Surrender

Disclaimer: I don't own bleach.

Summary: Only denial stood between Sousuke Aizen and reason. AizenXGin. GinXRangiku. One shot kind of dark, death fic.

He loved the honesty of his hair, the free fall of its weight as it pointed downward at the unending tug of gravity. His fingers used to part the spaces between the strands until their tips graced what could be touched of his scalp. It always felt more like dipping into the core of his secrets, doing that, touching him ever so slightly, more so than if he dug his nails into the flesh underneath his clothes. Sousuke Aizen did it all to Ichimaru Gin with eyes closed, knowing that the darkness of the night was never enough to hide the bold, shameless, screaming whiteness of his hair.

In the morning, light would assault his entire body. He hated the way its warmth washed over him unbidden, claiming every inch of his surface in a manner somebody else did the previous night. Opening his eyes little by little, he could never stand what wasn't there beside him. Then he'd realize he was naked, and that this was what he hated about mornings, that they heralded an end to something that gave him pleasure and heralded a start to something that forced him to pretend. Part of the pretense, of course, was suiting up in peculiar gear, immaculate white from hem to the neck just as Ichimaru's hair was white from tip to root.

He would slip into this imperious robe to begin another day. The transition from nudeness to something else had always been distinct; it didn't seem like it belonged to his life, but to something else quite apart from his being, if only because Ichimaru was never there to witness it.

"Captain Aizen," Ichimaru would turn to him now and then. "begging your permission to investigate the recent activities of the Gotei 13."

And Ichimaru would be gone, sometimes for hours on end, and when he returned a progress report would be ready, laid down on Aizen's desk for his perusal. But Aizen never read the reports. He preferred hearing Ichimaru speak, seeing him grin, watching him make minimal gestures to validate his accounts. One of the many things Aizen had loved about Ichimaru was his voice.

Nights in his bed were neither more indifferent nor more affectionate afterward. Ichimaru's submission would be natural, sometimes even easier earned than it had been when he hadn't gone away for the day. He never made a sound in his sleep; he never rustled on the sheets more than what was necessary, and it never was necessary, or so that was how it always was with Ichimaru Gin: a snake without a hiss. And for better or for worse, his hair would be white.

"Who do you dream of?" Aizen once whispered to his ears as they lay in bed. Ichimaru did not respond right away but after a while, when merely breathing violated the depth of the evening, he uttered a woman's name.

That night they made love again for the third time.

"Rangiku Matsumoto."

Ichimaru Gin had dared exhale a name whose very existence preserved him. He had always been generous with his love, liberal with its distribution, and had always made it a point to show that its ownership never was and never will be exclusive. Or likely yet, it had bordered on unreal in cases where Sousuke Aizen explored each of his regions to the limit. But he loved the self-assured determination of his captain, if not the captain himself; he had loved the ruthless, unbridled ambition in Aizen to possess, and then to leave nothing behind, almost to the level of something physical; although gazing at Aizen he could not get himself to tell affection from need.

In between lapses where Rangiku was all that was right in his world, and there were countless, the face of Sousuke Aizen was all that gave him reason to remain in Hueco Mundo.

He had always known, in some self-pitying guilty respect, what it was like to betray and to be betrayed. Yet, he, too, remembered the times when he was sure that his white-haired lieutenant would come to fulfil his purpose. To Sousuke Aizen, intuitions were negligible; what he felt in Ichimaru were confirmations after confirmations of his intention to betray, turn around, even to supplant him.

"I'm sorry Ichimaru, but this is where your treachery ends," he had said softly as he drove the blade inside him. He wondered then if treachery was something that mostly or even strictly applied to matters of love. "Goodbye, my comrade... no more."

Dying, Ichimaru had smirked at Aizen. He had smirked at the captain as a six-year-old, after completing an order to slaughter his own sub-captain: A process of baptism in a bath of blood. Somehow Aizen had always known, and loved the thought of knowing so, that Ichimaru would want to make him pay for it. His defiance had marked him in the way his capitulation never did, and Aizen loved it just that way.

Somehow Aizen knew more than just that too, and that he had his reasons for not permitting himself to wander into these thoughts as they made love in the night. But the knowledge was there all the same; running his fingers on Ichimaru, he knew that he never could bring himself to read his lieutenant's reports on the Gotei 13 because all he'd find was Ichimaru's longing for Rangiku Matsumoto. Pages and pages filled with the beauty, grace, and life of the woman he had died for.

"Farewell, my captain," Ichimaru made one final gasp for air.

Watching life choke out of him, Aizen had wondered if nights were made for moments like this, moments when everything was brighter than if both the sun and the moon were there in full to light them. Ichimaru's hair was white amidst the spatters of blood, just as it always had been, though it was white not in the way painted walls are, or in the way bleached clothes are, but in the way he desired, longed for, and loved Rangiku; in the way, most of all, he had served himself to Sousuke Aizen to be used whenever the latter pleased, whatever manner he felt like, no matter the consequences.

Aizen smiled a broken, somewhat devoted smile at the bloodied body of his protégé. He had loved the honesty of his hair.

END