A Sidelong Look

Titled// A Sidelong Look
Authors// BrucesGirl and R. Brightside (Kokuchou Kayou)
Pairing// Shuuhei x Renji

This story is based on the true story of a German activist group during the second world war called The White Rose. While this is just a smutty figment of our imagination, I encourage you to look up their story and the play titled “The White Rose.” Light a candle for those people, remember their deeds in your prayers. Because of them, thousands were saved.

NOTE// The name of the White Rose group has been altered to prevent offense.

Musical recommendation for this fic // RB cried much longer than BG did, because RB was listening to How to Save a Life and Heaven Forbid by The Fray. A thumbs up if you’re soppy and want a lot of angst.

AU// This happened because we were bored, out of luck for writing F&I (sorry!) and RB has an incurable fetish for Nazis and being a tad too rough as Shuuhei is here. Sorry, again.

--



Half an hour had gone by.

Neither of them had spoken for what felt like hours, but Shuuhei knew it was simply a few minutes.

"Abarai Renji," He stated once more, looking directly into the defiant, angry eyes of the man before him, leader of The Red Rose group. He hated to do this to him - he truly did. This man whom he'd fallen in love with, this red-head from a small town just outside of Berlin, had broken every law he stood for, and he'd fallen in love with him for that.

He closed his half-blind eye, cut across quite viciously way back when he had been mistaken for a wanted Jew, his eye just nicked with the blade he was attacked with, regretting the loss of his eye patch for the interrogation.

"Give it up. Deny it all. Stop this suicide." He hissed, every muscle in him tensed, waiting for a reply he half dreaded. "They will let you go, I can let you go, if you just deny it."

Renji's garnet eyes flickered as he looked away, his body straight in the chair as his hands rested on his knees. This man...Major Hisagi...wasn't it? They'd spent very little time together over the process of the investigation and the interrogation until now, but Renji could feel those dark eyes on him, piercing his soul and trying to understand his motives for what he did.

"You know I can't deny it." He said flatly. "No matter what, I can't stand and deny the fact that the Nazis are slaughtering millions with smiles on their faces. I can look away from the blood when it's my family's own blood that's been spilled. When are ya going to understand? I can't deny what I believe in."

Renji looked up at the man, his beautiful face contorted in pain from the earlier beatings and the chemicals that they'd pumped his body full of. But yet, he had no lies to tell when it had stopped affecting him. Renji told nothing...but the truth.

"Tell me...what do you believe in?"

"I believe in the law, no matter what that law may entail. For as long as I live in Germany, I shall serve Her."

Lies, lies, lies. More and more lies, which fueled him and kept him going throughout this time of terror. He believed in what Renji was saying, above all else.

His life was naught. He lived alone, with no living relatives, no women to turn to, and his only friend a petite blond boy whom he had trained into a strict regime, with a terrible stutter but the most innocent face, being slowly corrupted by larger forces at work. Mindless and brainwashed, just like he had pretended to be.

"A better Germany," they chorused. What was this better country now? They were slaughtering, they were killing, and everything Renji was saying was true. He just simply could not admit it.

Renji smirked. Law? "Oh yeah," he murmured, "The law is supreme above all else. You're killing millions with your passive aggressive, dumb ass ways." Renji straightened, and his garnet eyes flashed at the man.

"What do you want me to do? Close my eyes? C'mon. Even you ain't that blind!" The man was beautiful, Renji could tell, and in the back of his cool, dark eyes, he could tell that a passionate fire burned there, hidden away from the call of his duty and the pain of his actions. Renji looked up the beautiful officer, and his voice, quietly whispered a most despicable sound, making him a traitor in the eyes of their government.

"Fuck you and your war. We don't need it. We don't want it." His eyes pleaded with the officer, turning soft and yielding. "And neither do you...isn't that right?"

Shuuhei was so very tempted to beat the man silly for saying such a thing, no matter how true it was. He wanted so terribly to pull out the whip he was made to carry for interrogations and beat it across Renji's back until the man was bleeding for making him seem like he was a traitor to his country. He hated being thought of that way. He lived only for Germany, no matter of what the law held for Her.

"That's not right." He snapped. "Nothing you and this group have been promoting is in any way right. It's against the law." He snapped, his eyes filled with veiled apology. "No matter what it is that this country is standing for, what She stands up for is correct." He knew that had it been any other member of the Army doing this it wouldn't be about Germany. It would be all about Aizen and how his ideals were correct.

"You can't win!" Renji's voice suddenly rose. He nearly rose from the chair, but he stayed seated, hands clenching on his knees as he glared up at the dark, wild haired man and shrieked at him. "Just because it's the damn law doesn't mean it's wrong. Haven't you ever stopped to think that maybe the law is wrong?!" He finally leapt from the chair, his eyes blazing in defiance. "If you won't challange me, if you won't question my beliefs, then question your own! You live like a dog! You're obedient like a dog! Do something about it!"

He was so close to Hisagi that he could smell his cologne and the subtle scent of soap and starch on the crisp, dark uniform. "There's got to be more to you than this!" Renji was a soul searcher. A believer. This beautiful man who was interrogating him had to be more than just a soldier. Even they were human.

Shuuhei stood up equally quick, enough so that their forehead butted hard, his cap flipping off his head to land on the desk beside his hand, the hard leather edge and bronze buttons hitting his blunt, bitten-down nails, creating a gentle click that made his hand flinch away almost unnoticeably.

"If I, a soldier, am to live as a dog at the feet as my country, I will die a fucking satisfied mongrel!" He snapped, his lip curled back in a feral snarl, so much like a dog that he was described as. His hands, curled into fists, hit the table, hard enough to make the few papers on it jump, some falling to the floor with silence swoops, and then a gentle hiss as they slid across the floor.

"Now sit the fuck down!" It was a command, barked out at the defiant red-head, but he didn't move from where he stood, his shoulders drawn back and tense, his fists shaking against the table, blood surfacing from where he'd skinned skin from flesh and flesh from bone.

Renji almost complied. He almost listened, but he was never one for going by the rules. He approached Hisagi just one more step, his lips barely pushing his sweet, cinnamon breath over the man. Hisagi was enticingly gorgeous, long, lithe muscles just barely shaping the arms of his uniform, and his hair was so dark and so silky that Renji just had the awful desire to run his fingers through it.

The redhead's expression hardened, and he glared directly into Hisagi's eyes disrespectfully, and the low hiss from his mouth was punctuated by a vicious shove to the officer's chest, strong enough to nearly send him sprawling.

"Make me sit down, sir." He was getting angry. He hated being told to lie, and he wasn't going to start now. "Maybe we should talk about what you believe in." He snarled.

"I believe in what this country stands for. This dog will die at the feet of his country, not his government." Shuuhei barked, recovering from the shove and grasping Renji by the lapels of his shirt, his grip almost enough to pull the red-head off his feet and onto the table.

"I do not have to make you sit." He spat, his eyebrows drawn together in a vicious scowl. "You will sit when you are fucking told to sit, you hear me?" He hissed, pushing Renji back hard enough to force him back into the chair, his anger and strength combined a lethal weapon. Byakuya had given him all consent to be rough with the man. Renji was in no way delicate, and had lived through all the torture. It didn't matter if he was killed then and there, it was merely another way to get rid of him. "Do not talk back to me like that, or I will beat you. Is that fucking crystal fucking clear, Abarai?"

Renji stumbled back, and the shove was unfortunately off kilter, and he missed the chair, crashing to the floor with a soft yelp of pain as he felt his already punished body crack just a little bit more.

He glared up at Shuuhei, his garnet eyes filled with fury and indignity. The man before him… that Kuchiki person...he'd been a cold one, torturing him with out a single regret forming in his beautiful, steel eyes, but this one was different. He was full of fire and passion, and Renji, no matter how angry he was, was beginning to like this man a great deal. He sprang up from the floor, and his body pummeled into Hisagi's shoving the man against the desk, and Renji's hands tangled in the folds of the uniform jacket, and he shook the officer roughly.

"Then beat me! Make me hurt and bleed! I know you want to, but it's not because you were ordered to!" Renji looked down at the man he had pinned on the desk. "It's because you know I'm fucking right!"

Shuuhei was furious beyond his own comprehension, and probably the guards that stood at the entrance, monitoring anything that seemed to be blasphemous coming from the room.

The dark-haired man broke free of Renji's grip, grabbing a fistful of the thick, maroon strands and shoving him face first against the desk with force enough to break or fracture multiple somethings, the first of which would be that pointed nose of his. He tore off the rest of the suit, surely putting strain on Renji's arms as he did so, and then did the same with the button-up shirt, exposing the red-head's tortured, scarred back to him, and holding Renji's face against the desk, he pulled out his whip, rather like one would use on a horse to make it wake up, work harder, work faster.

Wake up, just like he was going to teach this horse, who was carrying almost single-handedly the funeral carriage of the Nazi party up a hill, a strenuous journey none had dared to take before now. And he had this dog's help, no matter how secretive he would be, pushing the carriage from behind and nipping his heels to urge him faster.

"You aren't going to fucking enjoy this, blasphemer." He snapped, bringing down the whip roughly on his back. "I'm not going to be kind with you, not any fucking more."

At first, Renji struggled. He let his clothes be ripped away from him, and he lay quietly against the cool wood of the desk, barely even flinching when the first strike came down. Then, he began to fight as the sting spread through his body. But the man was holding him down, and he seemed too weak to push the major off of him any time soon, so cries of fury escaped his lips, angry, furious screams echoed in the room as the whip slashed across his skin.

The torture before had been worse than this, really, but this felt a thousand times worse over his punished, bruised, broken skin. He fought the pain and the anguish, but it was too much, and soon, tears of frustration began to leak from his eyes as he screamed for reprieve.

"Stop... Stop! Stop! This is pointless!" His hands scratched at the surface of the desk. "I'll never deny it. You're only beating me...Gah! Ah..." His back arched sensually beneath the strikes to try to escape the punishment. "...You're only beating me...because I'm right! Because you aren't a true dog!"

Shuuhei let out a furious howl of rage, pulling out his gun and pointing it at Renji's head, already loaded, and as he was about to pull the trigger, alarmed, the guards burst through, one a tall, thin man with a bald head covered by his cap, and the other a feminine man with his hair cut neatly around his jaw.

Shuuhei glared at Renji for a minute, his lip twitching in feigned disgust, and then sheathed his gun, the guards looking surprised as he began to walk away, leaving Renji just enough time to get to his feet before he came storming back again, his anger not quite gone, and palming Renji's head into the desk once more, now taking his brief leave, barking back a command to clean the prisoner up. He hated himself for all of it, for taking his anger out on the red-head. He was a dog, he swore to himself.
He was a Major, one of those who faithfully served his country, without heed to government.

But it was all about politics now, wasn't it? Always the fucking politics. He almost let himself cry as soon as he got into his bunker, and instead recited their anthem, over and over again, in that manic way many of the other Majors looks at his longways for, until he fell asleep, curled up with bloody hands but a smile on his face, just like he would when his time finally came to die.

The two that cleaned his wounds were oddly gentle. Especially the bald one, even though he looked to be the rough one. They put Renji back in the room and left him some water and some light oatmeal to eat, but it wasn't enough to stave off the hunger and cold of a cold concrete floor with no blanket or pillow.

Instead, he opted to take the papers from the desk and make a nest of them in the floor, uncomfortable, but not as cold as it would have been sleeping on the bare concrete. He was hurting, but at least his back had stopped bleeding after the careful bandaging of the two guards, and morning came frightfully, the light pouring in from the tiny barred window. Renji's eyes blinked open, and he sighed as he sight up, a whimper of pain escaping his lips with a growl as the whip wounds stung sharply. Bastard. Fucking bastard.

Shuuhei had washed his hands vigorously, but could still see the blood there, even after the first layer of skin on his palms were gone. He could see that pathetic man, this horse that strives so hard to pull the carriage up the hill, and he'd ripped out the tendons in the tired legs, forcing him to backtrack.

Good. Fucking good, he said to himself. One less blasphemer in the world. But that pain-ridden face would not leave him alone, that agony-riddled voice still singing and echoing in his ears.

"You're only beating me because I'm right! You aren't a true dog!" Shuuhei, stiffer than usual, strode through the hallway, barking commands at casual privates to look sharp and fix their uniform, edgey and not in the mood for any higher-up talk.

He had to beat more sense into Renji and make him back down. He had to simply beat him until he awakened to his senses. The guards outside the door shot him a sidelong look, like many people did, and unlocked the door, twisting the doorknob and slamming the door behind him.

"Get up." He snapped. "Get in your chair. I'm going to continue your interrogation until you deny everything." He wanted this defiant red-head to live, not to die, no matter what. He was too strong a man, too intelligent, to simple trample on his life.

Renji slowly, painstakingly got up, and he sat in the chair, his body shivering with the cold of the room. His shirt and jacket had been taken away, and all that left was his beautiful physique, exposed to the room along with the tattoos across his body.

He made a quiet noise as he sat straight up in the chair, hands once again resting on his knees as he looked straight ahead, his eyes not even flickering up to the man who'd put him through so much pain.

He wanted to know why...wouldn't any of them want him to confess to the pamphlets? Why should he deny it? His eyes closed momentarily as he stretched his arms above his head, making his back crack loudly in the silence before he sat calmly, waiting for the next set of questions. This interrogator. He was a strange man, full of contradictions to his own beliefs.

Very slowly, Renji looked up at him, and asked him a quiet, piercing question. "Why do you want me to deny it so bad? Shouldn't you be wanting me to confess to it so you can just fucking kill me in the morning?"

"You are an intelligent addition to Germany. You are strong, you understand what you are talking about. What is the point of taking a life like that because of a simple... misunderstanding?" He spoke the word almost sarcastically, his eyes hard and eyepatch in place to cover the half-misty color of his right eye.

"I'd much rather pardon you than kill you, Renji. My wrath is easily provoked, but I will not kill if it's not for a good reason. The gun to your head," Shuuhei placed firmly, before Renji to put in any word, "Was merely because you pushed it too far. Unlike you, I am proud to serve under the law, no matter how corrupt you... believe it is."

Almost. So close to admitting his blasphemy, but the guards didn't notice. He could hear their idle chat through the door, almost whispers through the thick wood.

"Unlike those corrupted by the government, I pay no heed. My country is who I serve, not the man who runs it."

Renji began to laugh. The worlds coming out of the man's mouth were so rehearsed and so fake that it killed his heart to see such a potentially amazing man fall prey to such long winded and ridiculous beliefs like the ones that the government fed their tame, slave dog soldiers.

Renji's laugh died out softly as he leaned forward and rested his head in his hands. He was exhausted, and he'd do anything... anything for a warm bed and a nice long sleep, but he couldn't deny the truth. No.

"You want me to deny the truth because I'd be a smart addition to Aizen's regime? Fuck you." Renji spat the words viciously. "You're lying. I want to know the truth." He stood again, only, this time was less menacing because of the bandages covering his back and torso. He approached Shuuhei carefully, eyes trained on the other's face.

"What is the real reason you want me to deny The Red Rose pamphlets?"

Shuuhei's eyebrows drew together once more in his trademark scowl, not nearly as menacing as he had been yesterday.

"You want the truth?" He asked, his voice low, tone sounding enraged, but far from. For a man who had never known pleasure aside from the whores of Berlin, from prisoners of war, it was difficult to express any sort of romantic attachment.

"You truly want the truth from me, Renji?" He stood, and gripped the man's chin in his fingers, and then his jaw, analyzing the taller man for a moment.

"This is the truth." He crushed their lips together, holding Renji where he was so he couldn't escape, his teeth rough on the red-head's lips, drawing blood in his anger. Why wouldn't he just deny the fucking pamphlets?

For the first time in his captivity, Renji immediately tasted fear. He was so rough and unforgiving that he could feel the tender flesh of his already bruised and broken lips tear apart under his ministrations, and Renji fought wildly.

He was taller, but damn him, this man was stronger than Renji had ever dreamed of being. He struggled more underneath the pressure, and then, with a high pitched howl, he give himself up to it, hopelessness coloring him for only a second before he was fighting again.

Then, something sweet shocked him into stone cold silence and stillness. As he opened his mouth to scream, his tongue touched the other's, and he felt a strange twinge in his stomach as if though someone had set a flock of butterflies loose inside of him. He stared up at Hisagi in shock, and he gasped into the kiss.

He wanted...sex?

Renji didn't understand, but this one thing had been spared him in his torture...he didn't want to lose this one thing to a Nazi too... "Stop!" He tried to push Hisagi away suddenly, scared and frightened like a child. "Let me go!"

Shuuhei grasped Renji's wrists, and bent him over the table, undoing the buttons on the red-head's trousers, and pulling them away, not wincing at the lash marks across the man's bare backside.

"No. Don't you see? I can't let you go." He leant over to whisper into Renji's ear. "I am the government that holds you."

He dug his nails into the red-head's hips, his one visible eye half closed. "And I am going to fuck you and break you until you fucking deny it." He pulled back and spat into his hand a few times, smothering his erection in the thick liquid.

"What I lubricate myself with is the blood of blasphemists. Your blood will be next to make my way easy, but your way so much harder."

He pulled Renji's arms behind his back, arching him into an odd position that forced both of their legs apart to keep themselves from falling back. And he sunk in deep into the confines of a warm, heated passage, feeling the muscle snap around his girth, and he couldn't help but think if he had relaxed and given in, this would be so much easier.

Renji, at first, went stock still. Then, pain... excruciating, mind numbing pain shot through his body, and a blood curdling scream erupted from his bleeding lips as Hisagi pushed roughly into his body and tore the tender flesh to his entrance, making blood spill over their joining.

Renji was going to fight, but now, he could only lay his head down on the desk and weep in pain. "B-But why... I just don't understand..." He sobbed his confusion, not comprehending why the other wanted him to deny it so much.

"If you are so loyal..." He cried out in pain as Shuuhei hit him at a particularly rough spot, and then, it dissolved into tender whimpers, full of fear and trepidation.

"If... you're so loyal to your precious government... Th-Then...why...deny...it...If I do...they said they'd let me go."

Shuuhei grimaced. "I'm loyal to my country." He spat, his thrusts becoming rushed and... almost needy.

"Say it! Say you fucking deny it and this government will stop tearing you apart!" He grasped one globe of Renji's ass, and pulled it to one side, pulling the rip open further.

"FUCKING DENY IT, YOU FUCKING USELESS WORM!" He howled, furious and not paying any heed to the fact the guards were being questioned by some higher up or another, and he simply couldn't care less.

Renji was no better than a prisoner of war, and everyone knew it. Blasphemers were lower than anything. "You are useless to anyone if you can't stand up to this Government! You should just die, die like every other fucking blasphemer!"

Then, everything was crystal clear. Renji understood.

In the middle of his pain. In the middle of the growing pleasure inside of his gut, overwhelmed by the excruciating thrusts from the man above him, he understood what it was that Hisagi was trying to prevent.

"You can't stop it." Renji whispered. "I'm going to die." He spoke of it so gently like death were nothing but another day in his young life. He laid down and let Hisagi have his way with him, finally understanding how desperate the other man was. Hisagi felt useless. He felt unintelligent and bitter because he, the dog of the government, hadn't stood up for his beliefs.

"When I fall down on my knees, Major, you stand up to the government." The pain had lessened considerably, still stinging and throbbing, but there was, deep inside of him, a pleasure that was spreading through his veins, and he laid his cheek quietly on the desk, his garnet eyes closing in a look of complete peace.

"You can't save me," he murmured again. "So just take what you will and carry it with ya...so I know I'm not dying for nothing."

"You fucking worm!" Shuuhei snarled, his anger covering the thickening of sadness in his voice. "I'm trying to save you. I am trying to fucking save you!" He felt a burning in his throat, but it didn't stop him from talking.

"Why? Why the fuck won't you just deny it? Doesn't life mean anything to you? Doesn't it? DOESN'T IT?!" He roared it out, the sadness becoming more and more evident even through his anger, and his hips moved harder, faster, deeper, not bothering to make Renji come as he himself did, fully aware that the other man had an erection as he came, and he rested his forehead against Renji's neck, wrapping his arms tight around the red-head.

"Why? Just fucking give in, just fucking give in! I'm trying to save your life from a pointless death, why won't you just fucking listen to me? I'm trying my hardest to save a life for the first time since I was a child, and now you're going to simply throw your life away?" He was shaking now, but holding back his tears, voice shaking with frustration and sadness. "Why won't you just let me feel like I've saved someone?"

Renji's entire body relaxed, fingers reaching up behind him to do what he'd been longing for three long days since his torture and interrogation began. They slid up into the dark silken hair of the man on top of him, and he scratched gently at his scalp, no words coming from his mouth as he felt thick, oozing blood drip down his thighs with the seed of the other, burning the rips in his skin.

Hisagi was a beautiful, fiery creature with powerful potential and love shining in his dark eyes, no matter how brutal he'd been with Renji. He smiled lightly, sadly, like a man dying in his sleep, and Renji whispered soft words that the guards outside could never hear.

"Major, you stupid man. Life means everything to me. My life is nothin' compared to the millions that are dying." He looked up over his shoulder at Shuuhei, and finalized his decision with a tender, light command, spoken with shining, compassionate eyes. "If you want to save someone, my dearest officer, save yourself."

Shuuhei was weeping silently against Renji's back, his tears slipping off his nose, and apologizing so profusely it hurt for his brutality.

"Save yourself, Renji. Don't be fucking selfless!" He swallowed down the burn in his throat, and dug his nails into Renji's shoulders. "What do I have to do to make you selfish? What do I have to do to make you lie?"

It always seemed he was unlucky with love, his crushes always turning out to be cruel blasphemers, and the men he came by frowning upon intercourse with a man. But he'd never thought that unlucky in love meant finding it and watching it die - not in all the years of his life did he think that he had to watch a man that he had fallen in love with hang for his blasphemy toward a government he felt no care for.

"What the fuck do I have to do? Get on my knees and--"

The door opened, and the two guards came in, dragging Renji away from Shuuhei, and they dressed him carefully in nothing but white linen, the mark of the execution. "They've said he's guilty. They heard enough."

The beautiful lavender eyes of the effeminate guard gazed at Shuuhei. "It's time." Renji was quiet through it all, taking the details in quietly as his eyes silently warred with the other man's sadness.

He wasn't scared, and he didn't feel regret as the tie was cut from his glorious silken hair, allowing it to spill over his shoulders. "You want to know what I want you to do for me, Major Hisagi?" Renji's dark eyes closed as they led him out the door and away from the stricken officer. Over his shoulder, Renji's voice sounded out through the hallway.

"I want you to live."

Shuuhei tore off his eyepatch then, punching the desk and trembling with tears he hadn't cried since he was a small child, not even approaching double digits in his age. He cried like he should have done for every broken limb, every dead friend, every dead friend's family, for his family, and most of all, for that beautiful man who had shone light on his heart for three days.

He pulled the list of the Red Rose members, trembling as he read names he'd never even heard before, pulling out his lighter and holding out the note, he set it alight, waiting until it was singeing his fingers to drop it to the ground, the rest of the paper burning up before it even hit the ground, leaving shriveled ash in his wake. He already had a pamphlet in his pocket - all four of them, in fact - to use as evidence against Renji. And then, he left the building, followed by sidelong looks and a single, hopeful voice calling out for him.

"Major Hisagi? Where are you going?"

Keep walking.

"Major?"

Keep walking.

"...Sir?"

Walking faster.

"Shuuhei!"

Jump infront of a fucking bus.

He fucking wished. He still had work to do. He'd be working for the good of his country until the day he died, and that is exactly what he did, bleeding in an empty warehouse from a bullet fired by who had been his only friend.

Renji had wanted him to live. And he had, for as long as he could, but hopefully, whatever greater power rested in the clouds was going to be with him.

He’d never been a Catholic, but maybe now was the best time to believe in angels. Beautiful, maroon-haired angels, scolding him for not living long enough and slapping him silly, but embracing him anyway, making him see darkness, and then just a single word.

“Shuu!”

His only, pretty friend, crying for him, in the middle of the warehouse floor as his crimson life fluid drained away into a gutter, leading to the sewers of Berlin. And everyone else…

Well, they did what they did best – shoot him a sidelong look.


--


AN// RB cried more because she added more to the end after BG went and passed out. Wh00t for first fic finished in a day!