Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1032207.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Bleach
  Relationship:
      Ayasegawa_Yumichika/Madarame_Ikkaku
  Character:
      Ayasegawa_Yumichika, Madarame_Ikkaku, Ruri'iro_Kujaku
  Additional Tags:
      lots_of_trigger_warnings, Sexual_Violence, messed-up_thinking, PTSD,
      mentions_of_torture, really_messed-up_BDSM, Yumichika_backstory,
      Yumichika_and_Ikkaku_-_first_meeting, Developing_Relationship
  Series:
      Part 1 of Mirrorism
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-11-05 Chapters: 3/3 Words: 27063
****** District 66 ******
by Vorvayne
Summary
     The first thing Yumichika ever becomes really, really good at is sex.
     It's not exactly intentional at first.
     When Yumichika first arrives in district 66 - where life is hard but
     at least no one will gut you for a jar of water, probably - he's a
     teenager, slim and pretty and starving.
     This is what happens next.
Notes
     Oh my god, well it's finally posted. If you follow my tumblr, you'll
     know I've been writing this thing for *weeks*, and also crying,
     tearing my hair out, and posting about it a lot. I hope the end
     result is worth it.
     Heaps and heaps of thanks to 7emptymirrors, taydev, thecopperscales,
     w3djyt and theoccultdawn, who replied to my daft posts and cheered me
     on lots and lots and lots. Also to junko, who let me ramble a lot at
     her about zanpakuto and how the rukongai even works.
     Hugs, tears, cookies and anything else she wants to my beloved
     Lucymonster, who went so far beyond the call of duty helping me
     through this fic that it's practically co-authored, and wouldn't even
     exist without her. Your tears were not in vain.
     Regarding trigger warnings: this is not a nice fic. There is rape and
     torture and abuse dynamics and PTSD and general messed up thinking,
     and though I have done my best to keep it from getting gratuitously
     awful or graphic, I'd still like to point out that I wrote this to a
     playlist of 50% Nine Inch Nails. So take a deep breath, grab a cup of
     tea and some kleenex, and hold on to your hats.
     (If anyone would like to message me to get more details about what to
     expect, or anything I can do to help them decide whether they can
     feel okay reading this, I am happy to oblige and can be reached at
     vorvayne.tumblr.com)
See the end of the work for more notes
***** Chapter 1 *****
The first thing Yumichika ever becomes really, really good at is sex.
 
It’s not exactly intentional at first. When he first arrives in District 66, a
skinny teenager with long hair and a ragged yukata and nothing else but his
name, he’s taken in by the woman who owns the first inn he passes. She tells
him he has three weeks to find somewhere else. He asks if there’s any food, and
she says that they don’t get hungry here, that rich people keep all the food
for themselves but no one needs it, really. Still, halfway through the first
week he is weak and lightheaded, and if this isn’t hunger, then he doesn’t know
what else to call it.
 
At the end of the second week, he’s woken up in the middle of the night by the
sound of a door locking. He’s learnt enough to be scared, but not enough not to
be stupid; he calls out, “Hello?”
 
The only reply is low laughter, and a candle being lit, then he’s thrown to the
floor and blindfolded. He never gets to see the faces of the two men who tear
off his clothes and hit him in the stomach until he opens his mouth for them.
He gags and chokes, trying not to retch, but they don’t seem to care. Later, he
screams in pain and struggles, but he’s weak as a kitten compared to them, and
they hold him down and beat him until he stops. It doesn’t take long before
he’s too exhausted to even move, to do anything except whimper softly and wait
for it to be over, face scraping against the filthy wooden floor and
overwhelmed by the smell of damp rot and stale breath.
 
It’s a long, long time til they’re done with him. One voice says, “It’d be a
shame to ruin such a pretty face,” and by the end it’s the only part of him
that doesn’t hurt. He’s in too much pain to do anything, and he hears the voice
of the woman, and the sound of coins clinking together, before the door closes
again.
 
He leaves the next morning, still in pain and starving. It doesn’t occur to him
until later to ask the woman how much they paid for him. He sleeps outside
because he has to, and because he can’t, won’t be trapped anywhere.
Occasionally he tenses against sudden pain inside, or gags around a phantom
feeling in his throat, and it feels entirely real even though he knows
otherwise.
 
By the end of the third week - or maybe it’s halfway through the fourth by now,
Yumichika isn’t sure - he’s mostly too weak to move. He sits at the mouth of an
alleyway which leads on to a main road, tucked away from annoyed passers-by but
still bright and public enough to be reasonably safe. He sleeps there, too;
it’s not cold at night at the moment, and though some part of him vaguely
dreads the change of seasons, he’s not certain how long it will be until he
passes out and doesn’t wake up. At least it hasn’t rained much. The streets are
dry and dusty and uniformly the colour of soil, and his throat is dry, but a
cold would finish him.
 
A finger under his jaw tilts his head up, and he flinches at the contact and
opens heavy eyes.
“You’re a pretty thing,” the man towering over him says.
 
Oh god, Yumichika thinks, but it’s a curiously distant thought, without much
emotion connected to it. The man is large and strong and covered in Yakuza
tattoos, though he’s unexpectedly young. Yumichika doesn’t fight it when the
man picks him up as though he weighs barely anything, doesn’t fight when he
holds Yumichika’s hair roughly and shoves his cock down his throat. He’s too
tired to fight, and finds that this ragdoll lack of tension minimises the
choking. There’s nothing in his stomach, not even much water, so he doesn’t
retch this time.
 
Maybe it’s over quickly, or maybe his swimming half-consciousness just makes it
seem that way. The man tucks himself away - will there be no bruises this time?
- and chucks something onto Yumichika’s lap. “For your trouble, kid,” he says,
and walks away.
 
It takes Yumichika a moment to realise that it’s a bread roll. He devoursit,
and though it hurts hitting his empty stomach, strength seems to return to his
body from the centre all the way out to his fingertips. This has the
unfortunate side effect that he can now feel all of the bruises that haven’t
really healed yet.
 
His whole body is aching from sitting in the same position for so long, so he
pushes himself upright and walks down the main street with little idea of where
he’s going. The street is grimy and well-trafficked, with stalls down either
side and grey, raggedy people trudging mechanically along. A stranger crashes
into him and he tenses and panics at the contact, shoving reflexively. The man
- older and thick-set and laden with bags - careens away and ends up on almost
the other side of the street, shouting obscenities.
 
Yumichika looks down at his small, slim hands and thinks, with great surprise,
I am strong. But only, it seems, when there’s food, nomatter what the woman
said. She was a liar. So he has to get some more if he wants to survive - and
he wants. He wants to go back to that inn where they said, shame to ruin such a
pretty face, and slice hers to pieces, demand that she give him the money they
paid her to use him. He was the one sold; the money belongs to him.
 
Two people in a short time have told him he has a pretty face. He doesn’t know
what he looks like, so he wanders until he finds the district’s dubiously clean
river they use to wash their clothes. It’s too murky to see clearly, but he can
see long dark hair and a thin face with large eyes, and he supposes that
perhaps it’s true. He’ll be prettier if he’s clean, so he strips and washes his
clothes and hair as best he can in the murky river and - well, it’s something
of an improvement. The women working along the bank stare at his naked body as
though it’s shameful. Being pretty seems to make him a target, but he’s
beginning to wonder if it can’t also be an advantage.
 
He doesn’t know how to go about this, and it’s only a day before the
restorative effects of food wear off and the hunger comes back. He can’t let
himself become as weak as he did last time; he’d be dead, if not for the man
who liked what he saw enough to throw Yumichika a scrap once he took what he
wanted.
 
Every time someone touches him in the street he flinches; every time someone
looks at him twice he has to fight the urge to run. There is something on the
inside that wants to scream and claw at his own skin, but the rest of him is
oddly logical; he needs food and somewhere to sleep, and the only thing he has
that people want is this. It’s distasteful, but it won’t kill him. He saw a man
kicked to death in an alley a few weeks ago round the corner from one of the
water vendors; Yumichika would make a similarly easy target in a place like
this.
 
He swallows around shuddering nausea and ties his robe tightly at the waist,
allowing it to fall open a little at the shoulders, then he makes his way
around inns and shops. The last time he tried this, he offered labour in
exchange for a place to stay, and was turned away everywhere. This time he
tries something different; he isn’t sure how to say it - you can have me
however you like, if you’ll just let me stay - but it turns out that it’s easy
to tell who is likely to agree the moment they open the door to his half-smile.
Women look at him with disgust and he doesn’t know why, but none of them want
him. It’s always the men, and half of them close the door in his face the
moment they realise how they’ve been looking at him.
 
In the end, Yumichika knows this man will let him in when he doesn’t close the
door; he waits for Yumichika to stammer his way through I need a place to
stay...I’d be very grateful...I would let you do whatever you liked… as if he
knows what Yumichika was offering all along and just wanted to hear him say it.
Yumichika can’t look him in the eyes, but the man waves him in.
 
“That’s real enterprising of you, kid,” he says. When he turns round, gesturing
for Yumichika to follow, the beginning of a tattoo is visible at the base of
his neck.

Yakuza, Yumichika thinks, swallowing around panic. The run-down inn looked
nothing special at all; certainly not the sort of place run by a Yakuza man,
and yet - Yumichika has no choice. He follows the man upstairs and into a tiny
room - barely a closet - and a blanket is chucked in behind him. “Get some
sleep. You’re working tonight.”

Yumichika blinks, trying to get a handle on the situation. “Working?” The man
glowers a little more from under thick, black eyebrows.
 
“Yeah - what’d you expect, for me to bother putting you up just so I could fuck
you? Your job is to go downstairs and look pretty and entertain my guests, and
if you’re lucky you might get a few bits of appreciation from the customers.”
The man shuts the door and lopes off without so much as mentioning his name.
 
Entertain the guests, right. Who will all be Yakuza too, most likely. Still,
it’s not as if a group of Yakuza are any more likely to beat him bloody than
any other group of thugs on the street; perhaps less, if the inkeeper were to
make them pay for that sort of thing. And likely he wouldn’t want his employee
unsuitable for work the next day. It’s not safety, exactly. But appreciation
from the customers - what would that be? Money? Scraps of food?
 
Better, then, than the inn he’d come from, and better than the streets. There’s
a window in this upstairs room, large enough for him to wriggle out of, so if
he were locked in he could still escape.
 
He curls up under the blankets and manages to doze for a few hours. When he
wakes up it’s dark, and the man - whose name he disconcertingly still does not
know - hauls in a bucket of water, a bar of soap, and a green robe that, though
plain and obviously too large for Yumichika, looks to be infinitely better than
the ragged thing he had been wearing.
Yumichika washes as best he can with the limited water, but it seems to
actually be clean, and the soap is an unexpected luxury. Look pretty, he
remembers, letting down his hair and combing it through carefully with his
fingers till it hangs in a straight black sheet down his back. The robe is far
too large, especially around the shoulders. Yumichika opens the top to expose
his collarbones and the top of his shoulder and rolls up the sleeves many
times, then folds the fabric around his waist strategically before tying the
sash. He hopes the draping looks artful, now.
 
He supposes he’s expected to make himself appealing - “entertain”, the man had
said. He wants his customers to be happy, so that means: talk, perhaps flatter,
pretend to enjoy any attention he is given. Yumichika can do that. The thought
of leaning in to an unwanted touch of his thigh makes him feel ill, but in the
relative public of the bar, at least no one will do anything too indiscreet or
painful. And if someone wishes to drag him off to some closet and use him, then
hopefully they will be too intent on relieving their urges to notice if he lets
slip a few pained sounds and just waits for it to be over.
 
Maybe he will learn to feign enthusiasm even for that. Whore, he thinks, trying
the word on for size in his mind. That’s what I am now.
 
He keeps his chin up when he presents himself downstairs. Business has only
just begun, really; the bar is two-thirds empty, but still, men with scarred
faces and missing fingertips look at him up and down over their drinks. The
inkeeper calls him over with a sharp jerk of his head. “You scrub up well,” he
says, and begins filling a wooden mug.

You knew I would, Yumichika thinks, otherwise you would have closed the door in
my face. “Thank you,” he says, pulling one lock of hair to the front of his
shoulders.
 
The man pushes the mug across the stained bartop. “Here,” he says. “You’ll need
this.”
 
Alcohol of some kind, by the smell. Will alcohol make this easier? In
Yumichika’s observation it seems to make people more inclined to do stupid
things; still, it’ll give him something to do with his hands. He accepts with a
nod, and takes a sip.
 
It’s utterly vile. Yumichika smoothes out the expression of revulsion and
swallows anyway; it’s not going to be difficult to avoid drinking too much.
He’s going to have to join a table in a minute and be entertaining, somehow.
What do you even say to a group of drinking Yakuza? Enquiring about work is
probably not the best conversation starter.
 
He leans over the bar to speak to the inkeeper again. “Who’s been here the
longest?”
 
The man’s eyebrows raise, and he examines Yumichika thoughtfully. “That lot
over there,” he indicates with a tilt of his head. “They’re on their fourth
round.”
 
“Good.” Yumichika takes a sip of his drink and puts on a half-smile, then heads
slowly over to a table in the far corner surrounded by men playing cards with
their upper bodies exposed to show off their ink. One or two look up as he
approaches; every single man is at least twice Yumichika’s size.
 
“Looks like the entertainment budget’s gone up, ne?” The most easily
differentiable thing about the men is their tattoos, and this particular man
has a huge dragon covering his back and shoulders. Yumichika can’t even imagine
how many hours that must have taken. The man next to him elbows him and says,
“Oi, Roku, it’s your turn.”
 
“Does that mean I can sit?” Yumichika says, indicating the spare zafu with his
drink and taking another sip. He’s beginning to feel...warm, which is an
improvement on the constant chill he feels, except for the few short hours
after he eats something.
 
A man with ratty blond hair in a short ponytail grins at him. “That’s onii-
san’s place, but you can sit here.” He slaps one massive thigh.
 
Yumichika perches on it, crosses his legs, and begins to idly play with his
hair. He leans close to the man’s ear and says, “Who’s winning?”
 
He points with one thumb, and Yumichika notices that the tip of his pinky
finger is gone, the scar at the top gruesome rather than clean-cut. “Mugara,
there. Though his luck’ll probably turn soon; he ain’t all that good at oicho-
kabu.”
 
“Mm. And what’s your name?” Yumichika allows his hair to trail over the man’s
shoulder
 
“Isuke,” the man says, and he wraps an arm possessively around Yumichika’s
waist. It looks as if he might be able to put his hands all the way around
Yumichika’s waist, if he tried. Yumichika takes a few swallows of his drink;
it’s not improving in flavour as he gets further down, but it is becoming
easier to bear. The arm trapping him where he is is less easy to bear; the urge
to fight his way free is strong, but he stamps on it firmly with more sips of
beer and the knowledge that he’ll be kicked out if he tries that.
 
It’s not so very bad, really. There’s no pain, and he isn’t cold for once, and
in between rounds Isuke tells him the rules of oicho-kabu. There’s the constant
uncomfortable feeling of being stared at with intent, especially Mugara and a
man with an intricate koi fish pattern down either side of his chest, but when
the next round is due Isuke indicates another drink for Yumichika, encouraging
him to finish the one he has.
 
I’d rather not is clearly not an option, so he smiles briefly and puts away the
drink in one long go, taking care not to spill unattractively and keeping his
face impassive. The warmth pooling in his stomach is spreading outwards, and
his senses seem to be blurring slightly. He can still feel the arm holding him
in place, but it seems less connected to the urge to flee.
 
“Oi, Isuke, you’re monopolising the pretty thing,” Roku says, and he leans over
and grabs Yumichika’s thigh. Yumichika can’t help but tense, and his stomach
lurches unpleasantly. He wants to shrink away, to avoid looking at the leer
Roku is giving him, but he doesn’t have a choice, and in a minute his behaviour
will register as strange.
 
He makes himself shift round to look at Roku. “Well, you could deal me in. Then
I can play with all of you,” he says. This draws a round of guffaws, and he
manages to slip off Isuke’s lap and onto a zafu between him and Roku. The next
round arrives at the table, and Yumichika accepts his with the best smile he
can muster and a thank you, and tries not to make it obvious that he drinks the
first third all in one go. The distant, floating feeling makes him more daring,
makes up for the vile taste in his mouth and he’s not sure if it’s the swill
he’s drinking or disgust.
 
He hates how easy it is, to say the right things, to pretend to be useless at
the game even once he has the hang of it because they laugh and call him cute
and put their hands wherever they please. It’s not hard to entertain a bunch of
drunken men when you’re drunk yourself - and Yumichika is definitely drunk.
 
He’s so drunk that it’s not so bad when they carry him off to a back room and
strip off his clothes. Everything is blurry and far away, even the part of him
that wants to scream, and with countless hands all over him it takes a while to
realise that the strange noises, identifiably neither pain nor fear nor
pleasure but something a little like all three, are coming from him. They share
him equitably, passing him round until he’s dizzy and disoriented. Someone
strokes his hair as he tries not to choke on their cock. They’re rough with him
but not to the point of injury - well, probably; he’s feeling no pain at all.
 
He’s mostly together and mostly okay until someone wraps a hand around his cock
and says into his ear, give us a show, little slut, and his body does exactly
what it is designed to do.  
 
They leave him in an exhausted, sticky heap, though someone bothers to drape
the green robe over him. When he’s sure he’s alone the shaking starts, a
counterpoint to the slow spin of the room around him.
 
At length, he falls asleep.
 
-
 
Yumichika opens gluey eyelids the next morning, feeling sick. Someone has moved
him upstairs to the little spare room with a blanket. He’s...disgusting; so
disgusting he would sell his soul for a bath. Alcohol-fogged memories from the
previous evening trickle into his consciousness, and he curls up and swallows,
arms wrapped around his stomach, until he can stop gagging on nothing.
 
The door opens with no preamble, and he jumps at the unexpected noise and
movement. Stupidly, his heart races even as he can see it’s only Suzuruma. The
inkeeper has brought him another bucket of water and his old robe, cleaner than
when he last saw it.
 
“Thank you,” Yumichika says, though he can’t meet the man’s eyes in his current
state.
 
The inkeeper grunts in acknowledgement, then pauses. “You did all right, kid.”
Yumichika swallows; to this he cannot reply thank you. “Isuke left you
something,” he says, and drops a small silver coin on the floor before leaving.
 
Yumichika picks the coin up; it’s tarnished and battered, with an image of the
Seireitei stamped on it. He doesn’t know how much it’s worth, but he remembers
the small bronze-coloured pieces exchanged for beers the previous evening and
thinks, enough.
 
The first thing Yumichika does when he arrives at the market is wander around
and watch carefully how much people pay for things. It seems he was roughly
right; small bronze bits for drinks, small silvers for more expensive items
like clothing and food. There isn’t much of what Yumichika would consider
actual sustenance, mostly curiosities like sweets and pastries. At some point,
when he finds someone safe, Yumichika will ask why he gets hungry when no one
else seems to. Larger silver coins like the one he has in his fist draw several
smaller silvers as change, normally.

He can afford food and something else to wear, he thinks. He should make food
his priority - and quantity over quality, if he can possibly find someone
selling something more sensible than tiny pastries - but a colourful, well-
fitting Yukata will make him appear more attractive, probably. He’s not sure
that it matters; not sure what men see in him, really, especially since one of
the Yakuza from last night held his hair and said, so pretty, almost like a
woman. He takes a deep breath, and wonders why, then, they don’t just pay for a
woman.
 
One market stall has a woman selling bronze mirrors, and he looks at the
clearest reflection of himself he has ever seen. He does look like a woman to a
casual glance, but it’s not quite right - there’s a sharpness to jaw and
cheekbones and something around the eyes that differentiates him. Yumichika
wonders momentarily what he would look like in a woman’s eye makeup, since his
eyes are already so large compared to the rest of his face.
 
Yumichika bypasses a number of stalls displaying beautiful yukata until he
finds a stall selling bread. Presenting the large silver coin gains him only
two small silvers back, but there’s more, he reassures himself, where that came
from. It’s been two days since he ate, and it’s a struggle not to tear into the
bread roll, but he feels almost as if it will be taken away if he reveals that
he’s eating because he is hungry.
 
He stashes the remaining half of the roll in his pocket and shops for a yukata,
and though at first he considers which fabrics seem to drape most attractively
along the lines of his body and which colours look best against the black of
his hair, in the end he selects one with a peacock feather pattern simply
because it is beautiful.
 
-
 
Yumichika learns about masturbation from putting together various rude jokes
that are made in his presence. The men in Suzuruma’s bar seem convinced that
they’re supposed to make sexual jokes to him for some reason, as though in some
way they still have to persuade him to do his job. He wonders if they treat the
people - women? Other men? - they attempt to woo without money the same way.
 
It had never occurred to him that men with enough money to buy him would ever
bother to do it themselves. He doesn’t really know how expensive he is, if
there’s a group discount or if you just pay for the time and it’s cheaper to
share. He should ask Suzuruma. But it seems that everyone masturbates, and he
wonders if it’s odd that the idea had never held much appeal. His body seems to
have learned to take care of itself most evenings, whether or not the guests
bother trying to get an orgasm out of him, and he has no desire at all to
relive it in private moments. The guests like it, anyway. Yumichika supposes it
must looks like he wants them.
 
He has become very good at swallowing around his gag reflex, at leaning into a
touch from callused hands, at opening his legs and tipping back his head and
making pleasure sounds. Some of the responses have become reflexive instead of
conscious: he doesn’t have to fake moans, anymore, when someone slides fingers
into his mouth for him to suck. Men call him pretty little whoreand filthy slut
as they run their hands all over him, and he can’t help but think it’s a little
true, that it’s why he’s so good at this job that he can make a man come in
minutes with both hands tied behind his back. It’s difficult for even him to
tell sometimes, drunk and begging to come, where the performance begins.
 
There are the bad days, of course - where Suzuruma gets him to run errands and
he smells damp rot, or hears the sound of a door locking as he walks down the
street, and he spends the whole day looking over his shoulder and tensing at
every unexpected touch. Stupid little things like that set him off, like a
mouthful of rice getting stuck in his throat, while the man two nights ago who
grabbed so hard he left bloody scrapes and finger-shaped purple bruises on
Yumichika’s hips was almost routine.
 
He heals quickly, anyway, when he’s had enough to eat, and the regulars at the
bar have got used to the idea that he likes food and often bring him sweets or
pastries. Today, the marks are barely visible.
 
He learns a lot from the regulars at the bar; learns how to cheat at cards and
what shinigami are and where to get decent food and how to let people know that
you belong to the Yakuza, if you need to. How to handle a knife if that doesn’t
work. Where the softest parts to hit are and how to form a fist properly if you
don’t have a knife.
 
No one at all tells him what to do when a newcomer walks into the bar and sits
down, and Yumichika’s first thought is, I wonder what you taste like? He stands
up from where he’s seated by one of his tables of regulars and says, “Sorry,
boys, better say hello to the fresh meat,” then walks over. It’s a good thing
his kimono restricts his strides, keeps him from walking too fast and slinging
his legs around the man’s hips and finding out why he draws the eye so much
more than anyone else here.
 
The first thing the man does is take out a large box of noodles and eat them in
a way Yumichika has never seen anyone eat food before: swiftly, efficiently, as
if he needs the food so much he doesn’t even care how it tastes. It could be
disgusting, but it isn’t; he eats neatly despite the speed, and the fingers
gripping his chopsticks are long and slim and callused in a few places, rather
than generally rough, as if he does the same thing over and over. Yumichika
takes a moment to wonder what a man so unscarred and absent tattoos is doing in
Suzuruma’s bar.
 
“You’re staring at my food,” the man observes between bites, and his accent is
rougher even than you commonly get in the 65th; this man comes from the 70s
somewhere. Yumichika’s heard all sorts of stories about the 70s. The urge to
ask endless stupid questions ties his tongue.
 
Yumichika looks away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.” He can feel
himself blushing, of all things, and though it’s his job to be funny and make
conversation he can’t think of one single thing to say.
 
“It’s just noodles. Nothing tasty,” he says, scratching his bald head. There’s
strange marks at the corners of his eyes; birthmarks, or paint of some kind?
Yumichika wonders what they would feel like to touch.
 
He gathers up his courage. “I get hungry, too,” he says, because though he has
no reason to trust this man, at least the fact that they have this in common
makes him safer to ask than anyone else. Maybe he’s not thinking too clearly
about this, but he’s not sure he cares. He wants this man to know they have
something in common, even though everyone says Yumichika is slim and pretty and
delicate, and the man looks as though he’s never lost a fight in his life.
“Everyone says I shouldn’t, but...if I don’t have food, I start to faint.”
 
The man stares at him with undisguised incredulity. “You should keep that to
yourself.”
 
Yumichika bristles. “I have,” he says. “You’re the first person I’ve told. And
it’s not as if you’re being subtle about it,” he notes.
 
“Means you’ve got reiryoku,” the man says, after a few minutes of looking at
him. “Like those cunts up in the Seireitei.”
 
Yumichika leans forward. He can’t help it; it’s as if the man is humming or
something, because Yumichika can almost feel him in a way he can’t feel anyone
else. “Reiryoku?”
 
“Energy stuff,” he explains. “Some people can do some cool shit with it - balls
of energy and stuff - but mostly I’m just stronger and harder to cut.” Which
explains the lack of scars; Yumichika had been wondering how from the 70th, at
least squares with unscarred.
 
At least now he has an explanation for the strength that seems to belie his own
size. Yumichika takes out a small box of sweets that were a gift from last
night; he’s been saving them. He takes one and eats it, then offers the box to
the bald man.
 
“Eh? I don’t wanna take your food, if you need it,” he says, but he’s looking
at the offered food in the same way that men normally look at Yumichika’s body.


“It’s all right,” Yumichika says. “I can get more. You can have some.” You can
have anything you want; you can have me. “If you’ll tell me your name.”

The man raises an eyebrow, but takes a sweet. “Ikkaku,” he says, then pops it
into his mouth, and his expression dissolves into one of ecstasy. It’s an
expression Yumichika could stand to see again, maybe leaning over him; he’d
even keep his eyes open for that, he thinks. “Where’d you get these?”
“My name is Yumichika,” he says, though Ikkaku didn’t ask; Yumichika just wants
him to know. “And people get me things, sometimes.”
 
Ikkaku seems to look over Yumichika’s body for the first time since he sat
down. “You work here, don’t you.”
 
“Yes,” Yumichika says.
 
Ikkaku sighs, and picks up his bowl of sake. “Look, I ain’t gonna fuck you. I’m
not that sort of guy.”
 
Yumichika blinks, confused. Not what sort of guy?  Not the sort that wants him?
 
Then something like shame creeps in, and he has to drop his gaze to keep his
expression even. Why does Ikkaku not like him? Is he not beautiful enough for
someone like Ikkaku, so obviously stronger and more interesting than the men
he’s used to?

Is he supposed to feel ashamed of being a whore?
 
Yumichika presses his lips together. “Do you generally only talk to people if
you want to fuck them?” People generally only talk to Yumichika if they want to
fuck him, but he’s aware that’s not always the case, that there are a few other
motivations for conversation.
 
Ikkaku shrugs. “Don’t talk to people much, really.” He turns back to his
noodles, and Yumichika bites his lip, stung.
 
It’s horribly rude, but he stands abruptly. If that wasn’t a dismissal, then he
doesn’t know what it was. “Well. I’ll leave you in peace, then.” He walks back
over to his table of regulars, feeling Ikkaku’s eyes on him but deciding he
doesn’t care. It’s more effort than usual to smile, to permit touch, when his
hands want to ball into fists so his nails dig in.
 
It gets bad enough that he has to excuse himself and go outside to get some
air, reassure himself that the bar is not that small, that he’s not trapped,
that at any moment he could shrug off the hands on his hips and bodies crowding
him in place if he wanted to: he chooses not to, for food and water and a roof
over his head.
 
He thinks about Ikkaku, who had looked at his face and kept his hands to
himself (and is he supposed to be pleased about that? Yumichika would have
leant into his touch willingly), and in that instant that he’s not paying
attention, he’s grabbed and shoved up against a wall. The man is tall with
awful breath and Yumichika gathers his wits and is about to knee him in the
groin when a fist intersects with his temple. He’s out cold before he hits the
ground.
 
Yumichika turns round and Ikkaku’s standing there, grinning. “Not that I don’t
appreciate you defending my honour and all,” he says, feeling somewhat
vindicated as sarcasm falls out of his mouth, “But I could’ve handled that
myself.”
 
The grin falls away a little. “Didn’t look like it from where I’m standing.”
 
Yumichika looks him right in the eye and lifts one shoulder in a dismissive
shrug. “So try me.”
 
Ikkaku looks at him like he’s lost his mind. “...You’re serious.”
 
Yumichika just waits. Ikkaku waits long enough to move that Yumichika had
almost stopped expecting him to - clever - before his hand thrusts forward to
grab Yumichika’s throat. Yumichika has a single instant of total stillness
where he thinks only yes, and then he drops abruptly to one knee and slams his
knuckles into Ikkaku’s solar plexus. Ikkaku falls forward, and Yumichika grabs
his hips, plants one foot in his groin and rolls backwards, throwing Ikkaku
over.

Yumichika returns seamlessly to kneeling and leans one shin across Ikkaku’s
throat. Ikkaku stares at him blankly, and Yumichika couldn’t wipe the satisfied
smile off his face if he tried, panting with adrenaline rather than exertion.
An answering grin spreads its way across Ikkaku’s face, and Yumichika lets him
up.
 
“I guess I don’t have to worry about you, then,” he says, as though he would
have, otherwise. Then he turns and walks off, and Yumichika needs to go back
inside because he’s supposed to be working, and though he’s familiar with not
being able to shake the memory of a touch, the feeling that Ikkaku’s hand
around his throat drew out of him is entirely new.
 
Much later, he wakes up to a rising sun after a dream that he can’t quite
remember with his hand round his cock. Ikkaku was in the dream, all flashing
grin and grasping fingers and the strength that Yumichika felt so strongly even
through that brief moment of contact, and he finds himself thrusting up into
his hand at the memory.
 
Yumichika wonders what it would be like with someone whose smile is crooked and
infections. With someone so strong, almost humming with coiled strength, and
was that the reiryoku that Ikkaku spoke of? Would Ikkaku run fingers through
his hair, wrap those long, large hands around his hips, pin him to the wall by
his throat and fuck his mouth? All these things that have been done to him and
he will never know what Ikkaku does, what Ikkaku tastes like. He finds himself
hungry to know those things.

A hundred imagined images of Ikkaku on top of him and around him devolve into a
thousand clearly remembered images of other people doing the same things; there
is nothing that he can imagine being done to him that has not already been
done. There is little difference, he knows, between one man fucking you and
another, and he doesn’t understand why it’s different to imagine Ikkaku’s cock
in his mouth than anyone else’s.  Hunger and nausea coil together unpleasantly
in his stomach, like the memory of hundreds of orgasms forced out of his body.
 
It’s no good at all trying to focus, and in the end he curls up into a ball and
swallows around the urge to be sick, waiting for sleep to take him out of the
loop of memories that make him shudder.And if, in the morning, there’s a damp
patch on the blanket under his head, then that’s no one’s business but his own.
 
He washes his face more carefully than usual that morning, and his eyes feel a
little sore but he can’t tell if they’re red or not. It’s suddenly so, so
frustrating, and maybe it’s not all about not being able to see his own face
but he snatches up his money pouch and marches out the door.
 
It's a stupid thing to spend his hard-earned money on, but really, what else is
he going to do with it? The mirror is the size of a small table, silver and
shiny and depicts him faithfully, black hair and purplish eyes and protuberant
collarbones and bony wrists. This is what pretty is? He looks - underfed and
weak, compared to Ikkaku, and maybe that's why Ikkaku didn't want him.
Yumichika could feel how tough Ikkaku is; maybe he'd want someone who doesn't
break.
 
Maybe the patrons of Suzuruma's bar like how breakable he looks.
 
He carries the mirror home and props it up against the wall. His eyes are not
red, if they ever were. He looks at himself, missing the fat of childhood but
still with eyes too big for his face, eats a slice of cake, and remembers what
Ikkaku said about being stronger and harder to cut.
 
I am not fragile,he thinks, and gets ready for the evening's work.
 
-
 
Some days, honestly, his job is just dull. An evening full of regulars, and he
knows what they want of him so well he falls into an unconscious rhythm. Or
there’s no pain at all anywhere to distract him, intentional or otherwise, not
even the friction of grabbing hands or inadequate lubricant or his hair
catching between bodies.
 
He allows his mind to wander...and, as usual these days, it wanders to Ikkaku.
Yumichika hasn’t seen him since; not surprising, really, given that he’s not
from around here. He wonders what Ikkaku is doing now, if it’s in any way
similar to what Yumichika’s doing. If Ikkaku has one person to have sex with or
sleeps around or just doesn’t bother much, and whether he prefers men or women
or both.
 
He imagines, almost idly, what it would be like if Ikkaku were the one
currently kneeling over him, hands on his hips. And that’s...different. It’s
imperfect; perhaps it’ll be better if he closes his eyes and -
 
His orgasm is followed by an overpowering wave of nausea and shame, and it
hasn’t taken away much of the grasping hunger for - he doesn’t know what. Isn’t
this what the body craves: release? It would almost have been better if there
had been pain and tears because after those times he feels empty, spent in a
way he can’t seem to achieve any other way.
 
Later, Yumichika lies awake in bed and tells himself firmly, I will stop
thinking of Ikkaku. He doesn’t really expect it to work.
 
There are a few others of course, eventually. Yumichika does not learn their
names, and they do want to fuck him, and they are not memorable, with one
exception: a man with white-blonde hair who threw him around roughly and left
fingernail scrapes all down his back, and Yumichika came screaming for the
first time in his entire life. The man whispered a name into Yumichika’s ear at
his own orgasm, but Yumichika doesn’t remember it. He was languid and sated for
days afterwards, and though he couldn’t look anyone in the eye for the rest of
the evening, it was worth it to know how it feels like to be fucked like a
lover.
 
He still isn’t sure what need was filled, what thing it is that his body
craves, sometimes overwhelming his mind’s revulsion and shame and sometimes
running in parallel. It’s becoming more difficult, slowly, not to shirk away
from casual touch, but he falls easily into conditioned response when someone
holds him down and tears into him.
 
Yumichika begins to wish that Ikkaku had never walked into Suzuruma’s bar, and
that he had not wondered what Ikkaku tasted like. He can trace the beginning of
this strange sickness to that day, and perhaps he was lost the moment he
imagined what it would be like to touch Ikkaku, and perhaps it took as long as
that instant of hand against throat. Either way, it seems hopeless to attempt
to hold the feeling inside. So he lets it out, lets it take over, and then
sometimes it doesn’t even feel like him who kneels and begs and says Please may
I come? He’s not even sure where that one started; a sense of politeness at
first, to give warning and ask permission all in one, and now he almost needs
the growled yes in his ear.
 
He looks in his mirror one morning, and realises he doesn’t look like a child
anymore.
 
There’s a different atmosphere when Yumichika arrives downstairs that evening.
It doesn’t take him very long to ascertain the source: in one corner, there’s
an unfamiliar man with dark brown hair in a braid and well-fitting clothes who
doesn’t look anything like Yakuza. He doesn’t even look threatening; he’s slim
and middle-aged and has a forgettable face. It’s clear he’s important, though.
Murmurs of o-nii-samaand Gaaran-dono follow him around.
 
So Yumichika is wary as he approaches this man; he slips into seiza at a
respectful distance and keeps his eyes lowered, mostly. He becomes warier on
noting the way Gaaran looks at him: predatory, but like a snake rather than the
mammalian lust Yumichika is used to. His eyes are the palest blue and
completely empty.

Gaaran looks him up and down once, slowly, avoiding his face until the very
last moment. “So you’re this place’s resident whore,” he says.

People don’t normally say so out loud, at least not in the public venue of the
bar. Yumichika makes himself look Gaaran in the eye. “Yes.”
 
“Come here,” Gaaran says softly, as if he’s so used to being obeyed that he
doesn’t need a commanding voice anymore. Yumichika does as he’s told, and the
humming feeling on the edge of perception becomes more obvious. It’s not much
like the energy surrounding Ikkaku - he should not think his name in Gaaran’s
presence in case it is stained - but more like the shivering of ice just before
it cracks. Yumichika takes deep, controlled breaths. Everyone nearby seems to
be watching silently. What are they waiting for?
 
Gaaran slaps him once, hard, and Yumichika can’t restrain a small, surprised
gasp of pain. After a moment, he turns his head back towards Gaaran, eyes down
this time because he doesn’t want to see his expression. “Obedient little
thing, aren’t you? Pretty, too. Maybe I should cut up your face, see what you
do when being pretty doesn’t work for you anymore. See who would want you
then.” Something cold and metal rests against the side of his neck, and
Yumichika feels every muscle clench with the effort of not moving. The tiny
knife lifts to trail just underneath Yumichika’s left eye, stroking softly, and
though Yumichika doesn’t know for certain if it’s sharp, Gaaran doesn’t seem
like the sort of man to carry a dull knife. “I would still want you, you know.
I don’t have much use for a pretty face...and I’d bet that you make lovely
sounds when you’re in pain, hmm?”
 
It takes all of Yumichika’s strength not to shudder and flinch away. The knife
descends slowly, and he begins to be able to breathe properly again, though his
breathing is too quick, and - he needs to go outside, get some air -
 
The slap, this time, is so hard that Yumichika is knocked to the floor, and his
pained cry is out of him before he can clamp down on it so as not to give
Gaaran the satisfaction. “I thought so,” Gaaran says, and rotates his wrist
till it gives a sickening crunch. He stands, and nudges Yumichika in the ribs
with his foot. “Go flirt with the boys, now. I’ll be back for you later.”
 
Yumichika does not unclench until the sound of Gaaran’s footsteps fades to
nothing. Then he pushes himself gently up into seiza, works his jaw discreetly
to assess the damage, and stands. He hurts, but there’s nothing broken.
 
Everyone stares at him as he walks as fast as he can in his kimono to the door.
He tries not to pay attention, just look straight ahead, but he can feel all
the eyes in the room on him and when he closes the front door behind him he has
to lean against it to remain upright as the edges of his vision go grey and his
heartbeat pounds in his ears, far too fast. He’s shaking, but he has to compose
himself and go back inside. He undoes the knot of his hair and pulls it all to
the front of his right shoulder where it will disguise the right side of his
face a little, because there must be a red mark. Yumichika hopes there isn’t a
bruise, hopes that he won’t have to smile and flirt and please with a black and
blue face.
 
He digs his nails into his palm over the small scars there, and makes himself
stand, turn around, and walk back inside. There’s a table of familiar faces in
the corner, and he goes to sit by them and play cards, and compared to Gaaran
they’re almost comforting. No one makes any real advances, and Yumichika isn’t
sure if it’s pity, or because Gaaran has so clearly staked his claim.
 
When the next round is fetched, Isuke shoves a large bowl of sake in front of
Yumichika. “Drink,” he says. “You’ll need it.”
 
Yumichika takes a long sip and, it’s true, he could use something stronger than
the cheap beer Suzuruma sends his way, writing it off as a necessary expense.
He raises one eyebrow, trying for flippant and failing, suddenly. “I’ll need
it?”
 
“Just...trust us, ne? We know Gaaran-dono,” Isuke says, and Yumichika finds it
hard to swallow suddenly. He’d managed to forget, for a few moments, that he’s
going to have to touch Gaaran later, and from the sounds of things he will not
be forgiving.
 
“Thank you,” Yumichika says, and when he drains the bowl and requests another,
Isuke wordlessly refills it.
 
He manages to get in three bowls, and a much-needed level of calm dissociation,
before a hulking man with tattoos all the way up his thick neck grabs
Yumichika’s elbow and says, “This way.” It’s redundant, because Yumichika can
either follow the man or be dragged, and he’s been humiliated enough tonight.
 
Yumichika is confused when the man leads him to a different door than usual,
begins to feel sick as he’s pulled down dark stairs to the cellar, and is
struggling hopelessly when the man shoves him into the cellar and slams the
door firmly behind him.
 
There’s the sound of a lock clicking into place, and Yumichika opens his mouth
to scream.
 
A cold hand around his mouth and nose muffles any sound. “There’s no point,”
Gaaran says. “Nothing will change if you scream. In fact, I’m rather hoping you
do - but not just yet.”
 
Yumichika’s eyes are adjusting to the blackness, and the cellar has been
cleared; all there is in here is a table at hip height and a bag in the corner.
He’s trapped in dark room with Gaaran. Every sense is overwhelming; he can hear
Gaaran’s quiet breaths and his own thundering heartbeat, taste the metallic
tang of panic in his throat, and his body feels boneless and shaky. There’s no
point in trying to keep calm. Someone has cleared out the cellar; someone has
decided that whatever Gaaran wants he will get, and the only thing Yumichika
can do is hope he’s in one piece when it’s over.
 
One of Gaaran’s nails digs into his neck at the pulse point. “Undress.”

It takes twice as long as it should. His fingers will not cooperate, and Gaaran
tuts in his ear. “And here I thought, after working here for all these years,
you’d be tough.”

I thought so, too, Yumichika thinks, as Gaaran leads him by his hair over to
the table and pushes him onto it. Gaaran begins to tie him to the table, and it
takes all of Yumichika’s strength not to give in to the part of him that is
screaming and fight him off and run, because the door is locked and there’s
nowhere to run. Suzuruma would not allow anyone to harm him too much, surely:
he wouldn’tt be so valuable scarred and broken.
 
Terror makes his face damp even before the first stinging touch of the whip,
and there’s no point at all in trying not to make a sound. Perhaps if he just
gives in, this will be over quickly.
 
He’s wrong, of course. There’s no rhythm, no pattern, and just enough pauses
that he can’t seem to acclimatise. Every time he begins to space out into a
haze of pain Gaaran lets the leather trail gently across his back, drawing
attention to the wounds he’s made, and he’s back to the start, scratching the
table leg with his nails for something to hang onto. He’s sober enough to be
ashamed when his sounds of pain turn into shouts, turn into a few minutes where
he can’t stop talking, can’t stop pleading for it to stop. He’s not even
talking to Gaaran anymore, not even sure the man is still there because he
makes so little noise, and it’s so dark, and his drunkenness is making
everything feel unreal.
 
Eventually he stops being able to string words together.
 
By the time Gaaran is finished with him, he’s screaming and struggling
uselessly against his bindings. Gaaran has not touched him once except to tie
and untie the ropes, and he leaves Yumichika on the desk in total darkness as
he unlocks the door and slips out.
 
Yumichika’s limbs are cramped and sore, and he feels something dripping down
his skin that might be sweat and might be blood. He tries to stand, but his
legs won’t cooperate. The need to get out of the cellar is powerful, but he can
only manage to crawl to the door. His shaking turns into sobs that wrack his
whole body, and it’s all he can do to catch his breath between them. His arms
wrap tightly around his knees and he begins to rock slightly, and at length he
quietens and relaxes, exhausted and spent and in more pain than he can remember
ever being.
 
He still scrambles away from the door, panicked again, at the sound of
footsteps, but when the door opens it’s only Suzuruma with a candle and a
blanket. Suzuruma approaches, as if to try and get him up, but Yumichika
flinches and manages to speak. “D-don’t...t-t-t-touch me,” he says, jaw
clenching. “P-please...don’t…”

Suzuruma holds the candle over Yumichika and peers closer. He sighs. “Ah, hell.
If he’s scarred you I’ll make him pay extra.”
 
A slightly hysterical laugh sounds, and Yumichika realises it came from him. He
accepts the proffered blanket from Suzuruma and wraps it around himself, noting
properly how cold he is. His broken skin hurts where the blanket touches it,
but the desire to cover his body is stronger than the pain.

“Can you stand?” Suzuruma looks impatient. The correct answer is clearly yes.
 
“I...I don’t think so,” Yumichika rasps, and he’s thirsty, horribly thirsty.
Upstairs, there is food and water. Perhaps he can crawl. He takes a deep
breath, clutches the blanket tightly in one hand, and tries to move, limbs as
solid as rubber.
 
Suzuruma sighs heavily. “I’m gonna have to carry you, I suppose. Pull yourself
together.” Then he bends down and picks Yumichika up as if he’s no heavier than
a sack of potatoes, walks upstairs, and dumps him unceremoniously on the ratty
futon.

Once he’s alone, Yumichika pulls himself to the other corner and lifts a
floorboard. Underneath, there’s a covered jug of water and a paper bag of
sweets. Eating is the last thing he wants to do, but he manages despite the
continuing shivers, knowing that he won’t heal otherwise. He dozes fitfully for
the rest of the night, tiredness carrying him to sleep and panic waking him
shortly afterwards at every little noise, over and over again. He doesn’t dream
about Gaaran, not tonight, but when dawn arrives and he’s barely managed any
sleep, he knows that he will.
 
***** Chapter 2 *****
The next morning, most of the wounds have closed up, but walking is still
painful. Yumichika’s first thought is to walk to the market and see if he can
afford any of the silk kimono that his favourite stall sells, but he’s halfway
through prying up the concealing floorboard before he reconsiders. Some
shopping and a new kimono might cheer him up, but - he has quite a lot of
money. He doesn’t know how much rent is in this district, but it’s an amount of
money that could keep him fed for a long time, should he ever need it to.

He knows, these days, how to flirt with a man, how to tastefully imply that
he’ll spread his legs for money. He could do the same things somewhere else.
True, it wouldn’t necessarily make him any better off - he’d just have to pay
his rent instead of never seeing it in the first place - but. He’d be allowed
to avoid people like Gaaran.
 
Who probably won’t be coming back, of course. He’s clearly one of the Yakuza
high-ups, only swooping in to check that business is going as it should before
heading back to the family home. Likely, Yumichika will never see him again.
 
He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he does.
 
Still. There might be other people nearly as bad, and he never, ever wants to
be locked in a room again. He won’t, can’t do it.
 
Suzuruma tells him to strip so he can see the cuts, then sighs and gives him
the day off. Yumichika expects him to be angry but he’s only resigned, letting
him off with a vague, “You’re not that appealing, all covered in marks.”
 
Yumichika goes to the market anyway. Though there’s a lot of people, the street
is wide and he can see the sky, and it’s not so bad. Irrationally, he keeps
expecting to meet Gaaran by accident, and he can’t help but keep his head down
and body curved inward, as if making himself smaller will prevent him being
found. He passes by the kimono without looking, and heads towards a stall full
of small leather bags. Though it’s more expensive to purchase a beautiful one,
it will be less out of character to do so - and he can’t deny he likes his
things to be beautiful. Beautiful things are more valuable, after all.
 
In the food area, a noodle bar has opened. Being seen eating has become
fashionable recently; more of a display of wealth than expensive clothes. Even
though almost everyone here is poor, they still want a little taste of riches,
it seems. It’s good for Yumichika, who feels less afraid to eat his box of
noodles in public, slow and careful. He’s hungry this morning, and the noodles
are good; inexplicably, they cheer him up. Yumichika buys some sweets, too -
the hard boiled kind that will last a long time - and puts them in the small
bag.
 
Suzuruma has him serving drinks and talking to people all evening, even if he
isn’t expected to fuck them, so he spend the whole time offering them sweets
from his new bag and making jokes about how technically it’s his day off, but
he came down to see everyone because he likes them, and didn’t want them to get
bored without his lovely face to look at. He doesn’t think, not even once,
about Gaaran’s threat to slice up his face. If he were made ugly, it would mean
a slow death. So he doesn’t think about that: he eats sweets and drinks beer
and does the easy half of his job. It’s all right.

It’s all right when he goes back to work properly, too. He seems to need more
food when he’s injured, which was a worthwhile thing to work out. No one asks
him about the still-healing marks on his body. Do they all know what happened?
Or do they not care enough to wonder?

It doesn’t matter, really. He doesn’t want to talk about them. They aren’t
scarring, and it’s blessing enough.
 
It’s blessing enough until three weeks later when Gaaran walks into the bar
again with his two large bodyguards, and Yumichika’s blood turns instantly to
ice.
 
The rounds sent to the table he is at suddenly start arriving with bowls of
sake for Yumichika. He sits and loses at cards, and not on purpose, fists
clenching and unclenching rhythmically as he tries to decide what to do. He
tries leaving the sake to keep a clear head, but it begins to accumulate in
front of him, and in any case panic is stalling his mind quite effectively. He
turns to drinking it quickly; perhaps unconsciousness would be a mercy in this
case. He’s certain he was only able to let himself be tied down without
struggling so much Gaaran decided to just gut him only because he didn’t know
how bad it would be.
 
Slowly, like sliding into quicksand, he gets drunk. And then he’s only going
out for a breath of air, honestly, he probably can’t run in this state - but
Gaaran’s bodyguards wrap hands across his face and grasp his arms and drag him
bodily into the back room anyway, and because they’re grasping he struggles,
and because he struggles they hold tighter.
 
Suzuruma is in the back room. One of the bodyguards holds Yumichika down on the
floor in an arm lock, and the moment the other removes his huge hand from
across Yumichika’s nose and mouth, Yumichika begins to hyperventilate. He’s not
even in the cellar and already he’s falling to bits, tears beginning to fall
down his face, and he looks right at Suzuruma. “I can’t. I can’t go down to
that cellar again, please don’t make me, please,” he says, though it comes out
all slurred and he’s not sure if Suzuruma understands - if he can just make him
understand -

“I had brought you some sake, but it looks like you don’t need any more,”
Suzuruma says, cutting across Yumichika’s litany of pleading. Now he’s started
talking he can’t seem to stop: please, please don’t make me do it again, I
can’t do it, it hurt so much and I thought he was going to kill me, I’ll do
anything else, please, please. Suzuruma nods, and the bodyguard clamps
Yumichika’s mouth shut again. “Listen. You’ve got to do this. He won’t hurt you
too much; he knows as well as I do that’s bad for business.” Yumichika can
barely see Suzuruma now, the room is swimming so blearily. There’s the sound of
choked-off moans, and he supposes they must be his, supposes he’s too drunk to
even control his body anymore.  “He’s the oyabun - it’s not like I can just say
no to him, you know? He’s only in town for a few months. It’ll be okay.”
 
Yumichika swallows, and the guard releases his mouth once more. “A - a few
months? I - I have to do this for a few m-months?”
 
Suzuruma sighs. “Yeah. But, look, it’ll be okay. I’ve asked him not to scar
you.”
 
Underneath the shaking and crying, there is still something like thought. I
won’t last that long, he thinks. Gaaran wants to beat me to death, and if he’s
the oyabun then there’s nothing you can do to stop him. He feels his body relax
a little; there isn’t any point. “No,” he croaks, and his throat won’t make
sounds properly. “Please, no.” It’s hopeless, though; he can see that it’s
hopeless even though he can’t really see at all.
 
Suzuruma pinches the bridge of his nose, and waves vaguely at the two
bodyguards. “Take him to the cellar,” he says. “Gaaran-dono’s waiting.” Meaty
hands tighten around his arms, and for an instant the terror is so overwhelming
that he falls forward and retches, expelling all the sake in his stomach.
Suzuruma makes a disgusted sound. “And for fuck’s sake, clean him up.”
 
There’s nothing he can do when they hold his hair back from his face and dunk
his head in a bucket of cold water, or when they rip off his kimono and use it
to dry him, or when they half-drag, half-carry him down to the cellar and leave
him there. The door locks. There’s the sound of a match striking, and then a
candle is lit, and he can see Gaaran.
 
“Look a the state of you,” Gaaran says, and his face is disappointed, but his
eyes are...hungry.  “It seems as if I’m going to have to get my hands dirty
this time.”
 
He doesn’t, though; the hands that snake through Yumichika’s hair and use it to
pull him to the centre of the room are gloved. They tie Yumichika’s hands
behind his back, so that he’s resting on his knees and shoulders, head pressed
against the ground. It doesn’t take long at all for the crying to start again,
and he screams his voice hoarse quickly, retreating to exhausted whimpers.
Every time he thinks he will go out of his mind with the pain, it turns out
he’s wrong, and there’s nothing he can do except wish he were less strong.
 
Do not wish that.
 
His mind is fragmenting; there’s the part that’s too tired to scream, then the
hungry animal part that’s half-starving for the pain even as it screams, too
much, too much, and then - this. Emptiness, and a single voice that doesn’t
even sound like his own.

He is only stronger than you because you have not taken it from him.
 
Hands on his hips. And then - he had thought Gaaran too cold for this invasion.
It might be less bad than the pain because at least this he is used to; it
might be worse because it’s as if Gaaran is crawling all over him even though
they’re barely touching, as if Gaaran is creeping into every empty place inside
of him and leaving his cold fingerprints there.

Allow the invasion. Open your hungry heart and eat him alive.
 
Yumichika reaches for the humming feeling that surrounds Gaaran, andswallows.
 
Slowly, slowly, his head clears. The pain becomes less, and is almost gone. The
hands on his hips falter, and Gaaran’s breathing is laboured.
 
Now, fly.
 
A touch on his shoulder like feathers, and the smell of perfume, just at the
edge of sensation. Yumichika pulls at his hands and feels the rope between them
tear. He stands, knocking Gaaran backwards. Gaaran reaches for his left pocket
but the movement is slow; Yumichika can follow it, can dart forward and snatch
the knife before Gaaran can grasp it properly. He points it at Gaaran’s throat.
 
Gaaran grins. “You’ll never make it out of here, you know. One shout, and - ”
 
And the decision is made: Yumichika lunges forward and slashes at Gaaran’s
throat, cutting deeply enough to sever the windpipe. It takes barely an
instant; there’s no time at all for Gaaran to make a sound. There’s a moment
where he stands there and bleeds, then his body drops to the floor and spews
sticky, wet gore everywhere. Disgusting. Yumichika rifles through Gaaran’s
pockets til he finds the cellar key, unlocks it, and creeps upstairs. No one is
expecting Gaaran to be done with him yet, and from the noise in the bar
everyone is occupied being drunk and having arguments.
 
He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror before he wipes the blood off as
best he can. It’s ruby-red and sparkling against the brightness of a smile so
vicious he has never seen it on his own face before, and Yumichika thinks, for
the first time, that he looks altogether beautiful.
 
He prises open the floorboard where his money and small stash of emergency
sweets are already packed, uses his tattiest yukata to wipe the blood off his
face and swiftly dons his second-tattiest. He shoves his fanciest yukata into
the bag and leaves the rest of the clothes.
 
The guards are still at the door, but they are no longer threatening, even
though he remembers that they overpowered him like a child only hours ago. He’s
not sure how strong he is, but never has to find out because he is so much
faster. Their bones crunch under his foot as he steps on their faces, and then
he’s gone, running faster than he thought possible, and with the oyabun dead
there will be too much confusion for organised pursuit.
 
He chews on sweets as he runs, and doesn’t become tired for a long, long time.
 
-
 
The world is different outside of Suzuruma’s bar. It takes him a while to get
used to the idea that he can’t sayyes, you can have me to everyone who wants
him, because there’s not enough time. It doesn’t take nearly as long to get
used to having sex in a bed.
 
Outside of a Yakuza bar you get a wide variety of people; women as well as men,
for a start, shop workers on their day off, merchants in fastidious clothes who
drink expensive sake, old men who just want their evening beer. They all want
different things from him: he has to learn how to sit on top and move his hips
just so until slowly, slowly they uncoil beneath him, how to make a show out of
his own orgasm, how to tease and deny with a flirtatious grin. He still finds
kissing unbearably strange, though, and refuses; people take it in their
stride.
 
After he learns all of this, he goes back to picking up rough, scarred men most
of the time, ones the hungry thing inside looks at and says, yes. The ones who
throw him around and fuck him roughly and fist their hands in his hair, who
hold him down by his throat and leave bruises on his hips and, unwittingly,
scratch for him that appalling itch that he can’t reach himself. Maybe he’s
just been ruined, and can’t stand the quiet life anymore if he ever could,
needs the adrenaline rush and the edge of pain.
 
He hits the local bars on something like a rotation. This evening, his dive of
choice is where all the non-Yakuza petty thugs can be found, drinking and arm-
wrestling and showing off punishment tattoos and stolen jewelry. It’s low-class
and barbaric; Yumichika sticks out like a sore thumb in his flower-patterned
kimono, and he loves it. The first time he went, after the incredulous
expressions were exhausted, a few men tried to gang up on him and mug him. They
didn’t last long, and then everyone in the bar wanted him, including the owner.
Said Yumichika brought a bit of class to the place, but it’s not true; what
Yumichika brings is people who want to fuck him.
 
He almost feels more like a fight than sex tonight which, of course, is why
he’s here. It’s not hard to find someone who wants him, and for all that this
is his job, tonight he does not begrudge them even a little. The men in this
place are uncomplicated men with uncomplicated tastes, and with a little
encouragement most of them will give in to their barely-buried desire to grab
his hair and hips and throw him around.
 
He feels the humming in the air at the same time he hears the commotion over by
the door, and looks round. He would swear the feeling is -
 
Ikkaku. Yumichika would know him anywhere. Ikkakucovered in blood, and
Yumichika’s first thought is something between that’s beautiful and I wonder
where he got that? The large man standing in his way clearly does not agree,
and goes for something in his left pocket, and then there’s no time at all, and
Yumichika decides.

He palms his knife, swiftly appears behind the large man, and sticks the knife
in his upper back, slicing clean through his spine. Lung puncture, too, by the
sound of things.

Ikkaku’s face is comically astonished. “You - I - Yumichika?”
 
“Yes. That man was about to knife you, so I got there first.” You remembered my
name, Yumichika thinks.
 
The initial shock seems to have worn off, and the expression Ikkaku is wearing
now, as he takes in Yumichika’s completely bloodstain-free hands and clothes
and how the knife is buried all the way to the hilt, is something like
appreciation.  “I can handle myself, you know,” Ikkaku says, but he’s grinning
widely now as if he’s about to laugh, and maybe it’s adrenaline but laughter
wells up in Yumichika’s throat too, and he can’t stop his answering smile.
 
“I know,” he says, because he remembers, and they’re standing over a dead man
grinning like idiots, and there’s only a few more seconds before everyone else
at the bar gets over the momentary stupefaction and does something unhelpful.
“Now, shall we leave? We need to get you cleaned up before anyone else tries to
kill you.”
 
“All right.” Ikkaku shakes his head as if to clear it, and they leave at a
half-run. Yumichika curses, because he’s clearly not going to be able to go
back to his favourite rough dive, because Ikkaku has turned up again, and
Yumichika has no intention whatsoever of letting him leave.
 
His landlady screams a bit when she sees Ikkaku, but calms down when Yumichika
promises that it’s someone else’s blood. “You know I worry about you, dear,”
she says, tsking. “And don’t be getting blood everywhere! It’s so hard to clean
off.”
 
Yumichika smiles, and he doesn’t have to look to know that Ikkaku’s making an
overdone eh? expression. “I promise, Nakatoka-san,”
 
Upstairs, Yumichika attempts to clean the blood off Ikkaku in a businesslike
fashion, but it’s difficult; the itch has not been scratched and he still wants
to fight and taste blood and pain, and right in front of him is Ikkaku, who
woke it with a single touch. Who didn’t want to fuck him, Yumichika reminds
himself. Would Ikkaku resist, Yumichika wonders, if he knelt and mouthed
Ikkaku’s cock through the thin fabric? He’s obscenely good with his mouth;
would Ikkaku let him if he said, you can close your eyes, pretend it’s a woman,
if you like. Just let me, let me.
 
“So where did all the blood come from?” Yumichika says, conversationally.
 
“Fought someone,” he says, tapping the katana at his hip. That’s new; he must
have gone to one of the better districts to get one of those, or at maybe
blackmailed some Yakuza. “They lost.”
 
Yumichika hmms, pleased. Of course they lost. He’s cleaning the blood off, but
part of him would prefer to lick it off, to taste Ikkaku and a dead man’s blood
all in one. Maybe that would sate him – and then again, maybe not. The man he
left dying on the ground did not; that was exhilarating, but not a struggle,
not enough to take away his taste for a fight.
 
There isn’t a cut anywhere on Ikkaku, but there are plenty of scrapes and
bruises. He doesn’t even grimace when Yumichika drags the cloth over them. “Do
you often fight to the death?”
 
Ikkaku grins. “As often as I can,” he says, and Yumichika has to close his eyes
and breathe to control himself. Scratch me, bite me, fight me, fuck me, do you
like to draw blood, do you have sex like a battle, would you hold me down with
all your strength? He stands to fetch his largest garment, which is probably a
bathrobe, and finds his pyjamas.
 
Ikkaku raises one eyebrow at the flowery garment, but Yumichika glares and
says, “If you intend to sleep in my bed you are not sleeping naked,” and he
gives in. Yumichika looks away and changes himself, as swiftly as he can
manage, feeling Ikkaku’s eyes on his back.
 
There’s not even any discussion about Ikkaku leaving, which is good because
Yumichika would flatly refuse to allow it. He can’t imagine where Ikkaku was
sleeping, but he’s afraid the answer might be in an abandoned shed or in a back
alley from the atrocious state of his clothing, which is completely
unsalvageable and will have to be burned.
 
They climb into bed, and Ikkaku groans. “God, this is so comfortable. You lucky
bastard.”
 
Not really, Yumichika thinks. It took him a long time to settle, after leaving
Suzuruma’s bar, to work out his rota and find a place that would take him for
more than a few nights and earn enough money to not be hungry all the time.
People, since, have tried to force him to do things he didn’t want to do, have
evicted him from bars and inns, have tried to kill him, have ganged up on him
in alleys and tried to take what they hadn’t paid for. Lucky is not how he’d
describe his life.
 
But he supposes, for a man from the seventy-somethingth, that a comfortable bed
is indeed lucky, and he himself slept on a thin futon for decades, and so he
tries to feel lucky. It’s not so hard, with Ikkaku next to him.
 
It’s a chilly night, but Yumichika’s still surprised when Ikkaku shuffles close
and slips an arm around his torso. He tenses at first, expecting – he’s not
sure what to expect, really. But Ikkaku just mumbles sleepily and curls against
his back. Ikkaku isn’t even holding him in place, really. If Yumichika wanted
he could easily remove the arm and escape. He doesn’t understand it at all:
what is the purpose of this kind of touch?
 
“What are you doing?” He asks.
 
Ikkaku grouses and buries his face in Yumichika’s shoulder. “Warm,” he mumbles,
half-asleep already. Which is a reason, Yumichika supposes, to sleep close
together. He doesn’t know how to feel. It’s intensely vulnerable to be this
close to someone – and how much does he trust Ikkaku?
 
Entirely.
 
Which is one of the stupidest things he’s ever done and he did a lot of stupid
things, when he was younger. Ikkaku is correct about the warmth; heat is
seeping into every part of his body, and he finds himself relaxing slowly. Part
of him is still a little – wary, but then part of him is always wary, even when
he’s entirely alone and every small noise makes him tense. He’s probably safer
sleeping beside Ikkaku even than he normally is: there will be two of them to
deal with any possible threat. He supposes that he’s...comfortable. Hesitantly,
he wraps one hand around Ikkaku’s forearm.
 
The descent into sleep is quick and easy, after that.
 
-
 
The wakeup is anything but. Yumichika wakes screaming and shaking, clutching at
the bedsheets. He opens his eyes but it doesn’t stop: it wasn’t only a dream,
and the memory and the pain have followed him. He can see and feel the room
around him, his own bedroom, but his senses are still full of that damp room
where he was locked in and sold to two faceless men. His body remembers
perfectly, it seems - gives him the sensations over and over again, as painful
and vivid as when it actually happened. He had forgotten, almost, how painful
it was the first time.
 
He claws at Ikkaku’s arms round him, unsure whether he’s trying to hold on or
fight him off. Squeezing his eyes shut doesn’t help; then there’s no visual cue
to remind him that he’s not back there, it’s not happening again. It takes him
a few long moments to register that Ikkaku’s talking.
“Fucking hell, Yumichika, what? Are you all right? What’s happening?” He’s not
letting go, warm and solid and real against Yumichika’s back, and even if he
doesn’t feel more vivid than the memory at least his presence means that
Yumichika isn’t somehow trapped back there.
 
Yumichika takes deep, gulping breaths. He survived this once, and he can
survive it again. He doesn’t know the answers to any of Ikkaku’s questions.
He’s had this before, but only a little; almost ghostly half-real memories of
touch, an instant of pain, that would attack him on the bad days when every
brush of someone else’s clothes against his skin made him jump. “I don’t know,”
he manages. “I was - remembering - ”
 
He doesn’t want to tell Ikkaku how broken he is sometimes. It’s still dark
outside; they should go back to sleep. Maybe in the morning it will all seem
like a dream, and Ikkaku won’t think he’s a freak.
 
Ikkaku has stopped talking frantically, and lies still. “Remembering?”
 
“It’s not important,” Yumichika says. And truly, he hasn’t thought of it in
years. That the smell of damp rot and the sound of locking doors make him panic
has become just another fact of life, mostly removed from the memory of their
origin. He remembers now, of course. His face pressed into the dirt, coins
exchanging hands, and pain.
 
“I think it is,” Ikkaku says uncertainly. “D’you often wake up - like that?”
 
“No,” Yumichika says, and it’s the truth. It’s settling. The remembered
feelings are becoming fainter, the pain is diminishing, and Ikkaku’s warmth is
more real than either.
 
A long hesitation, and then, “If you want, I’ll...go, or whatever - ”
 
“No,” Yumichika interrupts, then swallows and forces himself to sound calm as
he says, “No, that’s fine. You can stay.” He notes that his fingers are digging
into Ikkaku’s forearm; probably, he’s fooling no one. He listens to his
breathing and makes it come more slowly and deeply. Eventually, his heartbeat
follows.
 
Ikkaku is still awake, still listening. Still holding him but not too tightly.
Perhaps, after all, he is owed an explanation. “When I first came here I was…a
lot younger. Hungry and stupid. I was sleeping on some woman’s floor, and one
day, she sold me. Locked me in with these two men, and...it hurt.”
 
Behind him, Ikkaku’s breathing stops for a second. “Shit,” he says after a
time. “Shit.” Yumichika doesn’t know what he was expecting, but he supposes
that about covers it.
 
“Go back to sleep, Ikkaku,” he says.
 
At length, Ikkaku’s breathing evens and slows into a sleep rhythm. Yumichika
listens to his breath, eyes wide open because sleep is no longer an appealing
prospect, and tries to convince himself that he’s safe here. In the hours that
follow he feels a few more faint echoes, tensing to avoid waking Ikkaku.
 
Eventually, with the beginnings of dawn creeping through the window, exhaustion
drags him into a fitful doze.
 
-
 
In the morning Yumichika makes tea, and they don’t talk about the night before.
Ikkaku doesn’t say anything about the dark circles under Yumichika’s eyes, and
Yumichika doesn’t mention doesn’t mention the way Ikkaku keeps looking at him
for just a few seconds too long.
 
“So I guess you managed to get out of the Yakuza,” Ikkaku says eventually. He
sounds halfway curious and halfway impressed, both of which are confusing.
Ikkaku would laugh and cut down anyone who tried to stop him doing something he
wanted, and Yumichika doesn’t understand why Ikkaku wants to know about his
life from back then. He already knows all that’s relevant, surely. Yumichika
was a whore in a Yakuza bar, then he left, and now he’s here. They call him
kagema now a lot of the time, but he’s still a whore.  
 
Yumichika rolls his eyes. “I was never in the Yakuza,” he says, opening a
bamboo box full of onigiri from yesterday and placing it on the table between
them.
 
“You know what I mean,” Ikkaku says. “It’s not like they packed you a bento box
and sent you merrily on your way, ne?”
 
Yumichika pours tea, first for Ikkaku then for himself. Ikkaku raises his
eyebrows at Yumichika’s tea set - well, was he expecting a tin pot? - and is,
thankfully, careful with the small china teacup. “I wasn’t really planning to
leave,” he explains. “But then the oyabun started coming to visit, and he was
so ugly and unpleasant. So I killed him, and left.”

Ikkaku blinks at him, tea neglected in his hands. “You killed a guy
because...he was ugly?”
 
Yumichika lifts one shoulder noncommittally, then selects an onigiri. “Gaaran
was - many kinds of ugly.”

Ikkaku puts his cup down. “I’ve heard that name. He was supposed to be a real
nasty piece of work.” He swallows and eyes the onigiri. “Load of crazy rumours
going round. Like they found him naked in a cellar with his head half cut off.
Or - he was torturing some kid for kicks, and one day the kid flipped out and
stabbed him with his own knife.”
 
Ikkaku is staring at him. Yumichika holds his gaze for a long time. “Eat your
breakfast,” he says eventually, offering a small smile, and he pushes the
bamboo box gently in Ikkaku’s direction.
 
Ikkaku obeys and Yumichika presumes that’s the end of that conversation. But a
few minutes later, Ikkaku speaks again. “I wouldn’t go near ‘em again. Yakuza
folks over that way half love you, half hate you, and they’re all scared of
you. Might try and kill you, or something.”
 
Yumichika’s smile is real this time. He waves the hand that isn’t holding
onigiri dismissively. “I can handle a few mindless thugs.”
 
Ikkaku takes a huge bite. “Yeah, sounds like I don’t need to worry about you.”
 
Yumichika can’t hold in a wince. “Don’t talk with your mouth full; it’s ugly.”
 
Ikkaku glares, but he swallows dutifully. “You ever felt like learning how to
use a sword?”
 
Yumichika’s first thought is how unwieldy, before he manages to parse this as
an offer to teach him. He examines his nails for dirt, and doesn’t look Ikkaku
in the eye. “Perhaps, if you’re an adequate teacher.”
 
Ikkaku grins at him, and he can’t help but smile into his teacup. And in the
back of his head, something like the victorious shriek of a bird.
 
-
 
The second thing Yumichika becomes really, really good at is fighting.
 
Ikkaku might like to think it’s because of him, but really Yumichika teaches
Ikkaku just as much as the other way around. Ikkaku is strong and quick with
sword, but he likes to throw himself into battle; Yumichika teaches him about
hiding a knife up your sleeve, how to fight when your hands are tied, how to
kill someone before they can make a sound, fast and brutal and merciless
because that’s how he learned. There is no safety in mercy.
 
The first time they train, they pick a dead-end alley, and Ikkaku kicks out
some street kids to give them the space. He hands Yumichika his sword, and
shows him how to tuck it into his belt and draw it.
 
Yumichika draws the sword and turns it in his hands uncertainly. “I don’t think
this is going to work,” he says. “It’s not me. I mean - it’s not mine,” he
corrects himself. Resheathing it, he hands it back to Ikkaku, and the
uncomfortable feeling at the base of his spine recedes. It’s a beautiful sword,
clean and well-crafted, and probably the only thing Ikkaku owns that isn’t bent
or torn or tarnished. Yumichika tried to get him some clothes and shoes and
other paraphernalia, and Ikkaku refused for hours before giving in with a,You
know they’re only gonna get broken, right?  Which isn’t the point at all. The
point is - he can afford them, so why would he let Ikkaku wander round in rags?
Ikkaku just looked at him then and said,Well, if we can afford all this
pointless crap, why are you even - you know - working?
 
Yumichika doesn’t have a clear answer to that one. At some point over the past
few weeks their money became each other’s money, stored in a box under Ikkaku’s
bed. He knows it makes Ikkaku uncomfortable, but he doesn’t understand why,
whether it’s how much money he has or how he made it or something else
entirely. Especially since this sword has to have been expensive. “Where did
you get it, anyway?”
 
Ikkaku scratches his neck and looks down. “Eh, it’s a bit of a weird story,” he
says.
 
Stolen, then? Not that Yumichika cares; a sword this beautiful should be in the
hands of someone who wields it beautifully, and Ikkaku does. Yumichika could
watch him fight for hours, and sometimes does, walking around the less
desirable parts of town with Ikkaku all day and just watching, waiting. Ikkaku
says he likes Yumichika to be there, says it makes them look like an easier
target, and Yumichika likes it; proving someone dead wrong can be so
satisfying. No one comes close to matching Ikkaku, though, so he never has to.
“Tell me anyway.”
 
Ikkaku frowns. “Not much to tell. I got really drunk this one time a few
decades back - just after I bumped into you that first time, actually. Had this
really fuckin’ weird dream...I was in this red desert, and I had to find an
oasis, and I could see loads of them but only one was real...anyway, I woke up
in some abandoned building holding my sword. No idea how I got there. I guess I
must’ve nicked it.” He shrugs. Yumichika wonders if he knows he’s running one
thumb up and down the saya almost protectively.
 
Ikkaku doesn’t offer Yumichika his sword again, and for a while they spar with
sticks. Ikkaku is stronger, Yumichika is faster, and they go through a lot of
sticks until Yumichika finds himself lingering outside an antique shop with
several decorative swords in the window.
 
He’s drawn to a simpler sword without engraving, with a purple tsuka and red
saya. The shopkeeper talks at length about its history and previous owners,
pulls it out of the saya to show him the blade, and runs her finger along its
blunt edge. “I wouldn’t try to sharpen it,” she says. “Not that a nice young
man like you would, of course. But it won’t hold an edge - hasn’t been made
to.”

Yumichika smiles blandly at her, and though it costs almost all of their money,
he buys it because he feels as though, if he walks out of the shop without it,
he will have left a part of himself behind. It’s not that much of a problem; he
will just work tonight. It’s fine, though Ikkaku will look at him askance for
working on his days off. Well, he already has more days off than most people,
since Ikkaku arrived.
 
It’s probably all because of that time Ikkaku walked in on him working. He was
entertaining one of his regulars - a rough man with rougher tastes, but he hums
just a little with reiryoku and Yumichika found himself agreeing, one day, when
he asked if he could bind Yumichika’s hands behind his back. After all, he
survived Gaaran, even bound like that.
 
So of course Ikkaku walked in on him on his knees, face pressed against the bed
and hands tied at the small of his back, halfway to orgasm under a large man
yanking on his hair and tearing at his hip. Ikkaku’s face, for the brief
instant he could see it, was halfway between horrified and something else,
something darker and dilated pupils and clenched fists. Almost how Ikkaku looks
during a good fight, and it’s enough that Yumichika buried his face in the
duvet and succumbed. There was an approving grunt from behind him, and the
gentle click of the door shutting.
 
He shakes his head to clear it, and tucks the sword into his obi. It feels
right, sitting there against his hip. Appropriately heavy - almost heavier than
it felt in the shop. He would have worked every night for a month for this
sword, marched right over Ikkaku’s protests, which he doesn’t understand,
anyway. He knows the house they rent adjacent rooms in isn’t especially well
soundproofed, but when Yumichika hinted that he’d be perfectly all right,
really, if Ikkaku wanted to rent a room down the street, Ikkaku looked almost
offended.
 
He hasn’t suggested it again, and Ikkaku still ends up in his room on cold
nights.
 
It’s not until he shows his sword to Ikkaku that evening that he realises he
has chosen a sword whose colours exactly mirror Ikkaku’s own. They match, and
if that thought gives him a little quiet pleasure, then it’s no one’s business
but his.
 
“It’s not sharp,” he says, offering it to Ikkaku with both hands. “But, I
thought I could at least use it in training, and we can spar properly.”
 
Ikkaku grins at the prospect, and takes the sword. Yumichika ignores the small
flash of discomfort that says that it’s his sword, because he and Ikkaku have
shared almost everything that could be shared, almost everything that they
have. “Nice,” he says, unsheathing and swinging it around in one hand a little.
“Good weight, too. It’ll be good for practise.” He runs the sword along his
palm - “Shit,” he says, and holds up his hand to Yumichika’s face with a scowl.
“I thought you said it wasn’t sharp!”
 
Yumichika looks at Ikakku’s bleeding hand, to the sword, and back again. “I -
the woman who sold it to me said it couldn’t hold an edge, that it was just
decorative.” His hand reaches out and wraps round Ikkaku’s wrist, brings
Ikkaku’s hand to his mouth and he laps at the blood there.
 
They both stop for half a second, then Ikkaku draws his hand back. “You hungry,
or something?” He says, somewhere between confused and annoyed - and he’s
right, Yumichika is starving even though he ate this morning, could eat three
days worth of food or take three men at once or taste more of Ikkaku’s blood
(or open your hungry heart and eat him alive, do you remember, you couldn’t
feel him anymore even before you cut his throat, because you ate the humming
part of him) -
 
“Oi, Yumi, you all right?” Ikkaku is shaking his shoulder. Yumichika swallows,
takes the tie out of his hair and rakes his fingers across his scalp.
 
“I’m fine,” he says. “Just - I’m working tonight, okay? That sword was
expensive.”
 
Ikkaku sighs, but he looks at the sword and looks at Yumichika and says, “Eh,
well, it’s a good sword. Let’s get a drink.”
 
-
 
Later, Yumichika will blame the dreams for the stupid, stupid thing he does
next.
 
Sometimes, there’s glowing vines that seem to come from his body, and all he
knows is that they are hungry. Sometimes there’s the shriek of a beautiful
bird. Sometimes, Gaaran is there, and Yumichika tells him, I’m going to eat you
alive, and watches him struggle uselessly. Sometimes he slits Gaaran’s throat
and drinks the blood there, and this time Gaaran has time to scream, but it
still won’t save him because they’re in a jungle instead of a cellar, and this
is Yumichika’s place.
 
He wakes up starving and clawing at his own skin. Ikkaku is beginning to give
him strange looks when he thinks Yumichika isn’t watching, and it’s terribly
hypocritical because Ikkaku is beginning to look strained, too: he hasn’t had a
decent fight in weeks. They spar almost daily, and Yumichika is half-waiting
for the day when Ikkaku forgets it isn’t a real fight and tries to kill him.
There’s a part of him that wants to know what would happen. There’s another
part, and that’s most of him, that is terribly afraid of what he would do.
 
They’re going to have to leave soon, and go further out where there are more
fights to be had. For that they need more money, if they want to have places to
sleep and adequate food, and perhaps it’s also that that’s responsible for his
stupidity.

This is how it happens: Yumichika’s doing a turn in one of the classier places
he knows. If he’s honest, he doesn’t feel like being here - he’s half trying to
appease Ikkaku and half avoiding him. He doesn’t want to have that conversation
about the bruises on his neck that Ikkaku found him covering up with makeup
this morning, because he knows how it’ll go. Yes, they’re from a client. Yes, I
let him. I’m fine; I’m fine. No, I’m not going to stop over a few bruises. You
do remember, don’t you, that I could have killed him between one breath and the
next?
 
The man who walks over to him is clearly not from around here. His clothes fit
in but the rest of him doesn’t; something about the way he shies away from
physical contact with the rest of the patrons, even though the people here are
reasonably washed. This theory is confirmed when he stands next to Yumichika at
the bar and says, “They did tell me you would be beautiful.”
 
It’s not all that uncommon, especially in this bar, to find patrons from the
50s, or even higher; you can’t find a good whore anywhere above the 60th is
frequently bandied about. Most tourists end up in the 62nd, which has a
reputation for that sort of thing, but you do get a few here in the 65th who
find it pleasing to “slum it” for a few days. But Yumichika has never heard the
accent this man is attempting to conceal; is he from the 30s? 20s? The
extortionate cross-district carriage fees would be nothing to him if he is, but
that doesn’t explain why he would travel for days to get here. Unless there’s
something particular he wants.

Yumichika raises one eyebrow. “They?”
 
The man smiles, and Yumichika supposes that he would be considered handsome,
with blond hair that brushes his shoulders and a smooth face. The low hum of
reiatsu, much fainter than Ikkaku’s but still unmistakable, is more appealing
than his face or figure to Yumichika. “You have quite a reputation, you know.
The kagema in the flower kimono.” Go to the 50s if you want a kagema, Yumichika
thinks: here, there are only whores. “As well as for dealing with clients who
have more...unusual tastes.” Yumichika smiles blandly, because if there’s a
sexual service he hasn’t performed he will be more than surprised, and there’s
little that he would consider unusual anymore. But then the man slips a hand
round his wrist, and although his grip is not tight, it’s enough that Yumichika
knows exactly what he wants.
 
The part of him that wants to run is utterly drowned by the vicious hunger that
has been roiling in him for weeks, just below the surface.  He’ll be safe; he
knows a hundred ways to kill a man without his hands, and if he can’t be
covered in someone else’s blood then he’ll take being covered in his own. He
allows the man to pull him closer and take the other wrist. “Perhaps we should
reconvene in my room to discuss this, hmm?”
 
The hungry expression he receives in response is no surprise. The man lets go
of Yumichika’s wrists before they depart, though Yumichika would have allowed
the man to lead him along like a pet, if he wished to pay for it. Still,
Yumichika thinks this man is more used to the kagema and hosts employed by tea
houses in, probably, the 20s than he is to people here; he walks side by side
with Yumichika, opens doors for him, and does not touch him at all until the
door to Yumichika’s bedroom is closed.
 
With one hand looped loosely around Yumichika’s wrist, Azaro explains what he
wants. He says that he would like to bind Yumichika’s wrists, and that he can
do so safely and in a way that’s easy to remove. He takes various tools out of
his black cloth bag and shows them to Yumichika, allows him to handle them, and
waits for his approval. Among the tools - well-crafted, and made chiefly of
leather - there is a short whip-like thing, and when Yumichika swallows and
says, “Not this one,” Azaro winds it around his hand and puts it carefully back
in the bag without a word of protest (it’s hard to get the words out, but he
has to, or he knows how it’ll go). Azaro explains that he likes to talk, and
that he hopes for but does not require Yumichika’s response.
 
It’s all so very polite and civilized that Yumichika doesn’t know what to do
with himself; Azaro treats him almost as if he is delicate. Yumichika is aware
that he looks delicate, but people around here either don’t care, or enjoy
breaking delicate things.
 
Azaro has done this before, that much is clear. Warm fingers carefully undo his
obi and slip off his kimono, and even fold it and place it on the bed. Azaro
runs light, ghosting touches across his shoulders, down the sides of his hips
and up his back, and Yumichika has to close his eyes to endure because he was
prepared for pain, not for - whatever this is. Men are strange creatures in the
upper districts, it seems. “So beautiful,” Azaro murmurs into his ear, and
places a line of kisses down the side of his neck. Yumichika shivers.
 
It’s much more comfortable, really, when Azaro pushes him onto his knees and
ties his wrists above his head, anchored on a hook. The rope is made of oddly
soft material that does not bite or chafe. The final surprise is the large coin
that Azaro places in Yumichika’s left hand as he says, “If it’s too much, open
your hand and drop this, and I’ll stop.” None of which makes any sense; he has
paid for this, and handsomely, so why would it be all right if Yumichika wanted
him to stop? Yumichika takes a breath, and concentrates on holding on to the
coin.
 
Nails down his back, sharp and well manicured, and no one from around here has
nails like that. The strokes are light, almost ticklish, and then, ever so
slowly, firmer and firmer. It has Yumichika chasing the edge of pain, and when
Azaro digs in and rakes, the sound out of his mouth is not a complaint but a
moan. “Like that, exactly like that,” Azaro says.
 
Next, an implement: the one with many tails. It’s more satisfying than the
scratch of fingernails, because Yumichika can feel the weight of impact
reverberating through him. It’s all on his upper back and shoulders, warming
them, and the pain is becoming more prominent but it hardly feels like pain. It
feels like there’s no more room for thought, and he only comes back to himself
when Azaro pauses for a moment. Then, he realises how much noise he’s making,
and how he can’t imagine this being over anytime soon. “Please...gag me,” he
says.
 
“Open your mouth,” Azaro says, and though he remembers seeing some gags in
Azaro’s bag, what’s pushed into his mouth is the fabric of his obi. It’ll be
ruined, of course - but it will muffle his sounds more effectively.
 
A few moment later he’s grateful for it as something stings his inner thigh and
he can’t contain a loud, surprised cry of pain. Cane, he thinks, and this
unlike the others is truly painful; sharp and sudden, and it makes him tense
and twitch with every stroke. No one has ever hit him here before, and he
clenches his fists and endures.
 
That’s not exactly true. Part of him endures; the starving, violent part of him
revels, like a beggar to a banquet. It takes its pleasure and returns it to the
rest of him, and that’s almost harder to bear than the pain. There’s the sound
of the cane being placed on the floor, and Azaro’s hand trails up and down the
inside of his thigh. “Shhh,” he says into Yumichika’s ear. “You’re not used to
this, are you?” He strokes both hands up and down Yumichika’s sides, and
presses a kiss to the top of his right shoulder. “It’s all right, just a little
more.” His voice is different; low and gravelly and satisfied, even though he’s
hardly touched Yumichika with anything but his hands.
 
He has soaked through the gag by the time Azaro puts the cane down for the
second time. There’s a hand on his inner thigh again, then Azaro is right
behind him. “You’re bleeding,” he says, and reaches his hand round for
Yumichika to see, using the other to remove the sodden obi. Yumichika reaches
his tongue out to lick the blood off Azaro’s fingers, and hears a low growl in
his ear as Azaro pushes bloody fingers into his mouth. “Ah, you like it,” he
says with satisfaction, and wraps his free hand around Yumichika’s cock,
stroking once, soft and slow.
 
Yumichika can only moan in response. His legs are beginning to ache, from the
awkward spread of his knees to the hot, painful throb of his inner thighs that
he supposes are covered in welts. He looks at the wall and waits, and the
shuffling sounds from behind him aren’t enough to tell him what’s going on.

He knows, though, when Azaro grips his hips. Something smells of jasmine, and
he supposes it’s the lubricant. Azaro is firm but does not hurt him, though
he’s already so sore on his legs and back that the motion aggravates it.
Overstimulated, it’s not long at all before he says, “Please may I come?”
 
Azaro sinks his teeth into Yumichika’s neck and digs in with his fingers on
Yumichika’s hips. He lets go long enough to say, “Not yet,” and that’s the
first time anyone has ever said no so for a moment he’s not sure he can obey.
But he does, he can, he holds himself on the edge through the bites to his
shoulder and calculated snap of Azaro’s hips. His whole body is shaking in
earnest, and the noises he’s making sound like some sort of wounded animal, but
he can’t control any of it if he’s to follow his instruction. Azaro wraps a
hand across Yumichika’s mouth. “Hold on,” he says, and his own breathing is
ragged. “Hold on for me.”
 
Yumichika squeezes his eyes shut tight and tries to find something to hang on
to, like the pain, but it doesn’t help at all; he’s so flooded with sensation
that it’s just another one. Azaro presses a kiss to Yumichika’s shoulder and
says, “Come,” into his ear, and Yumichika’s body obeys before he has time to
think, glad for the muffling hand across his mouth and the rope which keeps him
upright.
 
He’s too far gone, afterward, to be properly aware of Azaro turning him round
and finishing on his face, removing the ties round his wrists and lowering him
to the ground, fetching his duvet from the bed and draping it over him.

Azaro lies down next to him with a sigh, but does not touch him further. “Gods,
it’s been a while since someone exhausted me like this,” he says. Yumichika
won’t be able to work for days while his marks heal, but he honestly doesn’t
care because the hungry, violent thing is sleeping, sated, and he doesn’t feel
at all like scratching off his own skin.
 
Azaro does not linger. He leaves money on the bed, packs and leaves with a
single, “Thank you,” before Yumichika has really properly recovered.
 
It’s once he’s left that the shaking starts again. At first Yumichika thinks
he’s cold, or hungry, but food seems like an absurd amount of effort, and he’s
too disgusting to put on pyjamas and go to bed, so he throws on his dirty
kimono and fetches some water from his and Ikkaku’s shared bathroom.
 
Obedient little thing, aren’t you? You make lovely sounds when you’re in pain.
The nausea strikes as he closes his bedroom door and removes his kimono once
more, but he has to continue, has to wash the sweat off his body and the come
out of his hair. It’s difficult, and his hands are shaking, and when the memory
of cold hands and pain like a whip and suffocating darkness overtakes him, he
ends up hugging his knees on the floor beside a large bucket of water, naked
and cold and shaking and trying, trying not to make so much noise that he wakes
Ikkaku, whose snores he could hear when he walked past.
 
It’s a futile effort; a few moments later there’s a knock on the door and
“...Yumi?” in Ikkaku’s sleepy voice, and the door is pushed open a fraction.
“Fucking hell!”
 
Yumichika looks up from under his stringy hair. Ikkaku has a candle, and his
face is utterly horrified. He approaches, and Yumichika can’t help the flinch,
even though it’s Ikkaku. “Please don’t touch me,” he says, and it’s hoarse and
shaky but Ikkaku stops anyway, then approaches more slowly but doesn’t touch.

“Gods, Yumichika,” Ikkaku swallows. “You’re...bleeding,” he says. “Do I need to
go and beat the shit out of - ”

“No.” Yumichika insists, because it’s not Azaro’s fault that he’s this broken,
not Azaro’s fault that some days he lies in bed awake all night because he
can’t handle any more nightmares, that what they did seems to have triggered it
again even though it was so different, but he can feel the ache of the welts on
his legs and there’s still come in his hair and it’s enough. Enough that his
mind conjures up the feeling of Gaaran’s long thumbnail at his jugular, the
memory of the rough hemp rope round his wrists, and it blends lurchingly with
long, warm fingers and silk knots round his wrist, taints it, makes him feel as
though every touch since then has only made him dirtier. “It’s not his fault,”
he says.
 
Ikkaku puts the candle down and makes an aborted reaching gesture, then rubs
his head. “I don’t get it,” he says. “You’re hurt. I - what do I do?”
 
Yumichika swallows. He really is cold now. “Leave me alone,” he says, voice as
steady as he can manage.
 
Ikkaku hesitates half-through the doorway for a long time. Then he picks up the
candle again. “All right,” he says. “I’m just, uh, next door if - if you want
me.”
 
Yumichika rests his forehead on his knees and waits for it to be over. It
doesn’t end; he’s just sitting on the floor crying stupidly and eventually,
flashback or no, he uncoils and begins to wash his hair. The activity is a
little grounding, a counterpoint to the memory of pain that feels real but
isn’t. He washes himself slowly, methodically, compensating for the shaking of
his limbs as best he can. Eventually the memories become a little less real as
he gets cleaner, as if he is washing them off.
 
He’s exhausted; completely exhausted, and he barely has the strength to dry
himself and wring out his hair and rifle through his cupboard to see if there’s
anything immediately edible. There’s a single rice cake, and it isn’t enough
but he’s not sure he could stomach much more, anyway. He pulls on pyjamas and
crawls into bed, but it’s almost worse without anything to do, without the
physical motions of cleaning and dressing. Exhausted or not, he won’t be able
to sleep like this, not with Look at the state of you and here I thought you’d
be tough echoing in his head.
 
It takes long minutes to force his limbs to move, to pull himself upright, and
then he hesitates for even longer outside Ikkaku’s door. He rarely goes into
Ikkaku’s room, and never has at night, never like this.
 
The door isn’t properly closed, and the slightest push causes it to slide open.
Yumichika hovers in the doorway. “Ikkaku?”
 
He’s not sure what the protocol is; Ikkaku normally just pads his way in and
makes himself comfortable, as if he knows that the warning sound of approaching
feet will wake Yumichika so his arrival is not a surprise awakening. Surprise
awakenings aren’t good for Yumichika; the first time Ikkaku tried to play a
wakeup prank on him he almost stabbed him, half panicked and half on sheer
reflex. Ikkaku hasn’t repeated the experiment.
 
Ikkaku sits up and makes a confused, sleepy noise, arm groping for - his sword?
“That you, Yumi?” He looks round, lets his arm drop, and lies back down.
“C’mere.”
 
Yumichika hesitantly steps forward, wary of tripping over Ikkaku’s abandoned
shoes or something, and slips under the covers on one edge of the small bed.
Ikkaku grouses and rolls over. “C’mere,” he repeats, lying on his back, and
encourages Yumichika over until he’s lying in the crook of Ikkaku’s arm, head
on Ikkaku’s shoulder. Even though Ikkaku is half-asleep, the arm that he wraps
round Yumichika’s back is careful. He doesn’t ask if Yumichika is all right.
 
Yumichika tries to relax, make his breathing slow and deepen, but he’s fighting
the panic in his mind and it isn’t easy. It’s better here, though; he’s finally
warming up, and this whole room smells of Ikkaku. He supposes Ikkaku must be
asleep by now, but he’s not averse to lying here until morning, if there’s no
sleep to be had for him.
 
“I’ll kill anyone who hurts you,” Ikkaku says, and he sounds perfectly awake
now. Yumichika wants to say something likeI can handle it, or wouldn’t get many
returning clients that way, or even, maybe,I already killed him. But that’s not
what this is about. “Rip their guts out and break all their bones. A clean
death’s too good for ‘em.”

Yumichika doesn’t reply, but he does reach out one hand and lay it on Ikkaku’s
chest. He can feel Ikkaku’s heartbeat through his palm, and slowly, slowly, his
own relaxes to match it.
***** Chapter 3 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
They unanimously agree to leave without either of them talking about it.
Nakatoka-san cries and waves them off, but they’ve paid up all their rent and
left behind lots of things that she can sell. Yumichika doesn’t regret the loss
nearly as much as he thought he would; he still has the sword after all, and
it’s the most beautiful thing he has ever owned, so it’s all right.
 
Yumichika gets to watch many, many more fights, and it’s glorious. Ikkaku is
never more beautiful than when he’s skewering people with a grin on his face,
and it’s only half because Yumichika can feel his reiatsu much more strongly
when he fights. Every so often, Ikkaku will beckon Yumichika to join, and those
times are even better, but mostly, he’s happy to watch Ikkaku in his element.
He wouldn’t ever take that away from Ikkaku, not even if Ikkaku were losing.
 
It’s even all right when they’re holed up in some cold, abandoned building in
the 72nd, huddling together under a blanket. Without Ikkaku Yumichika would go
back to his old life, of course, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like
this one.
 
The dreams are back; they do so much travelling that he doesn’t work steadily,
grabbing pieces of satiation for himself wherever he can, in alleyways and
against walls and on dusty floors. Once they get into the 70s no one has any
real money, just these carved wooden bits, and precious little of that. He can
tell Ikkaku’s worried about him, worried about the way he’ll get down on his
knees for a jar of water, but it’s not as if he can explain that he gets a
piece of his sanity back, too.
 
He doesn’t tell Ikkaku about that one man in the 71st who fell unconscious into
a gutter, when it had been more than a week since he’d worked or fought and
just for a moment, the screaming hunger obliterated everything in his mind.
Thereafter he fights more; past the 69th, no one cares who or how you kill.
More people try to mug him, too, since he sticks out here even worse than he
did in the 66th, and he handles it.
 
Still, coming all the way out to the 79th wasn’t a good idea, Yumichika thinks.
For one thing, it’s a long walk back to civilization since the carriage only
comes once a month, and for another, most of the people here seem to either be
dead, dying or hiding from everyone else. Not much fight left in them. Ikkaku,
of course, is still shouting challenges out loud enough to echo down the
whole...street, for the lack of a better word.
 
Laughter, the childish laughter of a young girl, echoes down the street. Ikkaku
runs towards it, but Yumichika hangs back, feeling. The reiatsu - and it’s
unmistakably hers, sharp and energetic - is massive. Maybe that’s why Ikkaku is
running, even though he can’t feel reiatsu as well as Yumichika can.

Is it all hers? There’s a sudden blast of reiatsu, and then Yumichika can feel
what he should have felt all along: there’s two people with reiatsu other than
him and Ikkaku. A man this time, whose reiatsu is screaming for blood loudly
enough, for once, that he can hear it over Ikkaku’s.
 
All three exit the alley, and the girl is even younger than he thought, not a
toddler anymore but not far from it. She’s mostly clean, with bright pink hair,
and she seems cheerful as if well-fed. Unusual for around here. She takes up
position next to Yumichika and looks at him with interest.

Ikkaku and the other man are squaring off, and Yumichika allows himself a small
smile. The man has at least six inches on Ikkaku in height, and his whole body
is vast, broad shoulders and barrel chest and muscular arms. It will be a good
fight for Ikkaku, he thinks. With the reiatsu he feels, perhaps even good
enough for Yumichika to join in.
 
“Ikkaku,” he says.
 
Ikkaku grins, and holds his sword up. “No helping out.”

“All right,” Yumichika says, and watches. Watching will be almost as good this
time.
 
It’s like no fight Yumichika has ever seen. How is a man so large and strong
also so fast? Ikkaku holds his own, but fear begins to trickle into Yumichika’s
stomach; the man’s reiatsu is rising still, slowly, as if he’s trying to draw
this out as long as possible.
 
“Oh, Ken-chan’s smiling!” The little girl with the pink hair says. “It’s a
shame it’ll be over soon…”
 
He’s more than a match for Ikkaku, and still getting faster, and - that’s a
smile? It looks more like some demon’s grimace. It feels to Yumichika as though
his sword shifts in his obi, hungering for a fight, because the little pink
girl is right - Ikkaku can’t win this. He’s not going to win this, he’s going
to die, and Yumichika promised faithfully that he wouldn’t help but he didn’t
promise that he would just watch Ikkaku die.
 
We could bleed him dry.
 
Yumichika shivers. He needs to get back to civilization, to his job and his
life.
 
All that delicious reiatsu...he would sate us for weeks.
 
He can’t do that to Ikkaku. Ikkaku would never forgive him. He wants to close
his eyes and not have to see Ikkaku cut down, but he can’t; he knows Ikkaku
would want him to see. He forces himself to watch as the demon moves too fast
to even follow , slices, and reappears behind Ikkaku.
 
He bites down on his tongue, smelling blood.
 
But Ikkaku is alive, just; Yumichika can still feel him, and so can the man
because he’s talking, telling Ikkaku to come fight him again. The last thing he
says before walking off with the little pink girl on his shoulders is his name:
Kenpachi no Zaraki. It’s not a name at all; the unkillable one of Zaraki
district, no. 80.
 
The crowd is dispersing now, so Yumichika walks towards Ikkaku and kneels down
beside him.
 
“Yumi…” Ikkaku starts, as if there’s something he wants to say while his chest
is ripped to pieces.
 
“Shut up,” Yumichika says, and rips the bottom edge off his kimono then uses it
to bind Ikkaku’s chest and stop the bleeding as best he can.
 
“You didn’t help,” Ikkaku manages, and coughs wetly, but one hand curls around
Yumichika’s wrist and holds on.
 
Yumichika rolls his eyes. “Of course not,” he says, and lifts Ikkaku till he’s
approximately upright, one arm across Yumichika’s shoulders, and Yumichika can
drag him back to the abandoned shack they’re currently squatting in and have it
look something like he’s just helping Ikkaku walk. “As if you’d have ever shut
up about it if I had.”
 
Eventually, he lays Ikkaku down on the dirty floor and feeds him some water and
a piece of bread. “You die on me, Ikkaku, and I’ll kill you,” he says. “I’ll
follow you back to the living world and kill you again. Then follow you back
here, of course. So you might as well save yourself the hassle and just live.”
 
Ikkaku offers a weak grin, but he’s tired. Yumichika hopes it’s a healing sleep
he’s falling into. He grabs a blanket and curls up next to Ikkaku, close as he
can manage, and if he could feed Ikkaku some of his own reiatsu to make up the
deficit, he would. He can’t, though, so he settles for sharing body heat and
breath and blood, and some sick part of him considers taking his sword and
slicing his own skin to spread his blood over Ikkaku, and then it would be a
proper sharing.
 
He licks blood off his fingers absently and thinks, is there reiatsu in blood?
Ikkaku’s tastes sweeter than anyone else’s, but Yumichika had always thought
that was just because he’s Ikkaku. Maybe not; maybe the blood of Kenpachi no
Zaraki would be sweet as well, or perhaps not sweet but still taste like
reiatsu, somehow, though he’s sure reiatsu shouldn’t have a taste.
 
It does, though. It does, and he’s still hungry. A little less hungry than he
was before the fight, though that could just be tiredness or nausea or
adrenaline. When Ikkaku is well - maybe before, if Yumichika can find some way
to take him - they’ll go back to the 78th, where there are at least proper and
shops and inns, and have a decent meal.
 
Ikkaku mumbles in his sleep, and Yumichika holds on as tightly as he dares.
 
-
 
Ikkaku’s still there in the morning, still breathing, though his cuts are still
oozing in places. Yumichika prods him till he wakes and then makes him eat the
last of a stale loaf of bread, then walks most of the way to the 78th in search
of someone selling food. He’s exhausted and starving before he finds a woman
selling plain onigiri, and he buys enough to last a few days and steels himself
for the walk home. He eats as he walks, wondering if he should have bought
more, but he’ll be no good to anyone passed out on the street.

No one asks him about his kimono, once so beautiful, now much shorter than it
should be, ripped along the bottom and stained with blood. When Yumichika gets
back to Ikkaku, he’s awake and annoyed.
 
“You coulda said where you were going. Thought you’d - left, or something.” He
tries to sit up and fails, and the sound of his breathing is all wrong.
Yumichika wants to just curl up next to him again and eat onigiri and wait for
him to be well.
 
He examines his nails; they’re filthy. He should wash his hands before doing
what he’s about to do, really, but he’s not sure they can spare the water. “If
I were going to leave, I’d have done it when you suggested coming to the 79th.
It’s vile out here, and the minute you can stand I am dragging you as far up
the 70s as I can.”
 
Ikkaku nods. “I wanna find him again, once I’m healed up. I reckon he’s gone up
the districts - nothing special out in the 80th.”
 
Yumichika’s stomach clenches. He should eat some more, and feed Ikkaku too; he
opens the bag of onigiri and pushes it towards Ikkaku. “You’ve been?”
 
Ikkaku stills. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, then reaches for some
onigiri. “Just on the outskirts. Not much there but dead people rotting.”
 
When they’ve finished eating, Yumichika closes up the bag and shucks his
kimono. There’s nothing clean for him to don - the kimono was his last clean
thing - so he puts on an old Yukata that is stained rather than actively
dirty.Then he rips his kimono into strips.
 
“Oi, you planning on bandaging me up with flowery kimono?” Ikkaku clearly
hasn’t noticed that he’s alreadybandaged in flowery kimono.
 
Yumichika raises one eyebrow. “I’ll stop when you can fight me off.”
 
Ikkaku continues to grumble under his breath, but when it comes time to peel
off the bandage covering the huge gash down his chest, he clutches at
Yumichika’s thigh hard with one hand. Yumichika doesn’t say anything, just
rinses off the wound as best he can and rewraps it.
 
It’s dark by the time he’s done, and Ikkaku has gone quiet. Yumichika lies down
next to him, exhausted all of a sudden, and pulls the blanket over them.
 
“You don’t hafta look after me like this,” Ikkaku mumbles. “ll’be fine.”
 
Yumichika would elbow him in the gut if he could. “Don’t be stupid,” he says.
 
-
 
It’s a little over a week later by the time they’re in the 78th eating the best
hot dinner the best inn of the 78th can provide. Which is to say, a bowl of
noodles, and the floor has been swept recently. Ikkaku is still bandaged, but
in white linen, and it’s only really a few wraps over the chest would to
protect it.
He’s still in the strange mood he’s been in all week.

Yumichika mentally gives up all the plans he had to work tonight, and orders
sake for both of them. He sighs, waits for Ikkaku to drain the small bowl,
fills it up again, and takes a sip of his own. “If this is because you’re
disappointed to be alive still, I’m getting you drunk and confiscating your
sword.”
 
Ikkaku glares at that, but then settles back to morose contemplation of his
sake bowl. “Nah, it’s not that. It’s just - luck’s a stupid reason to survive.
You can’t control luck.”

Yumichika shrugs. “Well, both of us should have been dead a few times over.
Maybe luck’s on our side.”
 
“Mmm.” Ikkaku downs his second bowl. “I’m still gonna find him.”
 
“And try to kill him again?” Yumichika’s voice is perfectly level, he’s sure of
it, but Ikkaku looks at him sharply.
 
“Fight him again, yeah. But - I dunno. Maybe he could teach me a few things.” A
pause. “It’d be all right to be killed by him.”
 
So it’s like that, Yumichika thinks. Well, at least they know Zaraki’s not in
the 79th or 80th; it’ll be all uphill from here, district wise, even if they
have to travel around a lot. “If you say so. I’d still kill him afterwards,
though.”
 
“Eh? Don’t be daft; you’d die trying if I had already.” But Ikkaku’s smiling
now, and it’s better.
 
“Maybe that’s the point,” Yumichika says. It wasn’t supposed to come out the
way it did: as if he’s serious. Which he is. It’s probably the sake, which is
sliding down their throats much more smoothly than usual. “You never know,
though. I might get lucky.” He doesn’t want to imagine what kind of creature
he’d be without Ikkaku.
 
And it seems like the sake’s affecting Ikkaku too, or maybe that was just the
right thing to say, because Ikkaku leans across the table and kisses him firmly
once, mouth closed. That’s probably all it was meant to be, but one of them
leans in again, and Yumichika opens his lips and thinks, Let me taste you. He
doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but the strangeness of the action is
utterly overshadowed by Ikkaku, all warm and hard shoulders and familiar smell.
He thinks he’d give Ikkaku anything he asked for, and this is no hardship at
all; in fact it’s not nearly enough, and if thinking about what it would be
like with Ikkaku is just a part of his life, then so was the thought that he’d
never find out.
 
Ikkaku pulls back and blinks at him, pupils blown and one hand on Yumichika’s
chest. “Yumi...I dunno if this is a great idea…”
 
What does that even mean? Hesitance: why? Ikkaku was the one who kissed him,
after all these years of thinking Ikkaku didn’t want him for this, and now
maybe he does, and Yumichika doesn’t understand at all. If Ikkaku wants him, he
can have everything; if Ikkaku doesn’t, then why this?
 
Yumichika isn’t sure he’ll be able to stand it if he gives up this one chance
to find out, so he swivels round and swings one leg across Ikkaku’s lap and
settles there. Ikkaku’s eyes widen. “What are you - ”
 
Yumichika shuts him up with another kiss, and there’s still that hesitation in
the touch and it makes him want to scream, but it only lasts a moment because
Ikkaku slides one arm around his hips and one hand into his hair and takes. He
forgets they’re even in a public place until Ikkaku’s arm tightens and he
stands, lifting Yumichika with him, and Yumichika’s spinning in space with his
arms around Ikkaku’s neck as Ikkaku carries him to their room. They might both
be drunk but he’s not even a little afraid that Ikkaku will drop him, and sure
enough Ikkaku kneels to release Yumichika onto the bed.
 
They sit on the bed, Yumichika curling around Ikkaku as close as he can, and
kiss. No one ever said kissing was like this, but then again, he honestly can’t
remember the last person who kissed him, and he suspects the difference is all
Ikkaku. Ikkaku’s hands all over his body are inexpert but he doesn’t care; he
seems to have discarded half of his ordinary procedures to just kiss and hold,
and though the circling and shifting of his hips in Ikkaku’s lap is half-
automatic, he’s not used to how good it feels, how much the low groans from
Ikkaku’s throat please him to hear.
 
He doesn’t know what to do with his hands; just resting them on Ikkaku’s
shoulders is unsatisfying, somehow. But Ikkaku lifts his hands and places them
on his own chest, and - oh, he’s allowed? He slides his hands up and down
Ikkaku’s back, and Ikkaku doesn’t seem to mind so he continues, stroking over
shoulders and arms and everywhere he can reach. He doesn’t know why it gives
him so much pleasure to map Ikkaku like this, but he’ll be able to look at
Ikkaku’s back tomorrow and think, I know what it feels like to touch.
 
Eventually, Ikkaku’s hands find the tie of Yumichika’s obi and undo it,
fumbling a little, as though Ikkaku is not used to this angle. But he manages,
then pulls Yumichika’s kimono off his shoulders, and makes a soft noise at the
first touch of his hands against Yumichika’s bare skin. Yumichika throws
himself back into their kisses and hopes that Ikkaku will decide to take off
his tunic, so they can do this skin to skin with nothing in between.
 
In a moment of boldness Yumichika presses kisses down Ikkaku’s neck and across
his shoulders. Ikkaku tastes like blood and steel and just a little sweet, and
Yumichika could get drunk doing this, surely. It’s confusing, because Ikkaku
makes encouraging noises and puts Yumichika’s hands where he wants them, and
Yumichika doesn’t know anymore what he shouldn’t do; he can’t, surely, have
everything. But he can have Ikkaku’s taste and scent and hands on his hips and
through his hair, he can have Ikkaku’s tongue in his mouth and the feel of the
skin on the back of Ikkaku’s neck under his fingertips, and he’s drowning in
the things he can have all of a sudden, things he never dared ask for even in
the privacy of his own head. Ikkaku gives freely, and he has to push aside the
urge to just hold on tight with all his strength.
 
Ikkaku does slip off his tunic then, brisk and efficient, and when he leans
back into Yumichika, he can’t help but bury his face in Ikkaku’s shoulder and
spend a moment just feeling, Ikkaku’s hipbones against the skin of his inner
thighs, and how hard Ikkaku is underneath him. He shifts his hips
experimentally, and suddenly Ikkaku is all urgency, leaning forward until
Yumichika is on his back and Ikkaku’s on top of him, and Yumichika pulls the
blankets over them like a cocoon. Then he reaches behind under a pillow for a
small pot of oil, and hands it to Ikkaku.
 
Ikkaku swallows, and dips his fingers in. “Should I…”
 
“No,” Yumichika says. “I’m sick of waiting.” He slicks his own fingers and
strokes Ikkaku’s cock, and Ikkaku tips his head back and groans for a few
seconds before seeming to remember what he’s doing. He shuffles closer, and
Yumichika hooks one leg over his shoulder and the other around his waist,
pulling him in.
 
“Fuck,” Ikkaku swears, squeezing his eyes shut briefly. Yumichika uses the
leverage of the ankle at the back of Ikkaku’s neck to pull him in for a kiss,
and Ikkaku looks round at the leg over his shoulder. “Gods, you know what
you’re doing, eh?” He catches Yumichika’s gaze again, but there’s no judgement
at all on his face. So Yumichika smiles and tightens just the right muscles,
and lifts his hips to match Ikkaku’s movements, and if Ikkaku had planned to
say anything else it falls from his lips as a series of hoarse groans instead.
He leans forward, seeming to believe in Yumichika’s flexibility, and slides one
hand around the back of Yumichika’s neck and the other to the small of his
back, holding their bodies flush together as he moves.
 
Yumichika’s eyes keep fluttering closed, but he fights to keep them open
because he doesn’t want to miss a single one of Ikkaku’s pleasure-soaked
expressions, or the way the muscles on his shoulders tense and flex. He doesn’t
recognise half of the sounds that come out of his mouth, and he hopes that
Ikkaku doesn’t either, hopes that Ikkaku can hear that there are parts of
Yumichika that are hidden from everyone but him.
 
“Please,” he says, but doesn’t have the breath to finish his sentence, and it’s
a little frightening because he’s so close and he doesn’t know what Ikkaku
wants him to do. Whatever Ikkaku wants from him, it’s not the same as what
everyone else wants from him; Ikkaku is holding him as if he wants to merge
their bodies, as if he wants to wake up in the morning still wrapped together.
“Please, I – ” he tries again, but Ikkaku fucks him a little harder and he can
hardly hold words in his head. “Can I – ”
 
Ikkaku still makes a sound like, “huh?” Then he frowns for a minute and
eventually manages, “Wait for me?” and it’s a question, so Yumichika says,
“Yes,” and it seems to just unravel Ikkaku. He gives Yumichika a hard kiss then
curls his forehead into the crook of Yumichika’s neck and shoulder, saying
“Yumichika, Yumichika, god,” over and over again.
 
Yumichika does close his eyes then, and throws both arms around Ikkaku’s back
as tightly as he can. He holds on, and when Ikkaku’s firm, steady rhythm
falters and shakes, he lets himself fall. It feels like Ikkaku’s carrying him
again, and Ikkaku says, “Yumichika,” just once more as his body shudders under
Yumichika’s hands.

Ikkaku is lying on him, and it ought to be suffocating, but the warm weight is
just comforting. It doesn’t last; Ikkaku moves, manoeuvring them both onto
their sides so he can kiss Yumichika again, languid and sleepy. Yumichika
resists sleep at first, but Ikkaku’s fingers play softly with his hair, and
he’s warmer than he’s ever been, and after a while he lets go.
 
-
 
Waking up is glorious. Yumichika opens his eyes and he’s curled into Ikkaku’s
chest, tucked under his chin, and there’s something missing. It takes him a
moment to work out what it is: that lingering fear, whenever he’s touched, that
he’ll be dragged away and trapped and hurt. Even when it’s Ikkaku, though
Ikkaku is still safer than anyone else including no one at all – but it seems
that this morning, he gets a reprieve.
 
Ikkaku makes a sleepy noise, shifts, and opens bleary eyes. “M’rnin’,” he
manages, blinks a few more times, then looks down at Yumichika. “Uh…you’re
naked,” he says.
 
Yumichika raises one eyebrow. “Well observed.”
 
“And – ” is that a blush? Yumichika has never seen Ikkaku embarrassed before.
“So am I.”
 
“Yes.”
 
Ikkaku unlatches himself and can’t quite seem to meet Yumichika’s eyes, saying
things like, “Shit, where’s my clothes?”, and a cold weight begins to form in
Yumichika’s stomach when Ikkaku stands and pull on clothes as quickly as
possible. Come back, he doesn’t say. I was going to ask if I could kiss you
good morning.
 
Yumichika stands too, then. Ikkaku flinches, and yes, Yumichika has noticed
before that Ikkaku is strangely wary of seeing him naked, but now there’s not
an inch of Yumichika’s body that Ikkaku’s warm, rough hands have not branded
with touch, so it doesn’t make any sense.
 
“What’s wrong?”
 
“I’m sorry,” Ikkaku blurts, fully dressed now. He keeps looking at his hands as
though he’s not sure that they belong to him.
 
“What for?”
 
Ikkaku rubs his forehead above his eyebrows, and Yumichika gets a proper feel
for just how distressed he is when he looks up again. “Cause – we were both
drunk, but I rememberI kissed you,and you didn’t say – I don’t even know if – ”
He must pick up that Yumichika doesn’t understand a word of what he’s saying,
so he continues, “You do stuff all the time that you don’t really want to do,
and I don’t remember you ever saying no before, and I see the way you have to
make yourself sit still sometimes when people are, are, sortof all over you,
and…” He clenches his fists, frustrated. “I didn’t wanna be one of those guys.”
 
“I – it’s all right,” Yumichika says, is the only thing he can think of to say.
“I didn’t mind, I – that’s not why I let you fuck me.” And it was the wrong
thing to say, obviously, because something in Ikkaku’s expression breaks, and
he looks away.
 
“But it sounds like maybe I am,” he says, and his voice is rough and breaking.
“I don’t know how to make it better. If I just – I could pay you, and then
maybe it’d be like just another person you could forget – ”
 
No. No, no, you weren’t just another, you’ll never be just anything, take it
back, say you don’t think of me like that. He was sure, so sure, that that’s
what affection feels like distilled into touch, but he hasn’t got a good handle
on affection, anyway. He casts around for something to say and realises that
his vision is blurry, so he takes a deep breath and swallows once, clenching
every muscle he can to stay upright.
 
“You idiot; we share all the money, anyway,” is what comes out of his mouth.
He’s desperate for the right thing to say, the thing that will make Ikkaku
understand that it wasn’t like that at all, that Ikkaku could have anything he
wanted and Yumichika gave freely, and took too, took kisses and strong hands
splayed out against his back and his own name said in his ear like some sort of
prayer. But he doesn’t know what it is.
 
Yumichika hates the expression on Ikkaku’s face, like he doesn’t have any idea
what to do, so he turns round and picks up his kimono. It smells like sake and
sex and Ikkaku, so he drops it, and fetches another.
 
“Uh, should I go?” Ikkaku says, and it’s hesitant when Ikkaku is never hesitant
about anything.
 
Yes. No. Don’t go, never go. “If you want,” he says.
 
Ikkaku sighs, and his jaw clenches. “No, I mean – I wanna know if you think I
should go.”
 
Some part of Yumichika panics at this; it’s stupid, it’s only a question, but
he doesn’t know what the right answer is. “Yes,” he says eventually, because he
doesn’t know how to fix this, and any pretence of being okay isn’t going to
last five minutes.
 
Ikkaku nods and goes immediately. Yumichika notices how cold he is and pulls a
shawl out of the drawer, then another, then puts them both back because it
seems that everything he owns smells of Ikkaku. Or maybe it’s him, he thinks,
caught between the desire to bathe right now and the stupid part of him that
thinks he could leave the memories on his skin for just a little longer.
It’s while he’s bathing that a soft, sorrowful voice in his mind informs him
that the words he was looking for were I wanted you.
 
-
 
He tries them on in his mind. He tries to say them out loud, but they stick in
his throat. Three short words, but they taste heavy and unfamiliar, wrongness
spreading across his tongue.
The idea that he wants Ikkaku is – frightening, but he looks at all the things
he thinks about Ikkaku and concludes that he does. He wants Ikkaku, wants
everything about him, everything that there is to be had. It’s far, far too
much to ask, and surely even the wanting is some sort of intrusion, some sort
of expectation, and he doesn’t want Ikkaku to feel like that.
 
He tries to imagine himself saying it out loud, and can’t.
 
Yumichika supposes he’d imagined, in his sleep- and pleasure-filled haze this
morning, that it’d be simple. That he could just kiss Ikkaku good morning, and
maybe they’d fuck again, and he’d be able to go on with his life as usual but
with Ikkaku’s arm round his waist and an ever-present invitation to touch.
 
That Ikkaku wouldn’t regret it.
 
Well, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand a fucking word that Ikkaku said,
honestly; what does the fact that his job isn’t all sunshine and roses have to
do with the sex that they had? Why would Ikkaku try to pay him, and say that he
wants Yumichika to forget about it? Surely, that’s regret.
 
Yumichika has no idea how Ikkaku expects him to just forget. You can’t fuck me
like you love me and just leave, Ikkaku. You can’t.

Please, please don’t.
 
He’d thought maybe Ikkaku had got used to the idea that he’s a whore – had
decided that maybe it didn’t matter and Ikkaku wanted him anyway – but clearly
this isn’t true. He fucks people for money, but he slept with Ikkaku because...

He ought to admit it in the privacy of his own head, really. Lying to himself
won’t get him anywhere.

He slept Ikkaku because he wanted to. He still wants to, still wants Ikkaku
more than any single other thing that he can think of. And for a few hours
Yumichika felt like Ikkaku wanted just as much as he does. Was that feeling a
lie?
 
God, he wants that feeling again. Would kneel at Ikkaku’s feet and beg
forgiveness for whatever the hell it is he did wrong, to get that feeling back.
Ikkaku, he’s sure, would just look at him like he’s crazy and ask him what the
hell he was doing.
 
But Ikkaku is the one who apologised. Apologised for what they did, but that
doesn’t make any sense either. Why would he apologise for sex? Sure,
Yumichika’s been forced before, but no one who did that looked like they were
remotely sorry.
 
Yumichika doesn’t want a fucking apology; he just wants Ikkaku to hold him
again and stop looking at him like he’s broken.   
 
He can’t have any of the things he wants. He preferred not wanting things; it
was easier.
To make things worse, the hunger is gone. Well – perhaps not gone. He closes
his eyes and breathes, and tries to feel: no, it’s not gone, it’s just sitting
quiescent somewhere inside. He feels almost as if he could reach out and touch
the source –
 
But if the hunger is gone, how did he feed?
 
He must have taken from Ikkaku, he thinks, and the urge to curl up on the floor
and wrap his arms around his knees is overwhelming. Must have; nothing else
that he knows of will sate it. If he took from Ikkaku…
 
We did not take, he hears from that same place inside, louder than usual, and
there’s the ghost of feathery touch on his shoulders which should be
unsettling, but isn’t. He gave willingly, and we received.
 
Somehow, that thought is worse than all the others combined. Yumichika gives
in, curls up under his bedcovers, and tries to get warm.
 
-
 
It's dusk by the time he wakes up, and Ikkaku still isn't back from wherever he
went. Yumichika shouldn't worry, really; Ikkaku can take care of himself, and
the only man who ever posed a threat is - well. Ikkaku is looking for him.
 
Yumichika is entirely unused to how hard he wishes he could curl into Ikkaku's
chest again. He's used to the desire of course, sitting in the back of his head
and settling into quiescence whenever Ikkaku would climb in beside him on cold
nights. But it's as if that one night has unleashed a flood of want, and he can
hardly think past it.
 
It's a lot like the hunger at its worst, but only for Ikkaku.
 
If he thinks about it, he remembers that it was Ikkaku who woke the hunger in
him, too.
 
Yumichika steels himself, counts three, and makes himself stand, comb his
still-damp hair, don a kimono. He has no more time for the mess that is his
mind at present: there's been deep pools of horrors in his head for as long as
he can remember, and he's become adept at stepping around them. This is just -
another thing he doesn't want to immobilise himself thinking about. There is
rent to be paid, and Yumichika will be damned if he's pathetic enough to just
lie in bed and wait for it to be over, or something. If he'd gut himself for
Ikkaku, he can do his fucking job to keep them both fed.
 
Even if it's harder, out here, because they're travelling up district and every
time they do their money will be worth less, because there's not much demand
for anything except a rough facefuck in an alley, and maybe he shouldn't have
allowed himself to get used to the bed that he still misses.
 
At least it will be almost incomparable to his night with Ikkaku. Yumichika
hadn't known that sex could be a desire and pleasure of the mind as well as the
body.
 
There is little in the way of hunger even now, and that will make it harder
still.
 
It's an ugly place, the bar he goes to - but then everything in the 78th is
ugly. Yumichika will be happy if he never has to come back here. There are days
where he seeks out rough places with violence and blood and brutish men, but
today he would wish for the classiest place the 65th offers, because he can
flirt on autopilot and find more people who want to admire than ruin him.
 
Everything would be easier if he could just cut out the part of him that wishes
and wants and hopes. But he's tried that and everything went by in a numb haze,
until eventually he found someone who wanted to slice his skin open, so he
broke their neck with his thighs and finally, finally felt rushingly alive
again.
 
The barman doesn't mind if he takes people to the storeroom and fucks them, as
long as Yumichika pays him - in a blow job at the end of the night rather than
money, fortunately, because he'll be damned if he's letting anyone else take a
cut like that ever again.  
 
He doesn't know what it is, but everyone wants him tonight. It seems he's a
novelty; maybe he's more beautiful than they're used to in the whores round
here, where almost everyone looks too thin or worn or has had their face broken
a few times; maybe he looks classy, like some exotic thing from up district
that they want to make a mess of; maybe it's just that he's good at his job and
the walls are thin.
 
It's all easier than he'd thought it might be. At least, it is at first;
slowly, his stomach and throat begin to clench, and he gags a bit unexpectedly,
which hasn't happened in years. He combats this by getting drunk. It takes
effort, but at least he doesn't have to pay. Even here people feel the need to
make overtures with a pint of shitty beer they bought you, and for once
Yumichika is grateful. He doesn't really understand - people generally feel no
compulsion to comfort the pig they're about to slaughter for bacon, or leave
behind cups of tea when they buy clothes at a stall.
 
He's spent most of his life around people, but there's still so much he doesn't
understand. Maybe he would if he'd been taken in by a family, but he was too
old for that, really, when he arrived. There's so much that Ikkaku has taught
him - why people collect into families in the first place, what kissing is for,
how it feels to know the smell of another person, and why sometimes people
whisper names into his ear that aren't his, sounding like longing.
 
And maybe it's wrong or distasteful to think of Ikkaku while there’s another
man's cock halfway down his throat, but it doesn't feel as unpleasant as he
expected because Ikkaku and this man, this experience and that one, feel so
entirely unconnected. Maybe that's because he's drunk and his face has started
to go numb, but thinking of Ikkaku is safe and warm and affection (but oh, has
he broken it? If he has then he has to fix it somehow, has to, he'll go mad if
he doesn't and he hopes with all his strength that he'll get home to find
Ikkaku asleep on the ratty futon because, if all else fails, he can just sit on
Ikkaku and say things like, please, please make it all right, I'd do whatever
you want, I don't know what you want so please tell me).
 
At least he (maybe) gets to be the only person for whom Ikkaku means safety,
and that's much more than he would ever ask for, much more than he deserves.
 
At the end of the night there's a small group of them left. The barman locks
the door and shoves tables together, and they all share him and pass him around
till he's dizzy and short of breath and can't seem to focus on anything for
long enough to make it out. People duck in and out of the circle, becoming
temporary spectators and chucking coins at him. He gasps and swallows and
blinks water out of his eyes, and this is why he left his makeup habit back in
the 65th, he thinks, clutching the edges of the table because they remind him
which way is up.
 
Walking home takes far longer than it should and no time at all, because all of
the muscles that he can feel are hurting and the rest won't work, but he's
drunk and time is relative. When he stumbles through the door, Ikkaku is there,
and he whirls around immediately.
 
"Yumichika," he says, as if Yumichika's been missing for weeks or something. "I
- what's up with you?"
 
Yumichika half-leans and half-falls forwards, siccing a mound of coins onto the
table from the folds of his kimono, right in front of Ikkaku. "I'm drunk," he
explains. "And I can't feel my legs." Then he leans his hands on the table to
prop himself up, and makes himself meet Ikkaku's eyes despite the expression on
Ikkaku's face. "But I made enough money that we can leave this ugly place." He
tries to feel proud of collecting so much money in one night he could hardly
carry it, even if it's in wooden bits that won't be worth a thing anywhere
above the 76th, but he can't with the way Ikkaku's looking at him, as if he
might be sick.
 
Ikkaku makes a reaching gesture but changes his mind as soon as he notices it,
snatching his hand back. Yumichika looks at it and waits for Ikkaku to say
something. Anything. He's beginning, almost, to wish he hadn't kissed Ikkaku
again, or that he'd done whatever it was he was supposed to do, because he can
remember a time when Ikkaku would have come round his side of the table, close
but a few careful inches apart in case it was one of those nights where
Yumichika couldn't bear to be touched, and said, "Let's go to bed, ne?"
 
"I didn't know if - I didn't know where you were," Ikkaku says. Which doesn't
explain what's wrong, or why Ikkaku's looking at him like that. And maybe he's
disgusting, but Ikkaku has held his hair back from his face while he threw up
and cried after a bad night, one large hand making circles between his
shoulderblades, so it can't be that. Ikkaku looks as him like you look at
something ugly, and Yumichika's motivation to continue propping himself up
liquefies. He ends up on the floor, too drunk and confused to remember why he
shouldn't curl his arms around his legs and press his forehead against his
knees.
 
He feels motion, and when he looks up, Ikkaku is sitting next to him, legs
crossed. "I don't get you at all, sometimes," he says.

Everything is blurry, confusing, shifting in front of his eyes and inside his
head. "You're looking at me like I'm ugly," he says, and it comes out slurred
and indistinct. Ikkaku knows what he said, though; he can tell by the flinch.
"You've never done that before."
 
"No," Ikkaku says. "It ain't - you just look so - " So what? Drunk? Dirty?
"Miserable," Ikkaku finishes.
 
"I don't know what I did wrong," he says, to the floor. "Are you going to
leave? Please, please don't leave, come with me back to the 65th and then you
can go if you like - " he can't seem to stop talking, but Ikkaku interrupts.
 
"Oi, I ain't going anywhere!" Ikkaku says, and it's the first thing he's said
in days that isn't hesitant or confused, so Yumichika has to believe him.
"Don't even say that."
 
Yumichika swallows. "Then I have to fix it. I have to - you're going to have to
tell me how, Ikkaku, I don't know what I did wrong but I'll do anything you
want - "
 
"Don't say that either!" Ikkaku says, but he's started and now he can't stop,
brokenly repeating himself,please, please tell me how to fix it tell me what I
did wrong I
needtofixitdon’tlookatmelikethatI'msorryI'msorryIloveyoudon'thatemeIloveyoucanwefixitdon'tleavepleasedon-
tleave and at some point he stopped making any sense at all but it doesn't
matter because he's lying against Ikkaku's chest again, and he panics
momentarily because he's disgusting and tries to pull his hair back, or
something, butt Ikkaku just says, "Fuck, Yumichika, none of this is your fault,
alright? You ain't got to do anything." Finally, Yumichika manages to stop
talking. He's making Ikkaku's tunic wet but Ikkaku doesn't seem to care.
 
"Let's go to bed," he says, helping Yumichika to stand, and maybe it's going to
be all right.
 
Yumichika's half asleep, finally able to relax with Ikkaku's clothes tangled in
his fists, when Ikkaku starts talking again. "As if I'd go anywhere: the hell
would I do without you? Y'know, I never had a pair of shoes till I met you.
Still can't get used to socks..." He clears his throat. "Uh, anyway, I'm sorry.
I was tryin' to...eh, it doesn't matter now. I fucked it. You don't got to do
anything to fix it except still be here in the morning."
 
Yumichika's too tired to say anything, so he just makes a tighter fist.
 
-
 
Ikkaku is still there in the morning, tunic half-hanging off him because
apparently Yumichika has been holding on to it all night.
 
It's been a long time since he was last so appallingly drunk; people buy him
drinks all the time, and his tolerance is high. It took a lot of effort to
become so graceless and incoherent, he remembers, and then he made a fool of
himself all over Ikkaku. Still, Ikkaku is here, groaning and stumbling groggily
towards wakefulness, and maybe things are better now, so perhaps he can be
forgiven.
 
The first thing Ikkaku says, after looking at Yumichika for ten seconds
straight, bleary and trying to focus, is, "You smell like shit beer."
 
And worse  besides. Yumichika remembers how disgusting he is, and shivers. "I'm
going for a shower," he says, standing quickly, but Ikkaku catches his hand.
 
"Let's leave today. Head for the 77th," he says.
 
Yumichika turns back round, smiling, and says "I'll pack."
 
So they go. They go, and don't stop for more than a day or two, while Ikkaku
goes out and asks around and Yumichika goes to work.
 
-
 
He has to tell Ikkaku, of course. Has to.

He tries it on: I found out where Kenpachi No Zaraki has gone; he’s in the
Seireitei.
 
Ikkaku is going to want to go immediately, of course. And Yumichika can’t say
that he has any particular desire to stay in this particular place, or even in
this district, but - the Seireitei.  But - I dunno. Maybe he could teach me a
few things, Yumichika remembers, and that sounds like maybe they’re going to
stay. Are they going to stay? And do what - become shinigami?

He shudders. Shinigami cunts, Ikkaku said the first time they ever spoke. Not a
single thing Yumichika has ever seen has disproved this. They’re powerful and
dangerous and Yumichika would feel safer sleeping in an alley in the 70s than
in a bed in the Seireitei, surrounded by all those tall cold powerhouses of
reiatsu. Some of them were never even born in the living world, a little
removed from really being people. He can feel them, sometimes, when they visit
whichever district he’s in, and he feels a little like a tuning fork, lying in
his bed as the precise tone of their reiatsu keeps him awake from miles away.
 
We could be powerful and dangerous too,he hears, and the sound is - breathless,
urgent in a way he doesn’t recognise. We are already powerful and dangerous.
 
He’s not, honestly, sure why he’s even thinking about this. There wasn’t a
question about which choice he’d make - and it was a choice. He’s made
unpleasant choices before, often enough to know that it’s always a choice, even
if only one of the options are bearable. The only option in this case that is
bearable involves following Ikkaku wherever Ikkaku wants them to go, and that’s
all there is to it.

Yumichika has always found that the ones called “Hard Choices” are the easiest.
 
So he sits down without preamble while Ikkaku is getting through breakfast, and
says, “He’s in the Seireitei. He went and killed the last Kenpachi, so he’s
captain of the eleventh now.” Ikkaku looks right at him, and puts down his
rice. “Probably so he can fight as much as he likes; there’s no one here to
match him.”
 
Ikkaku frowns. “He’s gonna protect this shitty place? I don’t see it.” He
stands and picks up his sword - apparently they’re leaving right now, which -
well, fine. It’s morning, they’ve both eaten, and they can make it to the next
District by nightfall.
 
“I take it we’re going after him, then?” He says, and he can’t keep a smile off
his face, because this is going to be one hell of a trip, but Ikkaku looks
positively gleeful.
 
“Fuck, yes. He could be in hell for all I care.” He tucks his sword into his
belt, and Yumichika mimics him, heading to his room to grab his handful of
things. He keeps having to leave them behind, and supposes he’s been losing all
ties to this place for years.
 
It’s not until they’re in a bar at the start of the 62nd that Yumichika manages
to ask about the thing that’s been bothering him most. “So...are we going to
become Shinigami? Just to get to Kenpachi?”
 
Ikkaku tilts his head. “It’s the only way to get in,” he says, and Yumichika
wonders, suddenly, how much he knows about Shinigami, and how he knows it.
 
“But - ” He’s not sure how to ask this one. We’re not going to have to fight to
the death like Kenpachi, are we?Is just tempting fate. “Will we be let in? How
do they pick shinigami?”
 
Ikkaku shrugs. “Mostly it’s assholes from the first twenty districts. But
they’ll take anyone with decent reiatsu.” He looks at Yumichika intently for a
minute, and it’s the same look he gives to opponents he’s sizing up; he’s never
looked at Yumichika like this before. “Anyway, you got nothing to be worried
about. You’ve felt shinigami around: don’t you know you’ve got more reiatsu
than most? Your sword work’s fucking vicious too, you’d cut most of ‘em to
pieces soon as look at you.”
 
Yumichika blinks. He hasn’t ever given much thought to his own reiatsu. He
feels himself blush a little, a counterpoint to the smug I told you so in his
mind. He must admit, there’s an appeal to spending the rest of his life
fighting.
 
Because it is the rest of his life; if they become shinigami now, they’ll die
shinigami. He looks at Ikkaku. Well, Ikkaku is better than him, so Yumichika
will die first, likely. So that’s all right.
 
He swallows, because there is one last thing to take care of. “Cut my hair,” he
says.
 
Ikkaku’s eyes bug out absurdly, like a caricature, as if this is the most
ridiculous thing Yumichika could possibly say. “Eh? But - you - you love your
hair, and I…” He looks down. “We don’t have any scissors.”
 
Yumichika rolls his eyes. “It’s not going to be any use to me if I’m a
shinigami. Just match here,” he says, indicating the shorter pieces at his
shoulders. “And use your sword.”
 
Ikkaku looks panicked. “But - what if I fuck it up?”

Yumichika pins him with a glare that is half manufactured, honestly, because if
Ikkaku’s dragging him to the Seireitei then payback is fair. “Don’t.”
 
“And you’ll still speak to me in the morning if I don’t get it perfect?”
 
Hair grows, Ikkaku.Yumichika smiles pleasantly. “Of course,” he says, and
Ikkaku swallows nervously. He’d laugh, but - it doesn’t seem like the time for
it. His hair is a part of his body, part of his body language, and some percent
of the reason why he’s so good at his job, why so many people wanted. Such
pretty hair has been said to him so, so many times.
 
There’s a mirror in their room, which isn’t surprising because this is the
62nd, home of debauchery. He should be right at home, but isn’t. Ikkaku makes a
determined expression as he stands behind Yumichika and undoes his hair tie.
Yumichika shivers when Ikkaku combs his fingers through it, and if there were
ever a reason not to do this it would be that feeling. Get on with it, Ikkaku,
before I change my mind.
 
Ikkaku picks up his sword, and Yumichika has to close his eyes.
 
He feels…lighter, afterwards. The ends of his hair brush the back of his neck,
and he runs his fingers through it. It feels straight enough; he feels bereft.
He offers a smile, though, because Ikkaku appears to be holding his breath.
“Thank you,” he says, and Ikkaku deflates.
 
He wipes his brow. “Right. Well, I’m going to bed.”
 
Yumichika looks at himself in the mirror. It’s going to take some getting used
to. It’s only the first of many things that he’s going to have to get used to.
 
And then, so definite and loud that he’s momentarily certain that the voice is
coming from right behind him rather than his head, a verdict: Beautiful.
 
He removes his sword from his belt, places it by the bed, and curls up next to
Ikkaku. Tomorrow, they’ll be getting up early again, but Ikkaku rolls over and
mashes his face against Yumichika’s shoulder, and he’s all right.
 
Chapter End Notes
     Well, it's been one hell of a ride and no mistake. If you got this
     far, wow, thank you so much for coming along with me.
     Don't worry, I'm not ending here: there's going to be another fic,
     covering more of Bleach canon, about Yumichika in the 11th. It's
     currently in progress with the provisional title 'Retrograde'
     Until then, I can be found wittering about Bleach and writing and
     other stuff at vorvayne.tumblr.com. And I promise the rest of my work
     is normally a *bit* cheerier :)
End Notes
     I can be found at vorvayne.tumblr.com wittering about bleach a lot,
     and I promise the rest of my work is normally a *bit* cheerier.
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