Rating: Mature (R) for adult themes.
In This Part: Resolutions come in different shapes.

x x x x x x

Thirty: Aglow

Hung on the wooden stand, she watches.

The great, blazing bird opens its beak. It will rear, and the strike will pierce her and scatter her into nothing.

Rukia closes her eyes.

When she opens them again, a billow of cloth, tan and black, fills her vision. Her rescuer grins down at her as her eyes widen at the impossible conclusion that she still draws breath.

She's raised up and shouted at, warmth of a different kind pouring through her. As another voice makes her turn her head, her heart constricts with joy as she looks down at the man at the foot of the rack.

He's alive. They're alive. The knowledge beats at her with frenetic, stubborn delight. She's frail, but this realisation invigorates rather than smothers her. She was ready to die.

There is something to live for again.

She is flung down from the stand, and she hears herself screaming with the shock of it, cut as strong arms envelop her and break her fall. They roll onto the ground, the momentum smashing through them both. She would laugh if she could find the air for it.

They are, all three, still alive.

In the next eyeblink, in the manner of a dream, her gaze trails the shining arc of a sword passing through Ichigo as if he were paper, the crimson wetness of his blood soiling the ground. He topples, broken, and she strains against a chokehold as Renji falls after him, robes soaked with his own blood, eyes vacant with pain.

The sheet is knotted around her, her hair a mess over the pillow. Rukia gathers herself; she's used to this dream in its innumerable variations. She knows where it stems, for all that she can't seem to dispel it. There is the white tower. There is the old execution hill, and a record of a trial in the lee of greater treason that led into the war. It's all in the past, even if the past blazes into life in the vulnerable moments of her rest. She will wash off the sweat and change her robe and go back to bed.

A knock on her door interrupts her ablutions. She calls for the servant to come in.

"Lady Rukia." The old woman bows. "Captain Kuchiki is..."

"Has something happened? I thought the patrols weren't due until tomorrow."

"There was a skirmish, my lady. Captain Kuchiki requested to see you."

She tells herself she only shivers with the vestigial cold the dream always leaves running through her veins. Her brother can't be... "I'll come at once."

Rukia shoos the servant away before she can offer to help dress her, and pulls on the first yukata that comes to hand. If her brother was truly hurt, the servant wouldn't have been so sedate. She is being silly and oversensitive.

Still, the rush of her anguish falling away pauses her in her tracks as she enters his rooms. The space is softly lit, a servant seated unobtrusively in the corner. Her brother is resting in his futon. She only takes the most superficial stock of the room, one she's never visited, before kneeling next to him.

"Honoured brother?"

She seems to interrupt a light sleep; his eyes focus on her too slowly. A sedative, perhaps. "Rukia."

"What happened?" The quilt is pulled up to his chest, the collar of his sleeping robe showing a wrap of bandages. His right hand, atop the covers, is likewise covered in linen dressing. Her fear wasn't unfounded then, only its intensity exaggerated.

"A brief battle. I will recover."

"Of course." She presses her lips together. Silly indeed, especially in the face of his calm. "You wished to see me? Is there... anything I can do?" She's glad she was woken for this. Injury is something no shinigami can avoid, a part of their duty, but the news couldn't have waited for morning.

"I have been told to rest for a few days," His gaze is fixated on her face, as he were reluctant to lose the contact. "The wounds are not serious."

She nods. A draft winds into the room from an open window, stirring the candles in their painted paper hoods. It seems she should say or do something more, but no ideas come. The pressure of her dream, familiar in its terror, lingers close, yet it isn't something she would mention to her brother.

"Rukia." His voice pulls her from her clinging thoughts. "There is a scroll on the second shelf from the right, bound with a blue cord. Would you?"

She fetches the scroll, shifting through the cases until her fingers touch the faded silk cord. The scroll is heavy for its small size, the paper crackling with age when she dares to uncoil one end.

"What is this?"

"Something I'd read myself," her brother says, with a trifle of rueful humour. "Would you do me a favour?"

"Mm-hm." The lanterns hide her flush of apprehension; it seems she's been allowed into some private sphere.

"The verses are numbered. Find the one marked eleven."

"This one? 'You who... who have come...' "

"Yes. My honoured grandfather used to say, 'Do not begin a poem if you mean to hesitate.' "

"Do you think it true?"

"I think it's advice, to be taken in that spirit."

She clears her throat, aware that her voice doesn't bend to a storyteller's sonorant cadence. She makes it low and thoughtful instead to suit the words.

" 'You who have come from my old country,

Tell me what has happened there! —

Was the plum, when you passed my silken window,

Opening its first cold blossom?' "

A silence falls as she finishes. Her brother coughs, and she moves to adjust the pillow so he is more comfortable.

"She was fond of that poem," he says once the fit has passed. Rukia knows whom he means by the barely perceptible stress on the word.

"It's very sad." She rolls the scroll downward. "The... the sense of longing has a beauty of its own."

"You read it very differently." In the close circle of lantern light, his face is unfathomable. "Rukia. I cherished your sister. I adopted you into House Kuchiki on her dying wish."

"I know, Byakuya-niisama."

"This house has many doors." He draws in a breath. "You may have been taken into the Thirteenth due to the Kuchiki name, but you've excelled on your own. You aren't trammelled here, if you wish not to remain."

"Oh." She scrambles closer. "Oh, no. I mean... I've felt sad here. I've been hesitant in your company." She stumbles, but her need to speak out is greater than her sense of decorum. "I'd have felt those things no matter where I was."

"Then—" His mouth moves without sound. "Then you wish to stay?"

"I wish to stay." She lays a hand on his bandaged one. "For as long as I may."

"You are my sister. This is your home." He casts a glance at her whether to affirm his words or reassure himself that she's still there. "That will not change in the days of my life."

Smiling, she reaches to needlessly straighten the quilt over him.

"There is... another verse I'd hear. The last one on the scroll."

The scroll is frayed where the poem begins, a meticulously glued seam marking a rip in the paper. This time, she doesn't fumble as she starts reading, the lines flowing easier.

" 'So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed

Could there have been a frost already?

Lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight.

Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home.' "

When she looks up, his eyes are shut, his breathing evening into slumber. She closes the scroll, lays it on the table, and goes to draw down the blinds so the early sun won't wake him.

x x x x x x

On the second weekend after college starts, Orihime announces her plan to visit Soul Society. Ichigo should have dropped by a long time ago, so once Chad adds his succinct agreement to her enthusiasm, there is no reasonable way to refuse. Ishida does, of course, as he does every other time Orihime earnestly tells him to join them. He gives his regards to Rukia for Ichigo to deliver.

Rukia meets them at the dimensional gate, beaming up at Chad as she greets him and hugging Orihime in a rare display of delight.

"Hey, you," Ichigo finally says as she lets Orihime go, and they find themselves face to face.

"Hello." Her scarce smile doesn't waver. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd decided to quit."

"Quit what?" he snaps, half on instinct. They fall into step ahead of Chad and Orihime. "The shinigami business?"

"Well, that as well." Her tone gives away nothing. "I suppose I was wrong."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He's too aware of their friends a few paces behind. This isn't the time or the place to have the talk they should've had a few times over—but he has no idea what would be the right circumstances. Back at home, it is marginally easier to ignore the quandary. He hasn't been able to pretend he only lives in Karakura for a few years now.

"I said I would wait, Ichigo. I will. There are, however, some limits to that promise."

Unable to answer, he averts his eyes. I know, damn it. I made this mess, or at least made it worse.

Before he can find any way to verbalise that, Rukia has turned to Chad and Orihime with an offer of dinner at the Thirteenth—the Kuchiki estate would be too stuffy for them, anyway—and the fleeting window where he could have spoken honestly is gone.

x x x x x x

After the dinner, the others scatter across Seireitei. Orihime and Rukia disappear together, no doubt for something girly, so Ichigo doesn't even ask. Chad heads off to the Eighth with an explanation about a go match he owes. Ichigo hardly knew he played.

He's left with the whole of Seireitei before him and an utter lack of company. He could creep to the Eleventh, risk being found by Zaraki before he could find Ikkaku, and end up carted off to the Fourth on his first full day in Soul Society in almost a month.

Swishing his feet in the captain's pond, he even ponders hanging around the Thirteenth. What's wrong, anyway? It's not like I ever had trouble spending time...

He had Rukia and her antics, or at least, Renji and the often-offered tour of local taverns. Renji even worked for deflecting some of the Eleventh's homicidal impulses. Even when they were both mired in the aftermath of the war, there was the sparring, their unmixed rapport on the training ground.

"Okay," he says to himself. Pushing Zangetsu into his sash, he picks up his socks and sandals.

The sunset slashes into the streets. Ichigo wends his way through the city; he's in no hurry. Even the notion that he's going is borderline.

The gate to the Fifth is open; the shinigami on watch nods him through on sight. Being a saviour of Soul Society—and a personal friend of the acting captain—is good for something. He knocks on the door panel leading to the new captain's quarters.

As the door slides aside, he decides not to regret this. He opens his mouth and forces himself to speak. "Hey. We've got... unfinished business."

Renji backs from the doorway to allow him in. He lets his eyes circle the room; it seems more a place to crash than an actual living space. It also does a wretched job of distracting him from Renji, wary as he leans back against the closed door.

"Threats of bodily harm, somethin' like that?"

"Something like that." Ichigo sets Zangetsu down against the wall.

"Should we talk about this over tea like civilised people? Not that I have any, just got in." The outer robe of Renji's uniform is flung on the table, Zabimaru laid on top of it.

"Could you cut the crap? Humour me a second here." I'm sick of this situation, Ichigo understands. I'm sick of avoiding you, and not knowing what the hell to think. You owe me this much.

"What about?"

"What the fuck was that last time, on the way back from Rukongai?" The question spills from his mouth. "You know what I'm talking about, so don't play dumb." He'd been almost ready to deal with Renji, to yield to his teasing and admit things were not so bad, until the situation slanted too-sharply into uncharted territory.

Renji goes rigid; his reiatsu, a constant low swell of restless energy, stills. "Rather you forgot 'bout that."

"Who asked your opinion? You owe me a reason. I can take it."

"You can 'take it'?"

Indignation rises within him, but is countered by a jab of concern. "Tell me, idiot." It's more a prompt than a demand. "Whatever the hell it is. I've seen enough." I'm close enough.

Renji's hands press flat against the door. It's like he is testing a sore limb.

"Okay. Since you asked. Long story short, when the tian bin got me in Yellow Springs, we didn't... agree on my loyalties. In that, Wei..." He blinks, then goes on. "That bastard nearly took my eye."

x x x x x x

Ichigo gasps out a half-formed oath. A heartbeat passes, two, and three, before he reaches out a cautious hand.

Renji had meant to confront the youth after his reconciliation with Rukia—or, not confront, for all that a competitive quality flavours all their byplay. They needed to stand on even ground in this. That probably was what opened his mouth, too, to shove out the truth.

Ichigo's thumb touches his nose, feathers over the eye socket. Renji resists the impulse to close his eye or to respond in any other way. A half-healed cut on Ichigo's thumb shaves against the corner of his eye, the scar chapped against vulnerable skin.

It feels like bleeding a wound, like breaching the surface after a dive.

Then Ichigo crumples the moment without thought. "Was that what you moped about the whole way back?"

Renji flinches. "Oh, fuck you, Kurosaki—"

"Yeah, you wish."

Ichigo grabs his shitagi as if to push him aside; Renji raises his own hands in instinctive defence, seizing Ichigo's robe. He feels the clutch and flow of the youth's breath under his fingers. On occasion, he wishes. It would be easier, but more is at stake here than a moment's heated fancy. For all that this may be a confrontation, it should lower barriers rather than raise them.

"And don't call me that." Ichigo doesn't realise his own control of the situation, but tries to exert it anyway. That is very him.

"What should I call ya, then?"

"Not that."

"Dumbass." Clarity wars with a slow-rising heat inside him. His stillness is equal measures challenge and surrender.

"Like you're so smart."

"Hey, I know what I want. At least I don't pretend."

That is the wrong thing to say. Ichigo balks, his face scrunching. Renji senses how he tenses up. Don't let him go. Not now. He promised Rukia, but she is far from the only reason he's going through with this. This is likely to be their last chance before one of them does irreparable damage to their—friendship, confidence, all the other things that matter.

"Listen," he says. "I wasn't yankin' your chain in Urahara's old hideout. Neither am I now. What I'm—look at me." He bows his head to find Ichigo's eye. "Look at me. There's not a damn thing about this that I haven't meant."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Try to have a conversation with you. I'm not sure what your game is, but I... I'm serious. About this. About you." And Rukia, damn it.

"Right," Ichigo says, too rough and amazed to be mocking.

Afterwards, Renji couldn't say who initiated the kiss. Ichigo hasn't improved in the meantime—hardly a surprise—but his tentativeness is eased by the lassitude and weight of the kiss. A charged curl of need spreads through Renji, but it isn't the bright flare of pin him down and fuck him senseless that he well knows. Something else enters the space between them, heavy and mesmerising.

Ichigo twists his fingers into Renji's hair, tight enough to elicit an "Ow!" from him. "Ah, sorry."

"Ease up a bit. I'm not goin' anywhere."

Ichigo scrutinises him. "That a fact?"

"You're one suspicious bastard."

Ichigo nods his head against Renji's and does not speak. Tension thrums between them. He can't help but be conscious of his own heartbeat, or of Ichigo's body inches from his own. Trust takes time. He knows.

"Renji." His name in Ichigo's low voice is an odd comfort. "That sucks, what happened with Wei, but... it's over. We're in the clear."

For once in his life, he suppresses the urge to cut in with some half-clever commentary. His throat works.

"So, I don't know what you... wanted from me." Ichigo is trying furiously to put words to something he probably only comprehends in his mind. "I figure it hurts. I figure you can't really talk about it. It's easier to turn your back and pretend. But it's also pretty fucking stupid."

Incredulous laughter breaks from him before he can contain it. "What?"

"That's what you're doing." Ichigo gives him a deadpan look. "You and me both, for that matter. 'Least I figured out it didn't work."

"Who the hell are you to..."

"Nobody," Ichigo snaps. "Except you got in my face with the whole eye thing. That makes it my business."

"An' your excellent advice is to..." It figures it would be like this with Ichigo; pushing and pulling, always with a challenge buried in the layers. "To turn around and face it? That's it?"

"I sure as hell had to." Ichigo's gaze veers to the side.

How's that for cryptic? "Fine. What are we even talkin' about anymore? Don't answer that. We kinda... digressed here at some point." He realises, again, how close they are, as if it simply hadn't occurred to either of them to step back. "I didn't mean to spook you back then. I just... lashed out. It's fine now."

Something relaxes in Ichigo's demeanour at that, even if it is a vague reassurance. "I'll live," he says, half a chuckle. "Is it just me or is there kinda too much up in the air?"

"Hell, yes."

"Funny, though. I sorta feel more clear-headed." Ichigo's fingers burrow into Renji's hair, pulling on the twine that ties back his ponytail. His throat thickens at the weight of Ichigo's hand on the nape of his neck.

"That's good," he says. "Now we've sorted this out, maybe you better sleep on it. So things don't get messy again."

"You wouldn't put me up?" It's almost a quip.

"Hmm." Renji trails a thumb down the side of Ichigo's neck, falling back into the banter because it is what he knows. "I gotta wonder how sure you are 'bout that. You've bolted on me twice. Seems a bit of a pattern."

"That was different," Ichigo says, rough. "You sorta freaked me out last time."

"You sorta came on to me like no tomorrow the time before." Renji tenses as he speaks, though he tries to keep his words light, a jibe that can be deflected by a riposte or a laugh. Even this near, there's room for doubt.

"Guess we're even then."

"Tippin' the scales again, are you?"

Defiance flickers in Ichigo's eyes. "Take a guess."

He takes a full breath; it ripples on the fringes. "Ichigo, are you—"

The sliding door jolts in its frame with a grind of wood as he falls back against it, seeking purchase, head dragged down by Ichigo's grip on the back of his neck. Then his focus stutters and narrows onto the heat of Ichigo's mouth on his own.

"Yeah," Ichigo mumbles. "I am."

x x x x x x

Ichigo could not name the precise point where oh shit what am I doing becomes want this now.

It is, in any case, before he pushes Renji back against the door and kisses him.

He makes most of his decisions in split-second instants. This one creeps in like a tide until it's a surge that throws him forward. He has a few notions of how this should work. He tosses them aside one by one as Renji meets him, mouth on his, and then on his cheek and jaw and ear, and oh, whoa.

He kisses Renji again to distract himself from the shiver at the base of his spine. It trembles up at Renji licking slow and careful into his mouth until he groans and breaks away.

Ichigo gets his recompense in the way Renji damn near whimpers when his mouth slips on his neck: his teeth graze skin, first by accident and then on purpose. Cloth drags over his shoulders, and he lets go for long enough to let Renji yank his robes down his arms. Once free, he grabs the collar of Renji's shitagi and returns the favour. His hands sweep over the shapes of bone and muscle under Renji's skin, fingers catching on old scars.

Then he is pushed up to the wall. He'd say something, but Renji kisses him, bending him open and wanting and gasping before they have to part for lack of breath.

"Get up," Renji mutters. "This is gonna kill my neck."

"Who told you to—to be so damn tall—" Renji hoists him up, and Ichigo has to throw an arm around his shoulders and wrap a leg about his hips so as not to fall. And then he doesn't care, because the amount of warm skin on his short-circuits his thought processes. The doorframe bites into his shoulder blade. Renji's mouth and skin taste of salt. The tension in him rises steady and shuddery, gripping him hard when their mouths meet. The kiss turns deep, breathtaking, yet Ichigo wants to squirm at the lingering pace.

His feet come to the floor again. He lets his hand splay on Renji's hip, keeps his eyes shut, as if the most minute change could undo the heat and want and the undercurrent of something kinder.

"So," Renji says. "Now what?"

"You need me—to hold your hand about this?"

"No, you cheeky bastard. I'd prefer to—think of it as takin' suggestions."

"Well," he says, and it's not all boldness in his voice. "I guess you can take this as one." He pulls Renji into an artless kiss and slides his hand left.

x x x x x x

"Thought you said I was—" If Ichigo focuses, he can almost trace the tattoo on Renji's back by texture alone "—too bony for you?" He's proud of himself for the whole sentence, and then he doesn't know what is tattoo and what sweat-smoothed skin anymore. His back jerks straight as Renji draws a fingertip down along his hipbone.

"What can I say?" The amusement is muffled, but there. "You know what a masochist I am."

"Har," Ichigo says, then "Oh, shit," in a faltering whisper. That's Renji's mouth, and his hand braced on Ichigo's hip. Renji's hair is rough-soft in his hands; his fingers, knowing and sure, tug small ragged noises from him until he has no breath for more.

He knows the one thing he'll remember afterwards. They end up on the floor at some point, Renji with his head tossed back, his right hand tangled with Ichigo's left one, keeping it there clasping the side of his face. Leaning down to kiss Renji clumsily, Ichigo feels him arch up against his own body. He strokes his fingertips over Renji's temple, in tentative arches until Renji gasps, a rasping, desperate drag of air, and tenses with release.

x x x x x x

Shadows flow across the room as the light outside fades. Renji waffles by the window, for the breath of air or for the boneless satisfaction in him.

He sharpens when Ichigo swears at his sticking bathroom door. "Just leave it," he calls. "The frame's warped."

"Ever thought of getting it fixed?"

"Mm-hm." He turns to watch as Ichigo moves about, gathering his clothes. It's more the context than the sight itself that draws his gaze. Not that there's anything wrong with Ichigo himself, his movement fluid, his face cleared by cold water, but him, naked and loose-limbed in Renji's quarters, that is new.

"What's so interesting?" Ichigo cocks an eyebrow at him.

"You? Or maybe just the part where we had sex against my front door."

"Right." Ichigo shakes out his hakama.

Renji guffaws. "Look, don't think about it too much."

"I'm not." The sashes of the hakama claim Ichigo's attention. "I mean..."

"You are."

"Stop—stop putting words in my mouth. I didn't go, did I?"

"Point." Renji drops to sit on the floor, arms draped over his knees. "Though I was surprised you came in the first place. Not that I'm complainin', but..."

"Better not be." Ichigo crosses the room to him, poking him in the shin with the ball of his foot.

"Oi. Just tellin' it like it is. So what changed your mind?"

Ichigo halts in the middle of another mock kick. "A bit late to ask that question, don't you think?"

"What was that about lookin' your issues in the eye? If it's not plain by now I'm not gonna..." Renji can't help the sigh, although it's a gentle one. "I can guess what it is. Rather you told me yourself."

There's a pregnant pause. "Rukia did," Ichigo says. "Or at least, she made me figure out I was fed up with this shit we kept pulling on each other. I don't know how all of this is gonna work, but at least things aren't getting worse anymore. I think."

Renji shakes his head, in bemusement rather than denial. Despite making an art form out of stuffing his foot in his mouth, Ichigo has some sort of intuition working for him. Maybe he's even managed to fumble his way into a place where this can all work out.

Ichigo slumps into a sitting position, his shoulder wedged against Renji's. They slouch there back to back. "Not worse," Renji agrees. "Different, though. Think you can handle that?" Rukia's part remains unspoken, but the way Ichigo leans into him is answer enough to his immediate question.

They'll be strong enough for this to hold. At this moment, he believes it.