Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Eleven Lovers ❯ One-Shot

Eleven Lovers (in six drabbles)

by debbiechan

Disclaimer: I don’t own Bleach, and my imagination is not for sale; we’re making love here, not money.

Description: Bleach is so full of implied romance, more so than most shounen manga. I didn’t have time to write complete stories, so I threw some sexy scenarios into drabbles. (I’ve noticed that this fandom is full of informal drabbles, so I skipped the hardcore word-counting this time and limited each drabble to under 1000 words). The eleven lovers here are: Urahara, Yoruichi, Shunsui, Nanao, Kenpachi, Unohana, Matsumoto, Gin, Soi Fong, Ishida, and Orihime (with guest appearances by Yumichika and Ikkaku).

Warnings: Some of these drabbles contain references to S-E-X, and as always, if you’re not caught up with the manga, you will be spoiled.

Dedicated to LisaB who is such a fine editor and who has been trying in vain to get me to read quality historical romances. To this date, the only romance I’ve read has been in fanfic.

Lovers #1 (Urahara and Yoruichi)

"I’ve made up my mind," Yoruichi whispered between kisses against Kisuke’s chest. "I’m going with you."

"But I thought…" Kisuke paused, his breath not the least bit ragged, even though Yoruichi was insistently tonguing one of his nipples.

"What?" Yoruichi raised her head to get a good look at his expression. As usual, it was placid… but maybe more stunned than placid. "You thought what, Kisuke? Everyone believes that your mind is full of such deep understanding, but I’ve known you since you were a boy. What did you assume this time, big thinker?"

"Uh… the obvious?" He was blinking, his blue eyes catching slivers of light from one short candle on the nightstand.

"You don’t get the obvious; you invent new ideas. That’s why everyone else thinks you’re so insanely brilliant. I think you should know better than to assume the obvious when it comes to me."

"Your point?"

"You thought that my life as Commander of the Special Forces was more important than my life with you."

"Yoru." He took her head in his hands. His mouth was curving into that slight smile that told Yoruichi that he was about to one-up her. "Tell me if I invented this or not: Soi Fong needs you."

"No!" It was Yoruichi’s turn to be stunned. "We--she--Soi Fong doesn’t need me. She’s a very independent woman."

Kisuke’s hands were sweeping in long strokes down Yoruichi’s hair. "As you are… supposedly." He looked too possessive; his face was too smug.

Yoruichi gripped her thighs more tightly around his hips and bumped her groin against his. The gesture was more antagonistic than loving. "Look, I’m coming with you tomorrow, but don’t expect me to stay with you every day and night. I will sleep and eat where I please. I expect I’ll have admirers and hangers-on, like Soi Fong, who by the way, does not need me--she--"

He kissed her. The kiss wasn’t meant to shut her up; Yoruichi could tell by the brief softness of it that it was just an impulsive expression of Urahara affection. By the time he had pulled away from her face, though, and was looking at her to finish talking, she had completely forgotten what she was going to say.

Kisuke grinned. Lucky for him he didn’t look too triumphant--just happy--or Yoruichi would have kicked him in the balls.

"Tonight is our last night in Soul Society," he said. "Let’s make it one to remember, ne?"

Years later, she would only remember those words and the speculation about Soi Fong before them. In Kisuke’s arms, whenever he held her, there was nothing but forgetfulness. Yoruichi would find that blissful nirvana with him, and only with him, for the next one hundred years.

Lovers #2 (Shunsui and Nanao)

Nanao-chan, what should I do?

Why are you asking me? You’ll just end up doing whatever you want. Don’t worry about me. I follow at a safe distance so that I don’t get dragged into anything.

But Nanao had not kept a safe distance at all; she had exhausted her shunpou chasing Captains Kyoraku and Ukitake into battle and had made herself a terrible liability.

Nanao could hear Shunsui singing in the hallways on his way to the office.

La la la la la la, where is the mail?

La la la la la la, beautiful spring….

The moment Shunsui had lain her body, still shivering from Yamamoto’s crushing spiritual pressure, on the grass, Nanao had believed that she would never ever again see her captain alive.

La la la la la la, flowers and hearts.

La la la la la la, hearts and flowers….

He wasn’t drunk, just singing. He was going to sweep into the room and annoy her. He--the bastard, how could he continue to keep doing this to her every morning, day in and day out?

She wasn’t going to let him flirt with her again!

The door swung open and Shunsui’s gaudy robes billowed in the rush of air. Then his deep voice was near her ear, and his lips were making that ridiculous smooching shape. "Nanao-chan, how’s about a good morning kiss for your foolish commander?"

She surprised him by grabbing his face and planting her lips against his. It was a quick, fierce kiss, and as she pulled away, she could hardly believe it had really happened. Her chest was heaving, and her eyes were narrowed with anger.

Shunsui looked like a brick had fallen out of the sky and hit him between the eyes. "Nanao-chan?" He took one step away when he noticed her furious face.

"Tell me I’m not pretty enough. Tell me I’m not stupid enough. I’m not going to be one of your many little female conquests."

Shunsui put his fingers to his lips. "You kissed me?"

"Yes, I kissed you. A good morning kiss for my foolish commander. Isn’t that all you wanted?"

His eyes brightened. His composure was returning and with it, a new understanding. He whispered his next words: "Give me one taste of sake, and I must have the whole bottle!"

When Nanao only stared, Shunsui raised his voice. "What’s this about not being pretty?" He was still touching his lips. "What are you talking about?"

"I’m not pretty--not like those other women you chase. The ones you drag into your bed and who sneak away before you wake up--probably because of the way you smell." Nanao didn’t know why her voice was barking. She felt tears forming in her eyes. "The way you flirt--it’s a knee jerk response. You’d flirt with me even if I looked like Vice Captain Omaeda."

Shunsui laughed. It was a deep, resonant laugh and it went on a good while. Nanao could only watch as the laughter shook the tall captain’s shoulders.

When the laughter at last subsided to a gentle chuckle, Shunsui allowed his eyes to meet his distraught vice captain’s eyes. "Ahhhh, my Nanao-chan." He let out a musical sigh. "I thought you knew everything. You seem so smart, you know. How could you not know the truth?"

"Truth?" Nanao’s voice wavered so much in that one word. She wanted to say more, but she was sure she was about to burst into tears. Shunsui was closing the distance between them again. The closer his face came to hers, the less flustered she felt. When all she could see were his long-lashed brown eyes, she felt herself speak again, in a steady voice this time. "What is the truth, Captain Kyoraku?"

"That you are beautiful, Nanao-chan," he murmured. "That you are … more worthy than all other women. That you do not mind at all if I stink. That you are the one who wipes the drool off my chin and writes my reports when I forget them." His hand reached for the comb in her hair. "And I am nothing without you, Nanao-chan."

"Yes," she said, not taking her gaze from his and feeling her hair spill past her neck. "The truth is that I am your nursemaid."

He pressed his forehead against hers. He didn’t smell of sake. He didn’t smell bad at all, in fact. It was morning and spring in Soul Society. He must have lingered in the Sakura orchard before coming to work.

"The truth is," he said, "that you are my love."

And he parted his lips and touched hers with a wet, gentle kiss. His mouth lingered there, breathing a floral scent against her face. He was waiting for her. He had been waiting for her all along.

So she kissed him back. This time her kiss was not so brief, not so fierce. This time she kissed him with all the gentleness with which he had held her that day of the battle. That day Nanao had wondered if she really had felt his lips on her forehead as he lay her down on the grass.

Nanao knew the truth now.

Shunpou: named after a scroll-painting stroke, an extremely fast movement achieved by top Shinigami

Lovers #3 (Kenpachi and Unohana)

All eleventh division warriors knew that their insane, bedraggled leader, despite never being injured, found many excuses to visit the fourth division building. At first they thought that Zaraki Kenpachi dragging one of his soldiers out of an infirmary bed was de rigueur treatment for anyone lazy enough to think that rest facilitated healing. Then it was Yumichika who observed that the captain didn’t annoy recuperating soldiers on days Captain Unohana was away doing fieldwork.

"He loves her!" sang Yumichika and clasped his hands.

"You’re nuts," said Ikkaku.

But Yumichika insisted that their captain had discriminating taste in women. "Captain Unohana is a poised and peaceful beauty. Think of it! She is the probably the only woman in all the Seireitei who isn’t rattled by Zaraki!"

Ikkaku chewed his bottom lip and considered the raven-haired Greatest Healer. "She’s probably a hellcat in bed," he said. "But with Captain? No way."

And so the two friends decided to investigate the rumored relationship. Every year Zaraki Kenpachi scheduled his mandatory physical with Unohana after-hours so that he could be spared standing in line and filling out forms in the "Building of the Weaklings"--or at least that was the excuse Kenpachi grumbled to his troops. Yumichika and Ikkaku found it no trouble at all to hide in Unohana’s supply closet during the evening shift.

The two friends hoped to catch a tidbit to entertain the troops. They didn’t expect that they would uncover a bona fide romance.

Captain Unohana entered the room first. Right away she shocked the guys peering through the door crack by hopping on the examining table and dropping her captain’s robe. She was wearing a skin-tight red mandarin dress that exposed her delicate white arms.

Captain Zaraki entered looking utterly himself--vicious and beady-eyed. Something like a smile cracked one corner of his mouth when he saw the dress.

"You’re supposed to take everything off for this examination, Captain," he said. His hand reached out, and his giant fingertips landed on Unohana’s jaw with astonishing tenderness. "But it is a very pretty dress. I like it."

There was a tinkling of bells as Kenpachi’s large head lowered, his mouth open and his eyes shut--

At that moment Unohana looked over her shoulder. "Ken," she said, "let’s go upstairs to the burn unit. I want to show you something there."

At that moment, the guys in the closet realized that while everyone in the eleventh division was pretty lame at detecting reiatzu, Unohana could probably sense spies in her examining room.

She threw on her captain’s robe and was out the door, with Kenpachi following obediently behind her.

"She’s smooth," whispered Yumichika. "She knew we were here."

Both warriors were ashamed. When they returned to their base, they agreed never to tell the rest of the eleventh division what they had seen.

Lovers #4 (Gin and Rangiku)

You always disappear without telling me where you’re going …Gin. --Matsumoto Rangiku, manga 133:05.

There could be no reconciliation this time.

Detachment, inconsiderateness--one could forgive those things in a lover. This time, though, Gin had committed high treason, had (probably) helped Aizen murder everyone in Center 46, and … the silver-haired bastard had actually dared to tell her he was sorry.

Rangiku rubbed her temples and wondered if a shot of plum wine would stave off her hangover.

She had experienced a tiny revelation last night drinking with Kira. Or perhaps the revelation was due less to her powers of perception than to the fact that the droopy-eyed young vice captain couldn’t hold his liquor well: Kira carries a torch for Gin too.

Oh, how the two toasted officers had rambled on about the charms of Ichimaru Gin! Gin’s breezy sense of humor, his wicked smile, the way Gin always made you feel like you were a special player in Captain Ichimaru’s wonderful game!

It had only occurred to Rangiku after Kira was gone that maybe she should have seduced Gin’s oh-so-vulnerable and attractive second in command.

Nah, Kira’s probably the kind that pukes in the morning.

Rangiku stirred juice and salt into her morning cocktail.

Gin had this way of turning everything around, of making you think that his desires were your idea. As nauseous and emotionally exhausted as she was, Rangiku could still feel the heat rising in her gut at the memory: Gin’s elegant thinness misplaced on her big pillowy couch… two silver lines of hair crossing at the center of his chest … white hipbones jutting forward… a pleasure so sharp it was like tasting the burn of bad liquor and not caring… because it was him, Gin, insinuating his cool skin against hers, Gin, Gin cutting her heart in half with his skeletal fingers….

Rangiku shot back the plum wine and snarled. "I should be celebrating, not grieving. I’m free of that scarecrow at last!"

The muscles snapping in her shoulders reminded her of being thrown off Gin’s body, how his reiatzu had flared unexpectedly, how the sword she had been holding to Gin’s neck became too heavy to lift, how he had turned and smiled: "I would have liked to have been held captive a little longer!"

That look. If only it had been icy and villainous Rangiku wouldn’t feel so sick now. But Gin had looked at her with a cavalier fondness: "See you, Rangiku." And then the word she still couldn’t believe she had heard him say: "Sorry."

The pain welled behind her eyes without relief; maybe she was too dehydrated to cry. Sorry. It would be just like Ichimaru Gin to say that and not mean it. Sorry. Another ploy to make her want him. Sorry. If there had ever been a drop of kindness in that body it should have commanded her to hate him.

Rangiku wondered how long she would miss him. If a hell butterfly brought word of his death, would she begin to miss him less?

"You’re going to die for certain," she whispered into her empty glass. "All you bad guys are so going down…."

Lovers #5 (Soi Fong and Yoruichi)

"The portal is being opened tomorrow," said Soi Fong. "This time, I have had seven days to think of how to say goodbye to you."

"Huh?" Yoruichi wound a scarf around her neck. "Goodbye?" She tossed the scarf away and tried a new one, a brighter pattern this time. "If I thought you’d wear any of these things, I’d bequeath them to you. The House of Shihouin was never known for its lack of flash. All these yellows and purples--ah, too much for a severe girl like you." She tore the scarf off her neck and tossed it against Soi Fong’s shoulder. The shiny fabric stuck to the black kimono.

"Bequeath?" Soi Fong sounded confused.

Yoruichi laughed. "You’re the one who’s speaking of me as if I’m about to die. Why do you have to give a goodbye speech?

"Yoruichi-sama, please let me say what I have to say to you."

"Gah!" Yoruichi dropped herself into the pile of scarves. "Please knock off the sama! I thought we agreed these seven days that the whole servitude of the Fong House to me was complete nonsense, finished forever, null and void."

"I made a personal pledge to you," Soi Fong said. Her voice was as serious as Yoruichi’s was carefree. "It is I, not the House of Fong, who pleads with you now to let me speak my piece."

"Alright, alright, speak, little bee."

Soi Fong opened her mouth and Yoruichi interrupted: "Soi Fong! Look around you! Isn’t there somewhere else you’d like to make this speech of yours? Somewhere more … decorous?"

"You’re making fun of me," said Soi Fong.

"I’m sorry," said Yoruichi, trying not to laugh. "But we’re in my childhood play-place. I used to come here to pretend I was a lost baby Hollow. Kisuke used to--"

"What I have to say doesn’t have anything to do with where we are. All those years ago when we pledged to always protect one another--did we speak those words in a palace? We spoke them in the outdoors. A place…" Soi Fong cast a glance around the oasis inside the cavern. "A place very much like this one."

Steam escaping from various hot springs in the cave made a slight whistling sound. Otherwise the air was still, the foliage green and serene. It was a place as magical and bright as Yoruichi herself.

"I wanted to hate you," Soi Fong continued, "but I didn’t know who you really were. Maybe… maybe if I had known about this place a hundred years ago, I would’ve understood why you left."

"Think about it," said Yoruichi. "I couldn’t bring you here back then. You belonged to a world of rules and rituals. This was where I played and trained with Kisuke. We were rebels--outcasts long before we left Soul Society. See these?" Yoruichi held up a handful of silk scarves. "Meant for a Shihouin princess! Kisuke and I used them to catch fish!"

"Do you have to always talk about him?" Soi Fong lowered her eyes and looked so grieved that Yoruichi face softened right away. "I know he was the reason you left but--"

"No, no, little bee!" Yoruichi was at her side, taking Soi Fong’s hands into hers. "Don’t believe that. I didn’t leave Soul Society for a man. I’m free, and you are too. Come now, say what you were going to say? Let’s hear this prepared speech of yours."

Soi Fong swallowed. "Yoruichi--" She paused to emphasize the absence of the honorific.

"Fong Shaolin was born to follow you. Soi Fong lived to follow you. When you left, I wanted to be where you were. But today I know, as you are saying, that I am free."

Yoruichi’s eyes brightened. "You know that?"

"Yes. I can stay here in Soul Society or I can choose to follow you tomorrow. Even if I stayed and I felt like I wanted to follow you … it would not be letting go of the role of living only for you."

"And this is why you want to say goodbye?"

"Yes. I know who I am now and that I belong here, with my troops. I am saying goodbye to the you I hated. The you who bound me to her. Not Yoruichi… but Shihouin Yoruichi who was everyone I wanted to be and could not be."

"Ah, I see." Yoruichi’s palm cupped Soi Fong’s face. "That bitch never existed. Do you understand that now?" A laugh, a bright cascading Yoruichi laugh. "So tell me, you are going to stay here and be the Commander of the Special Forces without bitterness? Are you going to lighten up now?"

Soi Fong’s eyes moistened, even as she smiled at Yoruichi’s playful words. "There are some things about myself that I can not change."

"I know." Yoruichi ran her thumb across Soi Fong’s cheek, came to rest on the tiny serious mouth. "I don’t know how to explain this to you, little bee, but I don’t believe in goodbyes. Bodies can move from place to place, but devotion does not live in our bodies."

And Soi Fong looked into Yoruichi’s eyes and understood.

Lovers #6 (Ishida and Orihime)

Ishida reached across the bed for her, but instead of taking her soft breasts in his hands as always, he lay one palm across Orihime’s flat, rosy-pink abdomen.

"Souken is a perfect name," said Orihime. "Of course, if our baby has orange hair like me, we could always name him Ichigo."

"Oh anything but that!" said Ishida, and they both laughed.

"I wonder," said Ishida, "if we ran across him or her in Soul Society. Imagine. The person who served us fish in the Shiba household could have been our unborn child."

"Or maybe," said Orihime, "our baby will be one of the men who died in that explosion, someone I tried to save but couldn’t."

Ishida didn’t answer right away. His hand had stopped its gentle motions across his wife’s abdomen. His eyes looked sad. When he spoke at last, it was in a barely audible, whispery voice: "Maybe we aren’t supposed to think about things like this, Hime. Whenever I have tried to make justice make sense in my mind, I have always gotten myself into trouble."

"Well, what’s life without trouble?" said Orihime. "All we can do in this life is follow our hearts. What happened in other lifetimes, what will happen tomorrow… doesn’t matter much."

He looked at her. The moment was perfect. Morning sunlight flooded the bed, and Orihime’s hair shone like a halo.

"What matters," said Orihime, "is that your heart led you to me."

End