Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Red Thread, White Soul ❯ Chapter 1

Red Thread, White Soul

by debbiechan

Disclaimer: I don’t own Bleach; Kubo Tite and Perriot Studios do, and although the latter likes to taunt viewers with yaoi-ish scenes, the former apparently wrote the characters of Renji and Ishida as completely heterosexual (the most appealing thing about Ishida being that he tests false positive on your average person’s gaydar). Never you mind though, this story is a total yaoi fangurl piece, and we will return to your regularly scheduled canon veneration and het shipping once I get this one out of my system

Warnings: Male/male sexual stuff, not romantic at all. Implied het and characters have hetero-centric attitudes.

Description: Renji x Ishida. Implied Renji x Rukia, implied Ishida x Nemu. Takes place during Ishida’s last night in Soul Society. Partly inspired by this picture: http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y130/debbiechanlovesvegeta/12.jpg

Thank you to Osensong for finding this fanart by Mr. Randomness on a Japanese website.

This fic is the first I’ve written inspired by the Bleach anime instead of the manga. Remember the anime scene of Ishida’s last night in Soul Society? Renji is wandering the Seireitei calling for Rukia, and Ishida is calling for Inoue-san. I had to wonder what would happen if Renji and Ishida ran across one another…. * twiddles thumbs and looks innocent*

Part One

"Rukiaaaaa!" She had left the Seireitei once already today; didn’t she realize that there might be allies of Aizen about? "Rukia! RUKIAAAAA!"

He turned the corner and stopped a few inches short of running smack into one of the drifters.

The boy squinted his eyes and looked annoyed. "Why are you shouting?"

Renji wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t sensed the drifter; sensing reiatsu had never been one of Renji’s talents. He pretended to have invaded the drifter’s space on purpose and gave him the once-over with suspicious eyes.

"What are you wearing?" Renji had only seen outfits like that one in Academy textbooks.

"I’m a Quincy," the boy said. "This is what we wear."

"You weren’t wearing that before."

"No, I wasn’t." The boy’s voice was unnaturally aloof. It reminded Renji of Byakuya’s. What did a Quincy have to be so stuck-up about? The books said that Quincy were a long-gone religious cult who had illegally appropriated Shinigami duties and had gotten wiped out for their insolence. Losers, they were losers.

"I made this Quincy clothing yesterday," the boy added.

"You made it? Out of your reiatsu?" Renji was curious. His own reiatsu had created a strange pelt-like jacket when he achieved ban kai.

"I sewed it," the boy said, "out of prisoner kimonos. I used your pitiful Shinigami stitching equipment."

Pitiful Shinigami? Wasn’t the boy a friend of Shinigami Ichigo’s? What was with this Quincy garb and punk attitude all of a sudden?

The boy put his hands on his hips and looked away. He seemed tense, as if anticipating an unwanted confrontation with someone…. Or maybe a tryst with a girl?

Before this moment, Renji had not bothered to look twice at this kid. The Quincy was nothing. So what was that something piquing Renji’s interest? The white clothes looked especially weird and glossy in the moonlight. The Quincy had lean arms and legs like those District 78 boys against whose hungry bodies Renji had learned to fuck. That was it. In the strange clothes, the Quincy looked like a District 78 boy.

Over a hundred years ago Renji had killed one of those boys for shoving a hand between Rukia’s thighs. Others in Renji and Rukia’s gang would fall to starvation and disease, but this particular boy had earned the privilege of getting his neck snapped by Abarai Renji. Never mind that Renji had learned to steal and fight and fuck from this boy, that he had traveled for years with him and other Runkongai lost spirits, and that Renji considered the boy family. No one was supposed to touch Rukia. No man’s hand was supposed to pollute the only pure light in all the dim and miserable South Valley of the Runkongai.

"You are looking for Kuchiki-san," the Quincy stated. He didn’t seem the type to state the obvious to make idle conversation. Was there a hidden question? Did he want to know why Renji looking for Rukia?

"Yeah." Renji stared. Oddly, the Quincy had cool, level eyes like Captain Byakuya but the slump-shouldered, loser stance of a District 78 boy who didn’t know how to fight. "So what are you doing wandering around at night like a drifter still in hiding?"

"I’m not hiding from anyone."

Renji glanced to one side. "Have you seen Rukia pass by here?"

"No."

The first time Renji had seen this boy, it had been a night with a full moon. Renji had pushed the question: What is your relationship to Rukia? The Quincy had kept answering: I’m just a classmate of Kuchiki-san’s.

"We haven’t spoken," Renji said with intentional casualness, "since the night my zanpakutou dropped you to the ground. You were bleeding a river then."

"Abarai Renji." The Quincy jutted his chin forward, just as he had done on that night of the full moon, and spoke in a too-dramatic tone. "Abarai Renji. You told me that your name would be the last thing I learned before my death, and it so happens that I’ve learned quite a few things since that night--one of them being that your Shinigami blade was not enough to kill me."

"I didn’t cut you to kill you," Renji said. "You wouldn’t shut up, and I wanted you out of my way."

The boy’s eyes softened. "We thought you were trying to kill Kuchiki-san that night too. Now we know that you--"

The warm night air was full of what everyone in the Seireitei knew--that Renji had fought his own captain to save Rukia, that he had carried her away from the execution site. It was a stark fact that seemed to embarrass the Quincy and the Shinigami both.

"Hey, were you looking for me?" Renji asked abruptly. A conversation with Ichigo returned to him. "Ichigo said you came to Soul Society to prove yourself against the Shinigami--or something like that. We can fight if you want." Renji placed his palm on his weapon’s pommel and grinned. "I hear you turned Captain Kurotsuchi into seaweed. You might be a match for me now."

The boy’s face turned arrogant again. "You’re amazing." He snorted a little breath and looked disgusted. "Amazing."

Somehow Renji knew he wasn’t being complimented. "What? Do you want to fight or not?"

"You can’t read reiatsu, can you? You’re like Kurosaki, all brawn and no finesse, right?"

"Of course I can sense reiatsu. You’re hiding yours at the moment and this--" Renji allowed his power to flare the tiniest bit. "This is not all there is of mine." Renji’s Shinigami spirit thread tip was undulating at eye-level. He impelled the red ribbon towards the Quincy, intending to taunt him, and that’s when Renji noticed--

The Quincy wasn’t hiding his reiatsu. His spirit power was… gone?

"I’m not helpless," the Quincy said with a hard look. "I can still fight."

Renji was stunned. He had never been able to detect subtle fluctuations in spirit power, but whatever reiatsu the soul before him had used to face the formidable Captain Kurotsuchi was burned to a mere cinder of its previous strength….

Hold on. Was Renji actually sensing a solid white soul in its entirety?

At the same moment that Renji was wondering how it could be that he was sensing anything with such accuracy, the Quincy snatched Renji’s red ribbon in a movement so quick that Renji felt his mouth fall open. The boy’s got captain-level speed.

"I can still fight, Abarai Renji," said the Quincy. "Now, do you remember my name?" The boy’s low, fierce tone had returned, only now the dramatic voice was matched with a dramatic gesture; his long fingers squeezed Renji’s red spirit thread. "You hounded my name out of me that night you took Kuchiki-san, and I am wondering if your feeble mind can recall such information. If it can’t, then the formality of exchanging names with your opponent is a detriment to you."

"What?" The Quincy was still clutching Renji’s spirit thread. Renji felt a light pressure in his throat, the shape of the boy’s fingers against his soul.

"One who can not remember an opponent’s name can not properly hold a grudge," said the Quincy. "What is my name?"

"Ishida," said Renji in a hoarse voice. "Ishida Uryuu." What was this strange boy up to? "And I don’t have a grudge against you, Uryuu. I thought it would be… sport to fight."

The Quincy let go Renji’s spirit thread. "Don’t call me Uryuu. You don’t know me that well."

No, Renji didn’t, but something about the boy’s brittle look reminded him of another boy. Among the boys in District 78, none but Renji had any reiatsu to speak of. To hold your own against Renji’s simple strength required cleverness and attitude. There had always been fighting. So much fighting. The gang had fought as a group to survive, and its members had fought one another because--

Renji caught Ishida Uryuu by the wrist. The boy’s blue eyes flashed but his face didn’t startle.

"You didn’t catch my spirit thread," Ishida Uryuu said.

Renji inhaled deeply. "You little shit. I can’t even see it. I sensed it for a moment and then it was gone."

Ishida Uryuu looked to the fingers wrapped around his white sleeve. His voice was even. "I would have to say you have the advantage, however. You caught my arm, and I’m no match for you in simple physical strength."

Skinny boys. They would fight you over a look. They would fuck you for a bowl of dumplings. Just to have something to do.

"Besides, I am not in the mood to fight anyone," continued Ishida Uryuu. "So unless you wake up the entire eleventh division, I would have to guess that you’re not going to have any sport tonight."

"Who says you have to be in the mood to fight?" Renji said. He brought Ishida’s wrist up higher. "I’m a Shinigami, and you’re a Quincy. We’re natural enemies."

Ishida Uryuu looked a little annoyed now. "Weren’t you looking for Kuchiki-san?"

Renji didn’t know if Rukia was staying in Soul Society or not; he didn’t know where the stupid girl was at the moment; maybe she was with Kurosaki Ichigo saying goodbye; maybe Renji didn’t want to think about Rukia anymore.

The boy’s eyes widened. "You--?" He was a sharp one. Reiatsu or no reiatsu, he could still sense Renji’s.

I am hundreds of years older than he is, Renji told himself. He’s not even dead yet.

"I can sense something," Renji said. He sniffed the air. "You’ve got something left in you, and it’s white and small." Renji was amazed that he was sensing the boy’s spirit so clearly. "White and small like a go stone."

"What are you doing?" Ishida Uryuu’s eyes were following Renji’s red spirit thread as it grew and grew and began to coil around his white Quincy sleeves, loop past his mantle, and scroll down his tunic.

"I’m trying to sense you better," said Renji, and it was the truth. He was so bad at sensing reiatsu, but tonight, here, with this boy, some sort of frustration was urging him to try.

Ishida Uryuu was tensing under Renji’s inspection. Renji lowered his face to the boy’s neck and narrowed his eyes.

Not a go stone. A small white-hot cinder. Was this what destroyed Hollows instead of purging them? It had flared just recently. This afternoon. A picture emerged, plain as one of those fluorescent body scans the fourth division took of injured soldiers. The Quincy, a woman with a braid…the power to vanquish Death itself erupting and…

There was perfect silence for a moment, and then--his mouth forming a slow grin--Renji felt compelled to announce his findings. "Why, Ishida Uryuu…you got your cock sucked by Kurotsuchi Nemu this afternoon."

Ishida Uryuu didn’t answer, but that was no matter; Renji was red-hot certain. He lowered his face further and breathed in the whole scene. Well, what do you know! Renji had assumed that the boy was too snobby for those sorts of things. Getting your cock sucked by the daughter of the man you defeated in battle was some feat, though. It would have been widely admired in District 78.

The hand that wasn’t holding Ishida Uryuu’s wrist reached behind the Quincy’s back to clutch the cape made out of prisoner kimonos. Renji bent the boy backwards slightly and felt the velvety tendrils of his red Shinigami spirit wrap around their bodies. Renji was meeting no resistance. This wasn’t going to be a fight after all.

"You like it in the open air?" Renji whispered. "On the dirt ground?"

The Quincy’s deep breaths were pushing against Renji’s chest. Renji pressed his black Shinigami robes against the white Quincy tunic and was not at all surprised to feel the boy’s rock-hard erection. "Pretty little Kurotsuchi Nemu of all people. You had her on her knees in the dirt."

"Yes," Ishida finally spoke. His voice was whispery but had not lost its edge. "The way you didn’t have Kuchiki-san this afternoon, right?"

Renji didn’t know what the Quincy meant by that. He had not had Rukia that afternoon. Not that he hadn’t wanted to--damn it, words were confusing. This spirit-sensing exercise was an easier way to communicate. Renji wondered if he could do it again, with anyone else, but he suspected that the ability was being tapped by something uniquely Quincy-ish.

In the next moment, the pair dropped to the ground. Dust rose around their bodies. Renji was straddling Ishida and holding him by both wrists now. Red spirit thread was encircling them both like a growing cyclone.

"You were waiting for Nemu-chan? Was she supposed to meet you here?"

Ishida Uryuu’s eyes seem to break out of a trance. "No!" He looked at the wrists Renji held. "I--I wasn’t meeting anyone. Your new ability is crude, apparently. You don’t know anything about me."

"I know that you’re ready to fuck." Renji rocked his hips against Ishida Uryuu’s groin.

"No! You don’t understand. I--" The Quincy seemed genuinely uncomfortable. "I don’t do that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing? Taking it up the ass?"

"No! I mean fucking in general."

Renji felt his hands being pushed apart, but he countered the resistance easily and brought the Quincy’s wrists closer together. "You don’t fuck? What are you talking about? Are you a virgin?"

Ishida Uryuu looked very annoyed. "What’s with you sex-obsessed Shinigami? Do you people have sex all the time? Is it the way Shinigami communicate up here or what?"

Renji relaxed his grip on Ishida’s wrists. He could still feel the boy’s hardness against his own. "So, Nemu-chan?"

"She--I don’t know. She was all over me just like you are now."

Renji let out a hard sigh. He had misunderstood the situation. The scent of sexual arousal, the flickers of the boy’s weird reiatsu colliding with his, the Quincy allowing the intimacy of Renji’s spirit threads around him--

Renji dropped Ishida Uryuu’s hands and prepared to climb off him. Before that, though, he felt the need to run his fingers across that blue-black hair--maybe as a gesture of truce or to say "I understand that you’re just a kid." Ishida Uryuu looked so much like someone else…

The Quincy did not shrink away from Renji’s fingers combing his hair. "We shouldn’t," he said. The boy’s eyes glanced away, and his voice sounded unrepentant. "Not here anyway."

Renji broke into a wide smile and hooked his hands under the boy’s arms. They were gone from the scene in a twinkling of shunpou.

**