Blossom

"Fuck me," she says, panting, her voice low and insistent, her eyes two piercing orbs in the darkness.

"No."

She hisses in frustration, bare back arched like a cat, but doesn't attack him again. The first syllable of the Rikujōkōrō - six binding rods of light- is heavy on his lips as he observes her with a gaze intent.

"Why not, Bya... Byakuya..." She slurs, barely managing to get the words out as she flings herself at him again, lunging at the ties of his hakama; he blocks her flailing fingers deftly, faster than the human eye could see. "You scared?" She taunts, her face close to his. He can smell the sake on her breath. His face is impassive. "Or are you not even a man?" Still no response. She is gasping now."I get it, Byakuya. Ya... ya never had them guh... guts ta fuck even yer wife?" This one hits him hard; he flinches.

She catches his discomfort with those eyes, those wild swirls of gold in the darkness. "C'mon - fuck me, then. I know ya hate me. I dare... I dare ya..." He presses a palm against her shoulder, putting reiatsu into his touch to keep her at a safe distance from him, letting her rage and rage until her head lolls to the side, and her body goes limp. He shoots a quick glance at his discarded shihakushō, lying torn in a dark corner of the room, then the unfinished poem on his low table, and then at the poem's subject, hanging high in the sky. It is shrouded by dark grey clouds.

He thought she wasn't coming tonight.

He was wrong.

It turns out to be just another of those times she's come back drunk, and wanting him. Needing him. He's grown as accustomed as possible to her inebriated romps, though he knows that there's nothing she throws at him in her hazy stupor he can ever take as true. Including her first request. He can't remember when she started, and from his childhood memories it took at least half a sake store to get her drunk like this; he wonders what on earth she must be thinking to do this to herself.

But she's not weak in this state, he knows, and remembers that the first time she came to him, fresh from raiding at least five drinking joints, she'd evaded half the guards, knocked out the other half, put a hole the size of Komamura's Bankai in his top-level Bakudō defenses, and nearly scared the hell out of him by passing out naked on his futon before he came in.

And when she'd woken up, still inebriated... He'd told himself firmly that she was drunk, that she didn't mean what she said, that she wanted nothing to do with him, that her hand in his hakama was some sort of cruel mistake...

He was tempted.

But he wouldn't. Not for being the man that he was. He had his boundaries. His self-control.

Since then he's told the guards to stay away on Friday nights; and they've been all to happy to comply. With his servant-maids he's not said a word - they know what to do.

She's been here many times, but every time the request is the same.

Fuck me, Byakuya. Make me yours.

Is it hate, love, or an insatiable need for feeling? He does not know. Either way, he cannot just leave her there.

He owes her. Again, that dreaded word. Kuchiki Byakuya owes no one nothing. And yet, time and time again, this woman has found something he must repay her for.

Why does he torment himself so? Why does she torment herself so?

He gets up to carry her to his futon, then move to one of the many other bedrooms in the mansion - it is his usual routine when dealing with these things, and he knows that in the morning she will be gone, and his futon will be neatly folded.

Even someone like the Demon-Cat can feel pride. And shame.

He is stopped, though, by the clutching of fingers at his hakama; he turns.

She has awoken again, and is kneeling before him, her legs spread wide, breast heaving. Her eyes are glazed over and pleading, her lips pulled back to show gleaming white teeth. She releases his hakama to rake her nails across her stomach fiercely, to the point of drawing blood, blood that runs in rivulets across her sweat-slicked thighs, and it looks to him as if she's trying to claw her soul free from her body, like she's trying to escape this prison of flesh and blood.

She's almost presenting herself to him.

"Byakuya..."

His stomach churns.

Damn.

He waits for the next words that will indubitably tell him that she is still drunk, and still incapable of anything more than primal, incomprehensible thought. Or lack of it.

"Stay-" she descends into a hacking fit, then her body heaves and heaves, and she clutches at her belly, but there is nothing for her to give up anymore - her stomach has long been emptied into his courtyard hours ago.

He waits, patiently.

"...Pl...please." The way her voice catches in her throat gives him the illusion that she is crying, but she's not; she would never. She's probably still trying to retch. Shihōin Yoruichi never cries, he tells himself.

Or maybe it's just that he hates seeing her like this, helpless to her own demons.

"Hush," he murmurs, feeling absurdly like he is trying to placate a child, and releases the reiatsu flaring in his palm, just a little more. She approaches slowly, golden gaze now dulled, then lays her head on his lap, purring slightly, mumbling to herself, her fingers curling into his pant leg, almost possessive. The vibration is a low, steady, soundless hum. Almost like a kitten, she curls into his side, wrapping her arms around his bare chest, still murmuring incomprehensible things to herself. He does not object, and rubs her back, his fingers moving in soothing circles across her dark skin, but he is still wary.

This woman is no kitten. She is unpredictable, more so than a wild animal. He has seen it with his own eyes.

Her head tilts to the side, and her hair slips, pulled by gravity.

All is still.

And then she's clutching him as if she were falling from a cliff, her sharp nails digging into his skin, and he feels the skin split, drops of red welling up from the cuts. Her breathing is shallow, and all of a sudden she screams.

"Get away!" She is on all fours, her weight having left him faster than he can comprehend, and the cry that rips from her throat is animalistic.

He lifts a finger, resolute, the intonations of the spell fast rising from his throat. "Bakudō no roku-jū-"

"Byakuya..." she groans. "No, not you, too! Please... Byakuya!"

He doesn't whether she is asleep, awake, or insane. Doesn't know what could drive her to such lengths.

Doesn't know her anymore.

She freezes, then her head jerks back once, and she's still. Literally numbed to the very position she's in. She looks like a statue - one with a cruel sculptor.

He takes the chance to move closer, watching her for any signs of movement.

Her neck is exposed, and without thinking he rubs two fingers into the space behind her ear, and her eyelids flutter to the beat of her pulse.

"Oi! Wake up, Demon-Cat! It's time for lessons!" he grumbles, sliding open the shōji door so hard it is almost torn from its tracks. She looks up, a curious, delicate smile on her face, and he is taken aback. Usually she would tease him or something, not sit still like she'd gotten the cream.

He frowns. "Aren't you supposed to... Y'know, steal my ribbon or something?"

She continues smiling. "Do you want me to?"

"Of-of course not!" He retorts, his face burning. "But anyway, what in Seireitei are you doing?" He leans over, but doesn't manage to see anything.

"Origami," she says, simply. He frowns. "That's kids' stuff. Why are you even interested, Demon-Cat?"

She only unfolds her hand. In the middle blooms a paper sakura blossom, intricately folded, and pale pink.

She offers her hand to him.

"I could teach you, if you wanted to learn."

She is so close to him.

He stares for a moment, something filling in his chest, until she grins. "But sometime later. So, let's start today's lesson!"

She is gone, taking his ribbon with her.

He has never been able to fold origami. It is more or less the only art that still eludes him. Whereas she has been able to twist and turn fluttering fingers to create objects of beauty, all his attempts have been lopsided, crumpled, or torn. He will never tell her about the thousands of failed attempts he'd gone through before she left, all piled away, locked beneath the desk at the Barracks, or even that sometimes, just sometimes, he thinks of trying again, though his pride prevents it. What if she saw? What if she found out? He has promised himself not to submit to the humiliation of something he just can't do.

But now... From where he is sitting, he can reach his table without dislodging her sleeping form, and sliding open a secret compartment in the heavy wood, his fingers stretch for a thin piece of square paper. He plays with it absent-mindedly, half remembering the steps her fingers had once guided him through. His eyelids are heavy, and the solid warmth of her body pressed into his side coaxes him into a weightless, dreamless slumber, the paper slipping through his fingers.

Another hand catches it.

When he wakes, his futon is neatly folded, and his limbs have been arranged in a slightly more comfortable position than the one he was in last night. The room has been filled with cold air in the time of her absence, and he sighs, standing up to leave the room.

She must have left even earlier than usual.

He is almost touching the shōji when that's when he looks back and notices it, something he's never seen before.

It is sitting in the middle of his futon, its pale pink petals blooming, as if with an unspoken apology, in stark contrast to the washed white of the linen and silk.

It is a single, origami blossom.

-END-