Aversion

The wind was a wolf tonight, snarling, shaking blossom from the cherry trees outside the mansion. The candles trembled in their golden holsters, like frightened students before the slavering bloodmerchant that was Captain Zaraki. Sat on the bed, brushing her soft black hair, Rukia wondered where everybody was. This place was beginning to feel like a haunted castle - the miles of corridoors and dust-sheeted rooms seemed to be waiting for someone who would never return. Byakuya demanded absolute cleanliness, along with spectral silence on the part of the servants. It could be dull and terrifying in equal measures.

Rukia couldn't sleep. She had rested sporadically at best throughout the weeks following her attempted execution, and these last three nights, sleep had evaded her like a leaf in a gale. She often felt like a ghost these days, granted extra time, inexplicably grateful, even to the man who would have seen her beheaded simply to uphold text in an ancient book. She coughed, and the small hack echoed round the room and skittered into the hall outside.

Maybe water would help, or perhaps some of the sake Captain Kyorakou had jokingly placed in her brother's cold palm one festival day, to a typically frosty reception. She left her bedroom and headed towards the scullery, walking past his room. The door, as ever, was shut. He did not lock it though. If he had anything to hide, he would certainly have hidden it impossibly; she was certain he knew of her lock-picking skills. There was very little Byakuya did not know about her. Little, though some things she hoped were hers and hers alone. Still, worth a look. She pushed open the gilded oak.

Pristine white covers, as smooth and snowy as his captain's coat. A shining floor like a wooden lake. On the desk, neatly lined-up brushes and inks sat beside a part-worked calligraphic nightingale. It seemed that the only pleasure for Byakuya came through his art. He liked to be alone, just as he loved the quiet, and never exhibited or showed his work, but kept it in beautiful linen portfolios tied with satin, either in his bureau or in a corner of the extensive Kuchiki library. These sleepless nights, she often snuck to his closed door and listened for the soft sound of the brush being pulled across paper and the tinkle of wood against the rim of the water jar. It comforted Rukia to imaginine her brother, his grey eyes focused, not determinedly on a host of hollows, or furiously on a late subordinate, but softly, kindly, on each lick of ink, as the bird danced beneath his beautiful white fingers.

And he was beautiful, as striking as he was privileged, with his perfect, pale skin, fragile cheekbones, intense charcoal eyes and glossy rain of black hair. Whereas Yumichika cultivated his good looks, preening and perfecting endlessly, Byakuya's seemed to have fallen across him at birth like a priceless cloak, the benefactor unthanked. Sometimes the scrappy Rukon District thief in Rukia hated him for this even more than she hated him for his frigidity, or for having signed her death warrant. How could one person have so much and be so selfish?

Irritated, Rukia kicked the leg of her brother's antique double bedstead and ruffled the corner of the sheet, before, gripped by a small fear, pressing it flat again. What a waste of such a luxurious bed. Despite the rabid attentions of so many of the female soul reapers, he would never bring any of them back here. Perhaps he was still mourning Hisana, but that was so long ago. More likely he had just shut down completely, trimming off any stray emotions in order to become a machine of pride, discipline and honour. Or maybe he'd been hollow from the start. She was about to boot the frame a second time when a strange sound caught her ear.

Puzzled, Rukia stepped into the lavish hallway and looked around. There it was again. Sounded like paper being slowly, rhythmically torn in half, again and again, followed by the low growl of a pained animal. Following the noise, she ran down three flights of velvet stairs until she came across a half-hidden door, draped across with a black cloth. The sharp, threshing sound continued, each time followed by the beast-like cry. What was happening through there? Fear came easily to Rukia, and held her now like a body brace. Nevertheless, she put her hand on her zanpakuto and silently pushed through the doorway.

It was dark, as the small shinigami tiptoed down the stairs. The tearing sound was as steady as it had been previously, though the animal in pain had grown louder. Through a porchway at the bottom of the stone steps, two figures could be made out. Rukia gasped.

"Sir..." began the standing figure.

"I did not tell you to stop," growled the hunched apparition to his left.

"Please, Sir, I...must I? Why must I...?

"No questions. Know only that it helps me." The bent figure raised his sweat-soaked head, that unmistakeable profile shining in the dim light.

Byakuya stood, shirtless, bracing his trembling body against a strong barrel. Long, ravenwing hair hung damply over his face and his tightly muscled back was ribboned with deep cuts. As the manservant closed his eyes and took a step back, Rukia realised what must have made those pained, feral sounds. The whip cracked cruelly across her brother's back.

Byakuya winced and cried out, as the servant prepared to cast the whip again. From her shadowed corner, watching the captain's ordeal, Rukia was horrified. But as he cried out, she realised this was the most emotion she had ever heard him release. And then, unbidden, the thought: did he make these sounds with Hisana?

Suddenly, with the whip's lash and the half-stripped Byakuya's cries echoing around her, Rukia found herself imagining something she had forbidden herself, ever since the day the beautiful noble had first spoken to her and her stomach had knotted, blood thundering around her petite system.

In her mind, Byakuya was naked, lying on his pristine bed with his eyes closed. At first she thought him asleep, but then his strong, slender hand began to slide down that taut stomach, skilled fingers surrounding tightly what they found there. Byakuya Kuchiki, ice prince and flawless paragon, began to caress and pull the hardness between his legs, slowly at first, a small moan escaping his lips. He applied those neat nails, digging in with those tiny blades, and inhaled sharply, moaning louder as he touched himself.

"Oh...oh," he murmured, eyes tightly shut, agony and pleasure flashing beneath that stoic mask, threatening to crack it. "Oh, Rukia, Rukia, forgive me. Rukia, harder, please...harder...oh God..."

The whip broke her daydream, and Rukia found her cheeks burning. Her adopted brother! Byakuya, who even now was piously punishing himself for some imagined crime, Byakuya would be so disgusted, so horribly disappointed if he knew that she...

"Nnnhhh!" grimaced the captain, as the lash came down on his tortured back, but suddenly his expression cleared, his eyes closed, and a softer sound emerged: "nnh...Rukia..."

Her name! What did this mean?

The blood spiking her cheeks, she suddenly noticed the large erection outlining his hakama as he hunched and braced, those finely toned legs shaking. The lash again, the grunt and moan. The ice prince was gone. His gorgeous cheekbones edged in scarlet, Byakuya was a sweating, extremely aroused mess, his hands struggling not to touch the aching hardness and bring sweet relief.

"Sir!" The servant, disturbed by his heinous task, put aside the whip.

This time, the noble did not notice. The servant fled as Captain Kuchiki fell to the ground, one hand skating over the front of his hakama, murmuring, "forgive me... forgive me..."

As she watched, Rukia found her own hand slipping between the folds of her robe, shocked at how wet she was getting. It was the most arousing vision she had ever seen. Beaten and bloody, erect and topless, his impeccable mane sodden with sweat, Captain Kuchiki lay on the floor of the cellar, shaking like a warrior battling a curse.

Thrusting three fingers inside herself, Rukia began to pump them hotly in and out, giving out tiny gasps as she watching her brother's expression, at first pained and helpless, become blank, as if he were taking flight. She imagined his fingers taking over, wanted him inside her, roughly and deeply. She desperately wanted to spring upon this armourless moment and feel his smooth, strong body pinning her, pushing into her, a lock of ravenwing hair stroking her shoulder, those fine lips husking her name into her ear.

What was once Byakuya continued to sigh, "Don't... don't stop..." Braced against a marble pillar, his body trembled furiously before tensing in a calligraphic arc, his orgasm shattering him.

Rukia, her slender body shaking too, removed her sodden fingers, slid down the wall and sat for a second. Then, fevered and confused, she stood and stumbled to her room, leaving the captain lying on the cold floor like a leaf.