Black-and-Red Conflict

~~~Eight~~~
Outbreak


Byakuya did indeed come to Renji, but only after full two and a half days, while the redhead was stuck with a squad to manage and people giving him strange looks as he was wearing two swords at his side, the second of them being one nobody else would ever have dared to touch. They also finally started to question him, after the rumors had over a few weeks and especially over the last four days accumulated enough that they just couldn't keep their mouths shut any longer. It was unbelievably annoying, especially since Renji was not patient at all and the fact that his captain did not show up on the same evening on which the redhead had taken Senbonzakura set his nerves on edge. He had felt a short flash of the other's Reiatsu around the next midday when he'd been outside the office to get some food, but had not been able to catch a glimpse of the noble. Damn that bastard, either now the noble was observing Renji from afar, the coward, or the redhead himself was becoming paranoid. It wasn't as if the last days of constant confusion and emotional ups and downs had not taken their toll on him as well.

He found himself thinking of Byakuya every minute of the day and, maybe worse, he dreamt of the dark-haired man as well. The kind of dreams teenagers got, not adults, but it wasn't as if he could have helped it at all. The few moments he had been close to Byakuya, the noble's hand on his chest for an instant, the smell of the dark hair and the way it caressed the slender, pale neck. The kiss. All those things came together at night to tease Renji and make him wake up with his heart and breath speeding and his sheets a sticky mess, not only from the sweat.

Also had Senbonzakura not given up on shocking him whenever he touched it and by now he would automatically wrap the sword in the long cloth of his sleeve before he lay hand on her at all. Zabimaru had been awfully quiet the last nights, too. Either Renji's wet dreams were indeed simply too vivid for anything else to get through to his mind, or his own Zanpakutou was getting annoyed at him for carrying a second sword around. Sometimes he wondered if soul slayers were able to actually talk among each other. He really, really hoped they could not. That conversation would probably be too embarrassing to even imagine.

In the early afternoon of the second day after he'd taken Senbonzakura, he was flustered enough to snap at about everybody who crossed his way. As Matsumoto Rangiku asked him for the tenth time why he carried Kuchiki-Taichou's sword and how the two were getting along, he told her to shove her gossiping tongue somewhere where the sun didn't shine – she stalked off literally spitting acid – and as a concerned Rukia asked him how he was, he'd told her to just get out of his way. She'd first kicked him in the groin and then hit him over the head. At least he knew she would forget the whole thing after that, but that well placed kick hurt so damn much that it wasn't pleasant at all when he had another dream while he dozed off over some boring reports.

On the other hand, had he known how Byakuya felt over those two days, he had probably gladly accepted even a few more questions, kicks in the groin, or shocks from Senbonzakura. For the noble was in a much worse condition.

After he'd fled the office before, acting on pure instinct, unable of any coherent thoughts whatsoever, Byakuya had employed his flash step to carry him off as fast and as far as possible. Then, too, his unconscious had been leading the way and two hours later he'd finally stopped, far and deep in the woods surrounding Rukongai, collapsing from sheer exhaustion, his throat burning, his chest hurting, whole body shivering as his muscles were strained, some torn from their overuse. That pain, and the cold air under the thick canopy of leaves above him gave him a few precious minutes of a slightly clearer mind in which his hand fumbled automatically for the familiar sheath of Senbonzakura at his side. As he did not find her, shock ran over his spine like icy cold needles. Then he finally remembered having left her in the office and with nothing left that he could hold onto, the world crashed down around him.

He raged.

Flashes of Reiatsu seared the air and felled trees. Maybe the only time ever in his whole life he screamed. Far from any living creature of Soul Society his voice ripped through the wind until his throat was too sore to produce another tone.

Then he collapsed again. And finally, his body spent until the point that he could not move another meter, he fell into a sleep almost comatose, his brain simply shutting his body down for its own safety.

As he awoke the next morning he felt sore and cold. The sun was just rising but not yet far enough to penetrate the leaves. Luckily he had spent one of Soul Society's warmer nights outside, and his clothes were only slightly damp. In the merciful few minutes of having just woken up, his mind was clear enough for him to straighten his Kenseikan and set off back towards Rukongai, Seireitei and his sword. Unfortunately, back towards Renji as well, whom he knew he could not yet possibly face. But he craved for his blade, needed her, so he could focus on something more real than his own mind. He had to get her back.

He walked slowly at first, then faster, and finally used his flash steps for short periods of time until his sore muscles would start to complain again and he had to walk normally once more. Had his mind not been too occupied with the task of just becoming insane he would have thanked the world in general for the fact that Shinigami, and especially those of captain level, healed extremely fast. Had he been human, the torn muscles would have kept him stranded in the woods for days. Now he made his way back to Seireitei by midday, having great difficulty to hide his boiling spirit energy as he neared the office carefully, stealthy, hiding and feeling strangely like a thief on the run. He avoided Renji and everybody else around as most of them were out for lunch. He stepped into his office silently, eager to lay hands on his soul slayer again when he found just a piece of paper on the sword stand instead.

'Come'n' get it from me' was scrawled there messily and Byakuya was barely able to rein in the angry wave of Reiatsu that emerged from him once more. There was no question whose messy handwriting this was his mind almost went blank with rage at the thought of the other laying a hand on his Zanpakutou. When he left the office though and saw his Fukutaichou from a distance, another memory of the redhead speaking Hisana's name made his rage induced momentary stableness topple once more and he retreated before he knew he would lose it again.

He withdrew some way back into the woods until exhaustion had numbed him enough to make it easier again to catch a few precious clear moments. In one of those he wondered how many days he would be forced to hide like this, to humiliate himself steadily further until he would have finally been through all the feelings he had built up in his lifetime until now. In another he imagined the uproar that must rule the Kuchiki household by now, servants running around like headless chicken as their master did not return home. Strangely enough he hardly cared, for mostly about at that point the moment of peace would be over and another flood of emotions would force him into a crouch, clutching his head. But he did not scream anymore, and slowly, even if agonizingly so, as another night settled, he grew calmer.

He even caught a few hours of sleep, and as the new dawn approached he felt himself finally able to analyze again, stable enough to try and build back up at least some of his sanity. He knew he would still have to keep his distance from the subject that was his wife and her death, but carefully maneuvering around anything to do with that, he slowly searched for something that was certain and real and would allow him to build upon. Rules, the clan, his duties as captain, none of these things really meant enough to him to concentrate upon. They were just the empty shell that Byakuya had believed to be himself. They did not matter and could not ease his pain. But as much as he at first tried to deny and push it from him, he did eventually indeed find one thing.

So, a task as risky as building a house of cards, he reconstructed some of the walls that had been broken down, but now founding them on something different. He shuddered as he forced himself to admit it, but that foundation was Abarai Renji.

Byakuya had by now admitted to himself what the feelings were that had tried to force themselves to the surface whenever he'd been near his Fukutaichou. He had realized it since a long time, in fact, but always neglected all and everything of it until Renji had finally found the one trigger that had set the nobles carefully constructed walls crashing down around him. The trigger was the fact that Byakuya had loved once before – he carefully blocked out anything more specific – and thus could not deny what he had got to know then as something good and right, and something even he – noble, captain, powerful Shinigami – needed and needed desperately by now.

Whenever he had been able to calm down in those last, horrible twenty-four hours he knew the memory releasing it had been that of his Fukutaichou's lips on his own. Admittedly, what had set off another fit of rage had generally also been the redhead, holding a sword he damn well knew he should have never laid his dirty hands... but those hands and his lips, they were real. Renji's shock, his desperateness at being called stray dog by his captain had been real. His will to seek Byakuya out, and look him straight in the eyes without fear had been real. Renji's reaction to the kiss had been real. How he'd leaned forwards and into it, not hesitating a second but agreeing immediately and wholeheartedly, even after all Byakuya had done to him, that had been real.

As another midday approached, and hunger and thirst gnawed at his throat and stomach, the noble decided to return. By now he was at least halfway safe behind a temporary wall, backed up by a good measure of newly flaring, hurt pride, which was probably the only thing that came back easily on its own. He avoided other people as he made his way through Rukongai and then Seireitei to the mansion, not wanting to have anybody stare at him or ask questions.

It was Renji he sought now. Only the sword that man had dared to lay his hands upon, and also that man in person, Byakuya forced himself once again to admit, would be able to stabilize him enough now to return to something close to normality. But naturally the noble did not plan on telling the redhead that. If the other knew that he was what had saved Byakuya's sanity, it would probably just give him the strange idea he could somehow use that fact against his captain. That could not be allowed and he would prevent it as long as possible.

With that in mind he returned to his mansion, several servants obviously near their breaking point in the moment he entered, and even more so as they registered his dirty clothes and hair and that he carried the two parts of his Kenseikan in his hands and not on his head anymore. In seconds even the very last errand boy in the house was up and buzzing around their returned master. They could not even hold back their questions, but Byakuya told them he was well, just to get them to calm down and together with a few sharp glares it worked. Fortunately no other members of the Kuchiki-family where at the mansion right now, he could not have taken their glares, and indignation in this state.

After eating and drinking, he took a bath and then clad in the usual attire of black kimono and hakama, but omitting his haori and Kenseikan, as well as his gloves. As he proceeded to walk to the front door and out of it into the late evening, some of his closest servants objected rather resolutely. They did not have the right to block his way and would not have dared to really do so, but their worry over him had been too great as that they could have let him go just like that. He felt slightly confused and then, to his own surprise, positively touched by their concern, but of course he left anyway, assuring them he would not be vanishing again for another two days.

He made his way to the wall of Seireitei swiftly, near of which he knew he would find the house that Renji occupied a tiny flat in. He moved carefully and hid his Reiatsu, so he would not draw the attention of any Shinigami nearby. So, in occasional flash steps and now and then over rooftops, Byakuya drew nearer towards his goal.

Once he reached the building he walked over a narrow wooden patio that surrounded the second floor until he stood before the desired door and paused for a few seconds. He could feel the faintest tug on his mind induced by Senbonzakura and relief washed over him mixed with anger that Renji had really dared to take her. But much deeper on the inside, waving through his guts and chest and slowly pooling in his groin, was another feeling that he recognized as desire. As much as he had fought it before, now it provided him with so much needed stability.

He held onto it.


~~~