Do Words Make a Bit of Difference?

Over the next few years we settled back into our roles as friends carefully. I grew even taller and Rukia and Ai would torment me mercilessly over the amount of food I’d eat. “Save some for the rest of us,” they’d tell me. I tried to, but I was just so hungry. We all were.

We were a pack, a family of misfits, family bound without the ties of blood. The gods only knew how long after Yori passed we drifted along pretending that all was well. While we may have been adults age-wise we still looked like a bunch of malnourished teenagers and acted like juvenile delinquents.

I should have known better that to become complacent, because that’s when the next tragedy struck. It was summer again, a few days from the Kanto Matsuri and even though we wouldn’t actively participate we were still looking forward to seeing all the lanterns carried through the streets followed by the fireworks after the parade.

Rukia and Ai had wanted flowers and ribbons for their hair and Kenshin and Takashi had wanted to look at the wares offered by wandering merchants in town for the celebrations. I let them run off into the crowds, too hungry to bother arguing with them. I’d turned a corner, searching for a too-busy to be attentive shopkeeper when a loud boom sounded nearby. The buildings around me shook from the force and when I looked up; I saw a cloud of smoke drift into the previously clear blue sky.

Screams, the likes of which I’d never heard before, started up immediately. I finally smelled the smoke I saw and something else, something meaty and metallic, something roasting. Fear, abrupt and burning, clawed the back of my throat.

I ran through the crowds trying to escape. The tide of people running the other way made my progress slow and agonizing. My mind kept flashing images of Rukia, her looking up at me with mistrust the first day we’d met, the look of disdain when I’d noticed her changing body, the look of sorrow and soft acceptance when we kissed the night of Yori’s funeral. Finally the sea of people parted and I saw what the commotion was all about.

It was a circle of destruction, utter and complete, burning and blackened; the smell of gunpowder and singed flesh and hair. Pieces of what had been people only minutes before littered the ground; an ear here, a finger there, red everywhere, grey goo clumped on what may have been buildings and homes. Clumps of hair still attached to bits of skin and the blinding whiteness of exposed bone. And that sound: crying, screaming, begging all mashed together to form a symphony of fear and pain. The stuff of nightmares come true. People walked or crawled around in a daze, some calling for loved ones, shaking their heads, crying. No, no, no, no, no not true, a bad dream, I thought.

“RUKIA! AI! GET OVER HERE! KENSHIN! TAKASHI! HURRY- FIND THE GIRLS!” I heard myself shout. As I looked around, I saw pieces of the boys I’d loved like brothers, together in death as life. I turned away as sheer terror and grief warred for domination inside at the sight of their mangled remains. Rukia, I had to find Rukia, I thought over and over. Rukia and Ai, please, please let them be safe, I begged whatever deities may have been listening.

I found them hours later, after panic and dread had long since congealed in my throat. It had made shouting nearly impossible, but I’d pushed my voice past that disgusting barrier, screamed my throat bloody as I called for my two girls over and over. It was blocks away from the blast center that I finally found them. They were leaning against a dirty wall in an alley we met in over the years if we became separated while stealing.

She was holding Ai in her arms, rocking gently back and forth. I heard snatches of a nursery song we used to sing to Yori when she couldn’t sleep. None of us had so much as hummed it in since that day we’d found her. I realized the song was coming from Rukia.

Relief at the sight of my girls came too soon. Ai was limp and as I approached I could see the odd angles of her limbs. Rukia stroked the girl’s slack face, her silent tears cleaning tracks down her dirty cheeks, shaking from grief. Ai had been pierced by a piece of wood and it protruded hideously from her chest. Blood had dribbled from her mouth, which had stained her lips red. Her eyes were open and staring, like black holes, in death they held none of the warmth and mischief they had in life. She looked obscenely peaceful.

Rukia had dirt and soot, pieces of flesh and quivering grey matter smeared all over her. It covered her clothes, her exposed skin and her hair. She finally looked up and saw me and she screamed. It was a sound that wrenched me out of the daze I was in and I rushed to her side. She struggled and fought me, wanting to go back to Ai’s crumpled body, but I carried her out of there, locked in the vice of my arms. After a few minutes she fell limp and I felt the wetness of her tears soak through the fabric of my shirt. I ran as fast as I could. My lungs burned, but my steps never faltered as she silently cried in my arms.

After we made it to the river, I put her down and carefully undressed her. I tore strips off my old kosode and washed her gently, scared she might have been injured under all the dirt and grime and blood. She kept still, even though she was mostly naked beneath my hands. When she was clean again, I gently dressed her in my torn kosode and tossed the bloody yukata she’d worn in the river. Then I carried her flaccid body back to our camp. She’d stopped crying and I was relieved that at least her body had escaped unharmed.

After making sure that she was safely tucked in a blanket, I went back. It was dark, but there were fires burning everywhere as people looked through wreckage. Ai was right were I’d forced Rukia to leave her. She weighed next to nothing as I picked her up and carried her away. I went to that abandoned homestead we’d found years ago, high in the mountains overlooking the chaos of the city.

It was quiet there and the air was fresh and smelled like nature, not smoke and people. Ai had loved running through the wild grass. It took an hour to get there running as fast as I could, but I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving my friend to spend the rest of eternity in that horrid cemetery. I left her facing north, as was the custom and went to get Kenshin and Takashi.

I was more tired than I could ever remember being, but I as I ran back to the city, I focused on nothing. In the careful blankness I constructed I could feel a familiar presence. I allowed it to fill me, to lend me strength. As the sky lightened to the peculiar grey before dawn, I finally found myself back in the city.

I stole an overturned cart laying forgotten a few streets over from the blast site, and after I had righted it, picked a careful route through the debris back to the last place I’d seen my friends. My hands shook and my fine motor skills seemed to have deserted me, but I somehow managed to put what was left of them in the cart.

The walk back to the forlorn house up in the hills took longer this time. Birds chirped and the sun shone and everything was so damned normal. It was oddly offensive. When I eventually got there, I finally realized what the task I’d set before me really was. I was digging graves. For my friends. For people I loved.

I used a stick to break up the ground on a bluff overlooking the city. I’m not sure how long it took me, but the sun was setting by the time I was finished digging the three graves. The moon was high in the sky and my hands were blistered and bleeding and I was filthy beyond recognition by the time I’d buried them under the dirt. The wind whispered through the grass as I lay down to rest.

I dreamt of a voice whispering to me, calling out to me, and that strange furry white creature off in the distance. I woke sweating and shaking in the dark. I was cold and hunger gnawed so familiarly in my gut. I wanted to say something, anything to break the silence, but in the end I couldn’t. The walk home was long and torturous.

I wanted to go back to the camp, back to Rukia, but I smelled terrible and had stuff and dirt smeared everywhere. I went to the river and submerged myself in the cold, rushing water, clothes and all, until my fingers pruned and daylight broke. I was soaked and hurting everywhere when I finally crawled back into the camp.

Rukia didn’t speak at all for days, refused to eat, barely drank. But she was alive and that was all that mattered to me. I knew she’d carried Ai through hell, I knew she’d seen unimaginable horror and I knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to change that. There was no comfort for me to give, nothing I could do, except continue to offer her the food she didn’t want and the solace she had no use for. I couldn’t even seek to avenge my friends. Gossip and talk around town was that it had been an accident, and the ones who caused it died in the blast.

One night about a week later, I woke to her sobs and crawled over the hard ground till I reached her worn out sleeping mat. The moon was a white sliver in a dark blue sky, providing just enough light to allow me to see the wet tracks her tears had left on her pale cheeks. I smelled smoke from nearby fires. She looked at me with those big eyes of hers, her shoulders bowed as if the weight of her grief was too much to bear.

The darkness of the still night closed around us till all I could see and smell anymore was her. I edged closer and draped an arm across her sagging shoulders. She turned her face into my chest and I felt her small frame shake as my front got damp. I wrapped both arms fully around her, held her close as she finally spoke for the first time. She asked why they all had to die. Why we couldn’t have protected them. Why Ai had shoved her down and taken the flying piece of wood meant to end her life.

I had no answers, no words that would take away her deep pain. I had the same questions, though I was overjoyed at her survival. Callous as it was, I was glad she hadn’t been taken from me too.

The slats of her sleeping mat dug into my knees as I knelt holding her. The pain didn’t bother me much, but I was starting to lose feeling in my feet. I shifted slightly and allowed my shins to slide out from under my butt. Rukia sniffled against my chest and I let my head fall forward to rest my chin against the top of her head.

“I know it hurts, Rukia. I know and I’m sorry. I loved them too,” I whispered as I rubbed my hands up and down her back. The cotton was rough under my fingers, but I knew her skin would be soft beneath the fabric.

I looked up and focused on the white shard that was the moon that night, forcing my mind away from partially impure thoughts about a girl who was as good as a kid sister. A girl who had barely spoken two civil words to me for the gods only knew how long after the last time I succumbed and kissed her.

The neighborhood around was preternaturally quiet and it disturbed me, made me wonder if this was somehow the calm before the storm. It had been like that for the week since the explosion and I wanted everything to go back to normal. I wanted my friends back, I wanted the noise and the lights usual to our neighborhood and with all that the safe buffer between Rukia and I.

When her shoulders stopped hitching and her breath came more easily, she looked up at me with an inscrutable expression in eyes made impossibly deep and dark in the light of that fragment of the moon. When she tightly grasped the shoulder seams of my kosode in her fists I was scared what would come next.

She was still small, so much smaller than me and she weighed next to nothing. But she had immense strength in her tiny frame and she yanked my face to hers. The passion of her kiss startled me and I didn’t respond at first, thinking of how much I would hurt if she never spoke to me again because of another stupid kiss.

“Don’t you want me anymore, Renji?” she asked against my lips. “Don’t you love me?”

THIS IS WRONG, my brain shouted, NO, DON’T DO IT, STUPID! I kissed her back. She wiggled onto my lap, straddling me, wrapping her arms and legs around me. Her busy fingers somehow found the tie in my hair and released it. I felt the weight of its heavy red length fall over my shoulders and down my back.

She buried her fingers in it, allowing the hair to run through them. She drew her hands through to the slightly tangled ends and the gentle tugs reminded me of when I’d let her braid my hair when we were still kids. She’d known how much I liked her hands in my hair even then- I know she did, even though I always protested that the braids made me look silly. I kept my hair long for her. Just like I’d had ‘girl friends’, but hadn’t ‘gone all the way’, because some stupid part of me was waiting for her. Gods, I was such an idiot.

My tongue traced the seam of her lips and she opened for me. Years melted away and we were those two kids again, kissing for the first time. Nothing important had changed between us. I still loved her and it wasn’t in the brotherly fashion I’d loved Yori or Ai. I could taste the grief we shared, feel the pain at the losses we’d suffered, just as I had back then. The only difference was the lack of sake. This time I couldn’t blame anything on alcohol.

Her small breasts pressed against me and I couldn’t restrain my hands as I had then, long years of hunger destroying my resistance and good sense. I ran my hands up her sides and traced the sides of her tits as I moaned into her mouth. She licked my neck and I moaned again, until her lips were back on mine.

“I want more, Renji,” she whispered hoarsely into my mouth. I could only nod and acquiesce. Anything, anything for you, Rukia, anything, I may have said it aloud, but I certainly thought it.

I pulled from her embrace briefly and my fingers trembled violently as I untied my kosode. I couldn’t help but notice her hands were rock steady as she did the same to top her jinbei. After we’d shrugged out of our clothing, she merely nodded when I traced the band of fabric wrapping her breasts inquiringly. It took a while for me to steady my hands enough to untie the knot, but when the fabric finally unraveled, the sight of her naked chest took my breath away.

I reached one hand carefully forward and as gently as I could manage it, touched her. Her eyes closed at the contact and she arched into my hand. The texture of her skin made my mouth water and my cock grow impossibly harder underneath her. I used my other hand to grab the nape of her neck and bring her face closer to mine so I could kiss her. I poured all the feelings I had for her into that kiss, all the love and yearning I had felt for so long.

She moaned as I massaged the slight weight of her breast and wrapped her arms around me again, touching my back with her fingertips, making me shiver. Her hips rocked gently, rubbing against my dick through the layers of our remaining clothing. When I stopped kissing her to rub my tongue against the pulse point in her neck, her gentle caresses on my back turned to scraping fingernails scoring my skin. What little control I had maintained up till that point was lost and I uncrossed my legs and shifted till I was laying on top of her.

Her eyes opened and she looked at me as I hovered over her. The sleeping mat was rough under the palms I used to brace my weight so I wouldn’t crush her. I desperately wanted a softer, cleaner place to give her, but that was all we had. That empty square of earth between buildings which had seen their better days decades ago.

Focusing on what was truly important- her- I looked down, at the veritable feast that was her exposed upper body, trying to decide where to start. She was just so beautiful in the dim light the moon provided and it made her pale skin glow. Her nipples were sharp little points that cast slight shadows across her breasts. She was reed slim, and her skin was milk pale, nearly translucent looking. She was Rukia. She was mesmerizing to the point distraction. I could have sat there all night, happy to just look at her. Rukia, apparently sick of my inaction, grabbed my hair and pulled my face down to hers.

“Don’t stop now, Renji,” she told me before kissing me fiercely.

One of my hands found her breast its own accord, covering it completely with its span. Her nipple poked the center of my palm, demanding attention, so I worried it gently between my thumb and forefinger. She wriggled under me and my hips thrust into the cradle of her thighs automatically. I knew if I didn’t do something to regain my equilibrium soon; I’d spill into my hakama before bringing her to orgasm. It was not only important to me that she come first, it was vital.

I wasn’t completely without experience, though most of my knowledge came from watching others when they were unaware. I remembered the pants and moans of a woman when her lover had licked her body. I had watched the faceless woman bow her back off the futon as she found her completion at the hands and tongue of the man who lay between her parted thighs.

I would take all that I’d learned from watching and apply it here, to my worship of the beautiful girl beneath me. I disentangled our lips and again braced my weight above hers to lick her elegant neck and the graceful curve of her clavicle. I licked the soft and scented hollow at the base of her throat and then trailed a wet path down her sternum, between her breasts.

She arched under my touch, hissing and gasping at the contact of my tongue on her skin. I’d never felt so powerful. I traced the slight crease under her breast and made a swirl around the whole thing with the very tip of my tongue, before finally allowing myself to lap at her nipple. Her hands grabbed my head and held me in place. I obliged her silent request and suckled and nipped at the pink nub.

When she pushed my head to the other one, I smiled and used one of my hands to tug at the one I’d already made so wet and hard. Her wordless pleas went straight to my groin and I realized I was back to rocking my hips, rubbing against her. When I raised my face to look at her, her head stopped thrashing back and forth and she met my gaze. I saw the desire and lust and wanting I felt reflected in her stare. I let my hand trail from her breast to the tie fastening of the bottoms of her jinbei. Rukia flushed and though she looked a bit uncertain, she nodded.

“I trust you,” she told me quietly and my heart felt as if it would burst at those three words so softly spoken.

I made short work of the task and had her in short order naked before me. I was struck completely dumb and unable to move for several seconds. She was even more impossibly flawless fully nude. Long legs for such a small girl, her hips flared a bit and tapered to an incredibly slim waist and there was that flat stomach, those perfectly rounded breasts, that long slender neck. She was a prize, beautiful in a way I had not been prepared for. I knew that I was in no way good enough for her, but she looked at me as if she loved me, wanted me.

“Are you sure, Rukia?” I asked, mentally kicking myself for my reluctance, wanting nothing more than to just take what she offered without a second thought.

“Don’t you want me, Renji?” she asked for the second time that night, her voice soft and wavering. Uncertainty radiated from her and my heart twisted when she said “Is there something wrong with me?”

My mouth was dry, but I managed to croak “No, you’re beautiful, Rukia, perfect in everyway. You just, you deserve someone better. You deserve silks and flowers and soft blankets, not…”

“I want you, Renji. Please. Only you,” she interrupted in that soft voice of hers.

I couldn’t have argued anymore after that, even if I’d been so inclined. I could do this for her. I could make it good for her, I could make her come and scream for me. I gently spread her legs apart and scooted down so I could pick up one of her small, delicate feet. I kissed the high arch, each of her toes and licked the fine bones of her ankle. I kissed my way up her shin, tongued the back of her knee and the soft skin of the inside of her thigh. I let my hand precede my lips progress and it had found her wet center. I gently stroked those soft outer lips, cautiously nudging them apart and finding the folds of her sex sleek and hot and wet.

I was uncertain how it would feel to have my mouth on the most intimate spot of a person I’d known most of my life. Would I do it right? How would she taste… bitter, sweet, savory? But the musky-honeyed scent of her drew me forward and I surrendered the last of my reluctance to taste her. I moved my damp hand up her body and lightly grasped her pebble-hard nipple and twisted it between my fingers. My tongue slowly traced the seam of her damp core, opening her lips, revealing her. I followed the exposed ridges of her sex and reveled in her scent and taste as she writhed and moaned above me.

I noticed she seemed particularly sensitive at the top where her folds met. I let my tongue rub against it over and over, suckling it gently till she was keening and holding my head in place by grabbing my hair. Wetness seeped over my chin and she lifted her hips to meet the movement of my tongue and suction of my mouth.

I let go of that responsive spot, eager for a better taste of her and found the opening I knew would grant me entrance to her body. My tongue darted in and she shuddered around me. My hips thrust helplessly into the hard ground, unable to stop my body from trying to sink into what should have been her. I moaned at her tangy, salty sweetness coating my mouth, wanting more. My hand on her breast jerked and pulled restlessly at her nipple, but the feel of her breast under my hand was nothing compared to the feel of her under my lips.

Her hands clenched in my hair, pulling it harshly, but I didn’t mind the stinging pain as she writhed under me. I dimly heard her calling my name over and over and I knew she’d come for me soon. I loved her voice, almost as much as I loved hearing her say my name. I dragged my hand back down her body and used both of them to ease her thighs further apart, allowing me greater access. With a movement that was more dexterous than I thought I was capable of, I slipped a finger under my chin. I moved my mouth back to the place that had caused her such pleasure before and used my finger to gently probe her entrance.

It was tight and hot and everything I wanted. I had barely managed to slip in past the first knuckle of my forefinger when her body convulsed around the digit and she wailed her orgasm for anybody within a three block radius to hear. The trembling of her body was erotic beyond belief, as was the rush of liquid across my face and on my hand. I groaned and released her from my mouth. I was rock hard and throbbing in my hakama, desperate for the same release I had given her. I didn’t want to force the issue with her, content to roll over on my back and let my hand find its way under the folds that contained me.

Rukia had other ideas and tugged me till I lay fully on the mat next her still heaving chest. “Did you…?” she asked in a quavering voice. I shook my head, still full of the wonder that was her. “Do you want me to do that to you?” she asked next and I almost swooned at the thought of her small hands wrapped around my length.

I untied the fastenings of my hakama and lifted my hips as I pushed the cloth down. She sat up next to me and helped me remove them. She looked both scared and fascinated at what was revealed. Her touch on my stomach was tentative and she stroked the skin gently on her way down, tracing the peaks and valleys of muscle and vein. The first touch of her hand on my cock made me shiver and I groaned aloud. I allowed my eyes to slide closed, unable to keep them open in the wake of her touch.

She gently prodded and nudged my dick with a single finger, watching it bounce as I struggled to stay still for her exploration. I could hear her soft exhalations as she touched me and I writhed against the roughness of her sleeping mat, unable to contain the movement anymore. When her hands wrapped around its girth and she gently drew her hand up and down I gasped. She chuckled softly as my eyes flew open and found her staring at my face.

My eyebrows were probably buried in my hairline, my surprise was so great. “I’ve watched you do this,” she said, “when you thought the rest of us were asleep. You looked so fierce when you did it.”

I didn’t know if I should be embarrassed she’d seen me jerking off. She tugged and pulled on my flesh, but it wasn’t fast enough and her grip wasn’t nearly tight enough for my liking. I wrapped my hand around hers and demonstrated how I got myself off. My eyes closed again as she got the hang of it and I released my grip from her hand and allowed her to continue. My breath came in great gasping sighs as the release I sought came closer and closer.

When I finally came I cried out, my hips pumping furiously, feeling hot seed pour out and coat my skin and her hand. When I looked up and saw Rukia above me, she had a small satisfied smile on her face. She looked immensely proud of herself. I sat up and used a piece of discarded clothing to wipe my emission from her hand and my crotch. Then I laid back down and tugged her till she stretched out next to me. She put her head on my chest and I pulled a rough blanket over us to cover our nudity. Then I settled an arm around her and allowed my eyes to drift shut.

“Renji… What happens now?” she asked quietly.

“We sleep, Rukia. Love you,” I whispered into her fragrant hair, both exhausted and elated.

I could feel her smile against my naked chest. She laid a hand across my heart and whispered so quietly it might have been the breeze, “Love you too, Renji.”

~*~

So I had to kill the other kids off, too. But, there was smut. A whole slew of smut. Still no sex, though. Nope, haven't quite finished torturing my boy Renji yet (well, Tite's boy, but whatever).

It's late, but I wanted to upload one more chapter before I stumbled off to bed.

Review!

BTW- title is borrowed from an old Nina Simone song. She's just amazing, has the most gorgeous voice. If you haven't heard her stuff check it out, 'Feeling Good' is especially worth a listen or four.