problem on our hands. A big problem." He faced her with the entirety of his front side, grin less coy, but still far from transparent. "Neither of us knows when to quit the other." He ascended the stairs; one by one the steps creaked, and the night critters began again. "No, that's not it. Neither of us knows how. Is what I should say."

"It's simple," said Rangiku to the only man on earth talented enough to torture with the happiness he brought. "All you have to do is stop leaving." She wept silent in the expression of her eyes, wrinkling the skin above the bridge of her nose, her face all kinds of contortions, maybe as ugly as she felt.

She remembered he never broke his promises.

"That, Ran-chan," he trailed, "is something I can't do. Very sorry."

The secret to his success was he never made any.

"Sorry means you won't leave. Which obviously isn't the case."

He sighed once more, and inched closer to her, taking her cheeks, vulnerable and warm, in his cold palms. Too dizzied by his nearness, she did not resist in the slightest. She could only let him press closer to her, forehead against forehead, and then feel herself reciprocate. The familiar heat radiating from his chest immersed her, and she, feral and hungered, consumed it. Her lips thirsted for his, and her lips drank.

They spilled their clothes along the room. Sleeves, sashes, mantles—his and hers—draped the ground, wedged themselves between the doorway and trailed towards the futon.

Amorous fingers weaved through her miles of strawberry blond locks, gripping them, mussing them, stroking and caressing. Over his shoulders the paper doors stared back at her, its lines a perfect linear their relationship could never be. The thinly veiled moon peered in through the space the door left ajar.

She knew she would come to regret this tomorrow, when the light goes from violet to gold, as she did yesterday, like last week, the month before, and the month before that. But flesh on flesh, he was at his barest, and his often lidded eyes gentle amber. That, she could not learn to forgo. Always never.

Sprawled across his naked chest she contended, "Why do you keep doing this to me?"

He answered, a pause of a breath in between, "Because you keep letting me."

And they lay exposed to one another for a moment longer, dreading the golden light that would invariably seep in through the many cracks. For then, he would be forced to leave her again.

End Chapter

--6/18/06