I'm… pretty certain this is only R-rated. But if you disagree, please email me about it first so I can make the necessary adjustments.

Genre: Drama, angst, introspection
Pairing: Gin/Rangiku
Rating: R for sex and general vulgarity
Notes: Unbeta'd, so feel free to make suggestions.

Did it make her weak? Or was she simply nostalgic?

-

The Ghost of You

-

"Hey, Rangiku."

"Hm?"

"What d'you think: Are people born with evil in their hearts? Or does it get put there later on?"

Rangiku opened her eyes slowly, stretching out her legs beneath the blankets. She was not curious about what had prompted such an inquiry, as she already knew he had a habit of asking strange questions at strange moments; she was more surprised that he had remained with her even after she had fallen asleep.

After a long yawn, she replied drowsily, "I think everyone has the potential for evil inside them. It's just that we don't usually let it out all the time."

He leaned over her suddenly, his face close enough for silver to mingle with golden. "You know I'm leaving for the shinigami academy tomorrow, right?"

She gave a small sigh of exasperation. "Of course I know. How could I not?"

"You know you're going to have to follow me, right?"

As though she had never thought about it. "Why's that?"

Long, slender fingers lightly stroked her neck as he placed himself entirely atop her. "You have to make sure I don't change for the worse."

She wrapped her legs around his waist. "If living in this kind of place doesn't make you evil, what makes you think the Gotei 13 will?"

He opened his eyes and looked at her, his smile widening. "Well, it's usually not the place you have to worry about – it's the people." Before she could think of a response, he captured her lips with his and she was soon lost in his touch.

That was the last night they made love to each other; after that, they only ever fucked.

-

Rangiku was probably the first – though certainly not the last – to compare him to a snake. Growing up, he had reminded her of one of those little garden snakes: no fangs, no poison, but with the same serenely slithering manner that made a tiny part of the heart fear against all reason. But she had been too strong – or maybe too lonely – to pay any heed to that feeling of unease he sometimes brought.

During her second year at the shinigami academy, when she saw him again for the first time in a long while, one glance in her direction, one grin of sadistic mirth was enough for the realization to strike: He was no longer an innocuous garden snake. Now he was poisonous.

She could have run away right there, before she could have the chance to get too close to this stranger in her old lover's skin. But like any snake, he was hypnotic, vaguely enthralling, and she could not help but remain still as he approached her languidly, bearing down on her as though she was no more than a field mouse.

But then he opened his eyes, and his smile changed, and a specter of the boy she had known once upon a time reached out to her for the briefest of heartbeats, and suddenly she did not know what to believe anymore.

-

She was grinding her hips against his as harshly as she could manage when he asked her calmly, "So, do you still think that people are born evil?" And then he raked his nails down her abdomen hard enough to leave bright red marks in his wake.

Rangiku hissed in frustration and snatched his hands, pinning them above his head. She knew he wouldn't struggle – she knew he enjoyed letting her pretend she was in control.

"I never said people are born evil," she stated, pausing her thrusts so that she could better speak (she would never understand how his voice could be so smooth under any circumstances, least of all this kind). "I said they have the potential to be evil." She pounded her hips once for emphasis.

"Ahh, my mistake!" he replied serenely, his grin still firmly in place.

Of course, she knew he never made mistakes when he asked her such questions to remind her of their past. It was but one thing about him that drove her mad: his ability to twist her to his liking with the simplest of words. Silk threads that had first bound her heart to him had gradually turned into chains that she had not the will to break. He's not the same person, she would tell herself even as his cold hands laid arrogant claim to her body, as he surged inside her in an agonizing ecstasy.

She said nothing in response, but allowed him to reverse their positions so that she was beneath him, and she dug her nails into his back as hard as she could in the hopes of drawing blood as she moaned his name over and over again.

-

She was shy their first time together, eager to please but also scared of doing something wrong. Despite his own embarrassment he laughed at hers, but it was a friendly, almost loving laugh, gentle as the fingertips that danced across her skin.

There were times when he tore her apart with pain and uncertainty, but on the night they first made love, he revealed to her again the compassion that had once saved her life.

Physically, it was not a glorious experience; but had she been the crying type, she would have sobbed at the beauty of it all.

-

Hitsugaya returned to the division headquarters late in the evening after another fruitless, pointless, hopeless visit to an unconscious Hinamori. When he entered the office where he had left two drunken vice captains, he was greeted by the sight of Rangiku lying on the couch, an arm draped over the side, hair disheveled, face red with drink. Kira was gone, and all that remained were many empty bottles scattered about the room. A heavy silence hung in the air, companion to the oppressive melancholy that had always lurked in a corner of the room, in a corner of their hearts, and had recently been summoned to the forefront of their beings.

He observed Rangiku with unmasked discontent, fairly certain that she had regained sobriety by now, and even more certain of what – of whom – she was thinking.

They had not been working together for very long, but they were both observant enough to have recognized many things about each other. For instance, Rangiku knew that all his ambition, all his discipline, all his strength was fueled only by the thought of a girl who saw him as nothing more than a scowling childhood friend; in turn, Hitsugaya had grown well aware of her unusual, unhappy love for a man who was but a ghost of forgotten affection.

"I don't miss him," she declared plainly when he came up to her, as though it was a simple fact, as though in defense against a question he would never have the heart to ask.

He removed his captain's coat and draped it over her; just for now, he would not even try to pretend that he didn't give a damn. "Hopeless moron," he muttered sadly.

"That makes two of us, eh?"

His pride would not allow him to concur aloud, but he did not have the will to attempt to deny it, and so silence reigned once more as they both tried desperately not to think.

fin