Chapter Text
It was early, that time of day when it's light out but you can't yet see the sun. Night duty was over, his patrol shift coming to an end, and he was not really looking forward to sleeping. Getting sleep during the day really messed up his schedule. Ikkaku had suggested that he just stay up all day and just go to bed very early in the evening, but Yumichika could not stand to have those bags under his eyes all day.
He yawned as he made his way home, stumbling over the stone pathway, pleased that no one was around to see him look so unseemly. Always he had such posture and grace, but all that was lost when he missed his beauty rest. He had grown accustomed to getting a full night's sleep, once they had joined squad 11. Back in the days of wandering Rukongai, there was no telling whether or not you would sleep through the night. Always there were interruptions, assailants, nightmares that would wake him from his rest, prompt him to roll onto his side to make sure he was not alone. Always he would find Ikkaku, his long-time traveling companion, wide awake as well. They often woke together at the sounds.
That was before. Now they slept separately some nights, if only to keep up appearances. The more they touched, the more they loved in their private life, the less they made such contact in public. Still, it was hard for them to not at least gaze at one another, hoping that no one would find the truth in their faces.
He was not alone this morning. He heard some harsh footsteps padding along behind him. He knew he was not being followed; he knew no one stupid enough to be so loud about it. Turning, he noticed the assistant captain of the 6th company, strolling lazily along the narrow street, looking down as his paces.
“Red,” Yumichika yawned, “coming home from night duty as well?”
“Heh?” Renji said, apparently startled. “Oh, I didn't even notice you there.”
“You wound me,” Yumichika jested, too tired to truly be offended at someone ignoring his presence.
“I just woke up, actually.”
Yumichika looked around, making himself aware of their location in the Seireitei.
“But-”
“Yeah,” Renji sighed, scratching the back of his neck. “I wasn't sleeping in the barracks.”
Renji was met with a suggestive eyebrow raise. Yumichika could not help himself; always he was so interested in gossip. It filled that void, since he felt he could not share any juicy details of his own exploits. They had made an agreement.
“Do tell,” he said, waiting for Renji to catch up to him.
“It's not what it sounds like,” the assistant captain mumbled. “Unfortunately.”
“Begpardon?”
“Nevermind.”
They walked together for a little while, toward the sunrise.
“Yumichika,” Renji said suddenly, stopping in his tracks.
“Yes?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
Yumichika laughed. Silly, he thought, if anyone could keep a secret, it was him.
“Shut up!” Renji warned, shoving him on his slender shoulder.
“Sorry,” he coughed. “Yes. I can.”
They were silent again for a few blocks. Renji kept inhaling, opening his mouth as if to speak.
“Out with it, Red,” Yumichika groaned.
“Last night I slept in Thirteen's barracks, on the floor.”
“Okay?”
Renji's face was taking on a similar hue to his long hair, tied up tightly in that ponytail. What a waste. The assistant captain was staring hard at the ground.
“I almost told her how I felt but then she fell asleep.”
“Who...oh,” Yumichika realized. He didn't understand it. Little Kuchiki with her not-shiny hair and her boney arms and knees. “And...?”
“I thought for a long time I was over it.”
“But you aren't?”
“She looks so peaceful when she sleeps. I drifted off on the floor, looking at her, wondering what she was dreaming about.”
Yumichika smirked. That was a real kind of love, and he knew it for sure. For a long time he had wondered about Ikkaku's dreams, until he found out that he was usually in them.
“So...” Yumichika went on, gesturing for Renji to continue walking, “why tell me this?”
“Is it worth it?” Renji asked.
“Hm?”
“To risk a friendship like that?”
“I...wouldn't know...”
“Right,” Renji sighed. “Of course you wouldn't.”
Yumichika tried to keep himself from seething with exhausted anger at what the assistant captain was implying. He had always taken him for a bit of an idiot, so he was certain there was no way he knew. How could he possibly know? They were so careful and secretive. They had made an agreement.
“You should...” he trailed off, feeling foolish for giving advice he had failed to follow for so long, “You should tell her. When the time is right.”
“When would that be?”
“I don't know, idiot, that depends on the person! You've already had, what, thousands of opportunities?”
“...Yeah.”
“Then no doubt you'll have another one soon.”
He left Renji to make his way to his quarters. He knew he had made it sound so easy, the act of telling someone you were irrevocably in love with them. Someone you had known for a long time. He honestly did wish him the best, though he too was unsure of how Rukia would respond. He could never tell what that girl was thinking. She was quiet, and when she wasn't quiet, she was yelling. Like Ikkaku, a man of few words unless you got him started. Yumichika did love to get him started.
He was sleeping, like he always did through the sunrise. Occasionally he would be up so they could see it together. One of those things they only did when they were positive no one could see.
“Wakey-wakey,” Yumichika sang, sitting down on the futon and poking Ikkaku on the cheek.
“Hngh...”
“Get up, I want to sleep on your bed because it's already warm.”
“Okay,” he mumbled, moving over to make room.
“That's...okay. Fine,” Yumichika sighed, sliding himself under the messy blankets beside Ikkaku. “But you really should get up.”
“In a minute,” Ikkaku complained, throwing one thick, long arm over Yumichika's chest, pulling him closer. Always he touched him the most in the morning. Like he was in a sleepy haze and had forgotten himself, had forgotten how sometimes Yachiru would come bouncing into their room with a full teapot, spilling everywhere, insisting that they break their fast with her.
He let it happen, let himself melt into Ikkaku's warm, somewhat sweaty form beneath the blankets.
“Too tired,” Yumichika mumbled, wishing he had the energy to share in that early-morning love of which he had grown so fond. Before he would not even show his sleepy face, until Ikkaku had kissed it, on the bags beneath his eyes, insisting that he looked worn out and beautiful.
“Yeah,” Ikkaku agreed, through a yawn. “Tea...”
“Just light the flame,” Yumichika told him, having already set up the kettle.
“This is why I keep you around,” Ikkaku jested, brushing his lips against Yumichika's temple. He rose, cracking his neck and back, stretching those long arms above his head. “How was night shift?”
“Fucking awful,” he admitted. “Boring. Until I was walking home.”
“What happened?” he was lazily forcing his tired body to walk over to the kitchenette.
“Did you know that Abarai is in love with little Kuchiki?”
“Oh,” Ikkaku said flatly, “No. Well, yeah, but I kind of forgot.”
“You knew and you didn't tell me!?”
“What do you care about other people's business?”
Yumichika lifted his upper body up on his elbows, furrowed his brow at his lover standing clueless by the tea kettle.
“Right, I forgot. That's all you care about,” he laughed.
“Not true,” Yumichika insisted. “I care about gossip, you, and slicing people to bits.”
“In that order?”
“In no particular order,” he smiled. He did have a sort of shameful love for making Ikkaku wonder where he stood on his list of important things.
“Go to sleep, Ayasegawa,” Ikkaku said, rolling his eyes, in that way, always, making Yumichika want to slap him, kiss him, tell him to go fuck himself.
“Quit last-naming me,” he whined, laying back down.
The whistle of the kettle sounded and then drifted off. He heard the sound of careful pouring, and then footsteps. The kind that were loud though you knew the person was trying to be quiet. Ikkaku was promptly kneeling beside the futon.
“I'll wake you for lunch,” he whispered, to which Yumichika replied with a sleepy grunt. How unseemly.
**
The first time he told Ikkaku that he loved him, they had been sleeping together for a a few months. Yumichika was his, and utterly, he decided, had been told.
“Remember that you're mine,” Ikkaku used to tell him, before leaving their room to go do anything. Sometimes he still said it.
It was a morning like any other when it happened. They were having their tea and fruit, sitting politely on the floor.
“Will you fix this for me?” Ikkaku asked, pointing at his own face, where his little red markings were smudged and fading.
“Of course,” Yumichika agreed, getting up to go find the ink. People always forgot that Ikkaku wasn't born that way. In that little way he cared about his appearance, knew what color looked best on him. Red like blood, like he made Yumichika feel inside when he made him his.
He knelt down before Ikkaku, dipping the little brush in the pool of red ink, motioning for him to close his eyes. Gracefully he painted the little spots, careful to keep them the perfect size, no larger or smaller than they had ever been.
“Stop twitching,” he instructed, pulling the brush away from the shaking eyelid.
“I've had too much tea,” Ikkaku explained.
“Okay, then try to just relax, Ikkaku,” Yumichika cooed softly.
“How am I supposed to relax if you say my name that way?”
“Bedpardon?”
“Hurry up and finish. I have to look good for you, right?”
“What are you getting at?”
“We don't have a lot of time this morning, I'd like to...”
Ikkaku's face turned a little pink. He opened his eyes, nearly startling Yumichika into painting one messy red line across his forehead. He hated that about him, as much as he enjoyed it. Always Yumichika tried to remain calm and collected, pretty and still. No one else could really change that about him.
“Very well,” he smiled, quickly fixing the markings on Ikkaku's other eye. Once he placed the inkwell back on the floor he got pounced on. “Ah!”
He melted into laughter as Ikkaku began to kiss and bite at his neck and shoulders.
“Gonna need that stupid turtleneck,” the bald man laughed.
“Shut up!” Yumichika said, wrapping his arms around Ikkaku and sighing. “I love you.”
Ikkaku froze on top of him as they lay entwined on the floor. Yumichika felt his hands and feet go numb, realizing what he had said.
“You do?”
“Uh,” he stammered. He did, it was true, and he was very certain of it. He could not confirm when exactly it became true, but it did not matter. Laying there, his back uncomfortable on the hardwood floor, his hair all messed up from Ikkaku's rough hands, he felt he could stay there forever. “Yes. I love you.”
He forced his eyes to turn away from Ikkaku's smiling face. Smiling like he had won something, taken something.
“Well!?” Yumichika nearly shouted. “Is that all you have to say, when I-”
He was interrupted by a different kind of kiss. A new kind, softer than before.
“I love you too, duh,” Ikkaku told him, rolling over onto his back, laying beside him, their fingers laced.
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“We probably shouldn't tell anyone.”
“Yeah.”
“Our little secret.”
“Our big secret, more like,” Ikkaku corrected. Yumichika nodded, smiling in relief that Ikkaku also felt that it mattered a lot. He sighed, looking to his side, knowing he had more secrets not to tell. But for now, in the morning light on the hardwood floor, he felt as honest and true and strong as he thought possible.