Title: Contrary to Popular Belief
Author: autumnsoliloquy
Character/Pairing: Ichimaru Gin/Matsumoto Rangiku
Rating: M
Summary: Contrary to popular belief, Matsumoto Rangiku is not as promiscuous as most think.
Disclaimer: Kubo Tite owns Gin and Rangiku. I own nothing, boohoo. Contains mature situations and mentions of rape, but nothing graphic.

Contrary to popular belief, Matsumoto Rangiku is not as promiscuous as most people think. Just because she happens to have been well-endowed with certain assets that are sure to turn every male head in her direction, just because she has been named the most beautiful shinigami in Gotei Thirteen year after year, does not mean that she had jumped into every of their boudoir.

Thrice. That is the number of times Rangiku has ever been intimate with anyone. Sure, there were no lack of overtures and proposals coming her way, and she reveled in the spotlight of attention, be it male admiration or female envy. But she has only made love twice.

The loss of her virginity is a painful one. She might have been a Rukongai brat, roaming the streets of Inuzuri scouring garbage dumps for scraps of food and sleeping beneath the sheltering sleeves of bare trees, but like any other young girl, she had dreams. Dreams of meeting a guy who would whisk her off to paradise and away from all the grime, poverty and suffering. Dreams of happily ever after.

Indeed she was just like any young girl, but she was a Rukongai brat. One could say that it was almost inevitable; what was to befall her would have happened sooner or later. This is Inuzuri after all, the breeding ground for crime, moral deprivation and perversion.

Exactly how many there were of them, Rangiku can no longer remember. And she doesn't ever want to remember again. But the details of that painful incident are forever etched in her memory. The black robes she dons upon graduation from the Academy remind her everyday of those looming figures over her, obscuring her view of the glaring sun above. The physical scars have long healed, but those in her heart remain.

There are days when Rangiku would still be haunted by that incident, but on good days she'd think to herself: it was a blessing in disguise. Because on that day she was assaulted, when she woke up, every inch of her being aching and her spirit defeated, wondering if she was dead or if it was better off to have died rather than endure such unbearable pain – she woke up to a strange-looking smile on a strange-looking face belonging to a boy with curious silvery hair and strange-sounding name. She woke up that day thinking this must be it, this must be the real Heaven in the afterlife, and an angel has come to receive me. He gave her a dried persimmon, and ever since then it had been her favourite fruit.

The second time had been unexpected, but it was the fondest of all Rangiku's memories. They had been living under the same roof for many, many years – well, that is if one can call the badly-patched shelter overhead a roof. People might not define the existence of two shabby brats such as themselves as living, but for Rangiku it was the period in her life when she actually lived. Lived, played, talked, sang, laughed a genuine laugh, have dreams. In that small hut was a world that they had constructed for themselves, safe from the dangers of the manipulative adults, free to be themselves.

When Rangiku looks back on those days, she realizes that it was the only time she'd ever seen Ichimaru Gin free. Free to wear his true feelings on that classic smile, free to insult her in her face for her gullible nature, free to laugh and to be simply free.

Stop following me, you're being troublesome, is what he'd always say. Then he'd disappear to Kami-knows-where, sometimes for days, sometimes for months, without so much as a goodbye. But every time, he would return as if no time had ever transpired, and she too do likewise, not asking a whit about what he'd been doing or where he'd been. It was his certain return each time that had been the hope Rangiku clung onto for many years, decades thereafter, even when their comfortable cocoon has been forgotten and their lives in the present a cruel mockery of the past.

One bitterly cold winter night he returned to her like always, the handle of a jug grasped in his long-fingered hands. He had stolen again, this time a bottle of sake. "Sumthin' to keep us warm, Rangiku." She could still remember the smile on his pubescent face that night, his voice on the brink of manhood cracking with excitement. She never did ask him how he had acquired such a weird accent. They had a good meal that night; Rangiku had cooked up a stew of wild hare they'd caught before the break of winter.

They say that alcohol is the social lubricant, and in the hands of uneducated curious snot-grimed children, the inevitable happened. In retrospect, perhaps it was the only way it could ever have happened. Rangiku had longed for physical intimacy with the only person she'd ever call her family; perhaps it was the raging teenage hormones or their close proximity in such small quarters or maybe just a deep desire to connect with another person in all manner possible. But there was always a barrier between them that Gin had steadfastly erected around him, impossible for Rangiku to penetrate, that their connections were constrained to brief pointed touches and desires left unsaid hanging in the air.

Rangiku would laugh unabashedly whenever she claims it was that incident that cemented a lifelong friendship with sake.

It was awkward, unsure, tentative; gangly limbs entangled in thin sheets barely keeping out the cold winter wind, grasping each other like lifelines, drawing heat from each other's soul, every contact of skin to skin burning hot and branding permanent scars in their memories, lost in each other's heedy seductive scent, drinking them in…

Sometimes she thinks perhaps it was the only time she's ever really seen Gin's soul in its whole entirety, naked, barriers down and before the facades. Her heart aches with something akin to pride or maybe pain – she can't differentiate them anymore – whenever she realizes that she is maybe the only person who had ever seen the soul of this beautiful monstrosity in all its glory and grotesqueness.

The morning after he was gone, and for the next year Rangiku feared she might never see him again. But she was mistaken; another winter evening one year later she woke up to the howling gust of wind, only to see the back of his fading figure once again.

"I'll be a shinigami and change things. So that they'll end without Rangiku having to cry," was all he said.

That was the last time she would ever see him for a long, long time.

The third and last time was perhaps the most painful of all. More than her innocence being robbed away from her by a gang of strangers, the cut was deepest when her last shred of dignity was ripped away by the only person she had ever loved.

"My, my, if it isn't Matsumoto-fukutaichou we have here! To what do I owe the honour of your visit?" His sing-song voice grates in her ears; even after all these decades and centuries she had never gotten quite used to it. It had been so different from the voice in her head.

"Cut the crap, Gin. I know you're up to something," she said, trying to keep her composure under his slit-eyed stare but her wavering voice gave her away. "Just what exactly are you planning right now, Gin?"

The memory of their last encounter was still fresh in her mind. Who would've thought that the first time they would have a proper conversation beyond respectful official chatter in centuries of being colleagues in the same organization, would have her at the point of his sword? She had succeeded in ending the fight between the two captains, but he had destabilized her being in ways no one could even see amidst all the Ryoka furore.

"And what makes you think I would tell you that, Matsumoto-fukutaichou?"

Rangiku could not longer remember how it had happened, but one moment there she was at the sanban-taichou's office, with the firm belief of her purpose being to demand what exactly was going on with a friend, a platonic friend from the past, then the next thing she knew, she was pinned against something hard, the sturdy table beneath her cold against her skin, shuffling of clothes, cold harsh lips leaving a trail of hot butterfly kisses on her skin, her fingers raking through soft silvery hair, reaching summits of pleasure, passion and emotions she hadn't felt in years, ages, threatening to undo her…

As she floated back down from a pinnacle of white ecstasy, the first thing she saw was his white haori falling on his black robes, the familiar sight of his back facing her. As he started to walk away, Rangiku reached out and grabbed the clothes on his back, his haori bunched up in her fingers.

"Stay with me." Those were the words she wanted to tell him that moment. She had always wanted to say that to him. But the shards of her dignity lay broken on the floor, and her pride was the only thing she had left in order to gather the tatters of her shattered resolve.

She let him go.

Later, he would tell her, "I'm disappointed, Rangiku. You could've hold onto me a little longer."

His apology was the sound of her breaking heart.

At the very end, it was still you after all.

It was only you who could make the heart beneath your touch pound faster. Don't you know? It beats only for you. It always has.

Only for you.

FIN.

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