Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ After Never ❯ Chapter 3

My no own Bleach! Kubo do.

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“Sometimes,” Matsumoto muttered to herself while waiting at the far end of a dead-end hall, the curiosity spiking across the upper floors of the club drawing an audience in the other room, “I really hate my job.”

Gin had stopped her short moments ago by clasping her wrist. “Wait here jus' a moment,” he asked. She complied, if not out of obedience then not wanting to follow the familiar trail down a couple more stairs, through a very broad set of heavy doors she wouldn't be able to open without his help, and into the screaming partiers below. Seeing as she didn't want to remember that, she settled on just avoiding anyone else.

“Hello.” So much for that bit.

Matsumoto nearly jumped at the slicked voice and curved yellow eyes. She gagged at the sudden salt pillar lodging behind her tongue, which he seemed to enjoy, smiling for all his worth a smile that made Gin's smirk seem friendly and cute.

“My apologies, Seeker. I didn't mean to startle you.” His tone, not only his presence, sickened her, deafened her abilities. He chuckled and left, long dark hair whisking across her arm.

Holy…she needed a drink, a strong one, and a shower, bath, a hot springs sounded better. Maybe a pot of boiling water, something to get rid of the disgusting slime itching her entire body.

Gin reappeared, slightly unhappy, and she grabbed his black blazer. “I need a drink,” she rasped, sounding like she'd actually drowned in salt. His smile dampened. Unsuccessfully she tried to swallow a cough, doubled over from the effort, ready to possibly hack her lungs out or heave her nauseated stomach when instead her back slammed near unpleasantly rough against the wall. Eyes wide, she found Gin's mouth sliding across hers, feverishly smooth, the bulge of fangs pressing against her lips as he tasted her bottom lip agonizingly slow. Whatever aftertaste that vampire she didn't recognize or remember for that matter vanished as Gin's sea-salt spice ghosted through her, sinking into her pores, and filling her throat with memories of the sea.

When Matsumoto surfaced from her beach-like heaven—heaven might be a press, but she didn't find too much argument at the moment—gleaming rubies amusingly stared extraordinarily close. His fingers fiddled with a lock of her hair, other hand placed against the wall next to her head.

“Aren't your eyes green?” she asked, slightly breathless and running her tongue across her lips to catch the lingering taste. It always did amaze her how much the spiritual world was so real to her, right down to ordinarily nonexistent favors of certain beings. He watched the movement with eerily enjoyable concentration.

“Sometimes,” he smirked, leaning back from her. “Ya wanted a drink?”

“Um, yes.” Matsumoto shook her swimming head. “Lead the way,” she urged, her smile fake, urging him forward with the sweep of an arm.

“Ya don't know th' way?”

“I'm not supposed to know the way,” she snapped, immediately afterward biting the inside of her cheek. Her scowl didn't waver, not as his smile faltered into a confused upturn of the lips, or when he cocked his head to the side, hair shifting to that side of his face and genuine curiosity in his ruby red eyes. Everything, down to the two studs in his now prominent earlobe, just screamed…

Matsumoto resisted licking her lips again. “Never mind. You know, it's not that important! And I do want a drink. Let's go.”

She took off with Gin at her heels watching the usually smooth-talking, provocative woman fidget and stumble over herself in agitation. She maneuvered the halls with an expertise that rivaled her earlier second guesses and cautiously curious glances.

Halting before the door, Matsumoto turned around when he didn't make a move forward. “Well? Are you going to open them? I can't do it myself.”

A thin smile split Gin's face as he swiftly stepped forward, nearly ripping the doors from their massive hinges.

Brow raised, she appraised his work and gave him a look. “You didn't have to kill it.”

His mask hardened, and through his stiff muscles he smoothly ushered her into the ballroom dance club floor.

Underdressed again, she dully noted. Dresses, evening gowns, suits and ties. Bow ties on some of them. How lovely. One glance at Gin set her at ease. He wasn't dressed for the party either. Not in a swirling black blazer, light grey button-up with the top two buttons undone again. In fact, his wardrobe was slacking even more than it had the last time.

Well. Didn't she just fit right in with this crowd, blue jeans and all?

Sighing, Matsumoto made her way through the crowd. Gin disappeared, but was close enough—not to mention powerful enough—to pierce the wafting scents of all the other creatures romping around the dance floor, sitting or lounging across couches and chairs and tables. And, damn it, the bar area was full, not a seat empty.

Gin gripped her wrist and placed a hand to the small of her back. “Need a seat?”

To the far corner, underneath a balcony overlooking the dance floor, he steered her, both sitting at the internally lit bar in plush, swiveling seats. Matsumoto twisted side to side as she waited for the tender to return with her glass.

“You aren't getting anything?” she asked him.

His eye blinked further open for a moment. She couldn't tell its color. Gin rested his chin in his hand. “Nah.”

“So what? You're going to watch me drink?”

“Guess so.”

The tender's hand flashed in her peripheral vision, setting her tall order down without a clank. A bottle he set next to it, and walked away without a word of payment.

“Last time it was pay-per-drink.” Matsumoto muttered, leaning over the bar to catch the tender's attention.

“On th' house,” Gin said, shrugging.

“Really? Oh, how sweet!” she cooed sarcastically, downing half her glass in a few gulps. “Ugh.”

“What?” He leaned forward a bit. “It ain't any good? I c'n get ya `nother one.”

Matsumoto waved her hand, feeling more drunk without the actual buzz then she ever had, even when totally smashed. Those college days made her laugh at times…

Shaking her head only made the world spin, and she would have fallen had Gin not caught her deftly.

“Oh, that was a doozy,” she slurred giddily. Her muscles quivered under his cool palms, her skin already hot through her clothes. Sweat gleamed on her brow, down her neck as she slumped over, hiccupping and gagging at once. Shocked, Gin's wide blood red eyes stared dumbly as Matsumoto convulsed in his arms, something akin to a horribly childish sob bubbling from her trembling blue lips.

“Gin,” Tousen said, standing over the crowd-calling pair. The smile Gin gave him was more of a sneer, blatantly showing the tips of his fangs knowing the other vampire couldn't see the challenge. Tousen shifted on his feet anyway, somehow sensing the threat someway. “This is disturbing-”

“You're joking,” Gin said, deathly serious.

Grimmjow, irritated and bored, looked over Tousen's shoulder, muttering, “Shit.”

“Bring her,” Tousen motioned. Sighing, Grimmjow stepped to do as he was told, but Gin refused silently, glaring, lacking a smile of any kind. The werepanther sidestepped the furious vampire, stuffing his hands in his pockets and whistling.

“Fucking hell,” He glanced at Tousen as Gin walked away. The werepanther shrugged, uncomfortably irate under the blank stare. “What? He'll cut off more than just my fucking arm.” For emphasis, Grimmjow flexed his freshly regrown arm, absently flipping the blind vampire the bird before sauntering off.

(())

Not for the first time Matsumoto woke in a strange room with a headache. The burning down her throat was new, something like indigestion, but a constant fire. The salt added to that certainly didn't make anything better.

Aizen hovered over her, almost bored-looking but keen. He smiled. “Awake now, are we? You had a bit of a misfortune at the bar. Do you remember anything?”

She smacked her forehead, rubbing forcefully. “Something about my boss firing me or something, but that was more than five hours ago…”

“Possibly more than you think,” he sighed calmly, taking a seat in a white chair.

“Where's Gin?”

“Why don't you tell me where he is?”

She opened an ashen eye, choking on a laugh. “A guessing game?”

“Not necessarily.” Aizen leaned forward. His selves were rolled up, his pristine suit jacket behind him. “Just take a look around you and tell me where he is.”

Wherever he was, Gin was close enough for her to feel his irritation rolling off him in waves, sea-salty waves. She stared at Aizen a little longer, wondering if he'd call his own bluff, laugh in his menacing way, and leave. But he didn't. He took a sip from a goblet—oh man, a goblet? Really?—its contents she'd rather not know.

“Alright, what are the rules?” she mocked.

“No rules.”

“Do I have to play?”

“Haven't you already consented?”

“Not really, no. I was just curious. What exactly was in the drink I had?”

“I'm having that looked into.”

“Good good,” she nodded, attention drawn to a curtain hanging closed over the window across the room. She frowned. It was ripped, top to bottom, in half on one side, leaving a wide gap open to the city outside. “Can…can you call Gin in here?”

Sipping, his dark eyes glinting, he asked, “Why? Is something wrong?”

Matsumoto shook her head slowly, transfixed on the fringed curtain. “I don't… What tore that?”

“Hm? Oh, the curtain? I need to have that fixed. It seems to always slip my mind.”

“What happened in here?”

“Why don't you tell me?”

Slamming her palms on the short table before her, Matsumoto leaned forward, snarling, “The joke's old, pal.”

“Well, I see no reason for me to explain when you were here when it happened.”

“I was here-?” Eyes wide, a memory, blurry, flashed of a dark night, howling in the distance, and herself dressed differently, so ridiculously out of date that it made her head spin. Gin appeared beside her, something leapt between them, through the window, taking half the curtain with it and her. Matsumoto found herself gripping the tear right below a faded, hard bloodstain.

Aizen smiled, quietly stepping from the room.

She screamed when the door shut, sounding so much louder, like it was kicked in, like her memory played. “Gin!”

This time the doors did rip from their hinges.

(())

Barely thirteen. He was barely thirteen, yet here he stood before the council, dressed in a tailored black suit, partially out of business reasons, mostly out of mourning.

A man, one of the forty-some consisting of the financial, foreign, and other miscellaneous directors, droned on and on about law statements, requirements, and more business, business, business, only briefly brushing through the sudden passing of Ukitake Juushiro not twenty-four hours ago.

Killed by a terrible cough, inevitable surely, the doctors had stated. Still the man's death had not been so close on the horizon in his latest checkup. His death had been extremely violent, and Hitsugaya's first order would be to have his new office transferred to another floor of the building, and every piece of furniture touched with Ukitake's blood removed.

The funeral was set; the body was to burn, as was custom of the chief executives in this line of work.

Without heirs, Ukitake's line ended with him. Without family, Hitsugaya's small, growing hand held the entire franchise, with aid from a selected board of advisors for the next ten or so years. He had the freedom of choosing half of those who would stay close to him for that time. None from this group would he freely choose, though he understood that the half of which he had no selection control would derive from these stern men and women.

Young but distantly cold eyes appraised each board member, marking faces with as much a hint of a nature he deemed mistrustful, and vowed to give those with dark glints deep in their eyes a quick dismissal the moment his name found its place on the long list of executives legally, when the company fully rested on his shoulders. For now all he could do was wait and not let the temporary legs and arms of his corporal presidency get away from him.

Hitsugaya Toushiro squared his small shoulders and faced the situation like the man he wasn't supposed to be yet.

When the meeting adjourned, he escaped quickly under the scrutiny of the none-moving forty-six seated Board of Directors, who all grimly began discussing the unexpected death of their head soul, the too-soon-instated soul, and the allover cycle shift in Sector Ten of Paranormal Thirteen, Inc. The instigator was to be found immediately before anything else fell out of hand.

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First of all, was I the only one who totally freaked over Bleach chapter 329? 8D For any who have not read: shame!

Secondly, did I not tell ya that the updates wouldn't be so soon? I tried, really, and I will continue to try, but schoolwork sadly does have to have a higher rank on the list of priorities. So, yay for Fall Break and time to sit down and write more than three lines without falling asleep on the keyboard!

Lastly, seeing as the hour is slightly late and I really wanted to get this updated, if there are any mistakes feel free to drop a note. The fault is all on me since I beta my own work anyway.

Last lastly, thankies bunchies!