Chapter Text
It was never anything more than casual sex. It was the kind of dirty, hardcore, secretive relationship that had men sweating bullets every time they passed a temple. As addictive as it was, however, as passionate as it always became, it didn’t amount to much of anything, in the end.
They didn’t amount to anything.
Kurotsuchi wasn’t the type of partner that he could ever acknowledge in public when the man himself was so unrepentantly vile. Admitting to bedding Kurotsuchi, of all people, was as good as tearing open the Gates of Hell, inviting the mocking jeers of every man who heard of the scandal through the grapevine. Bedding a pig wouldn’t have thrown Zaraki into half as much disgrace. When he couldn’t even begin to comprehend the shame, he knew that Kurotsuchi was a lover better kept in the dark, shoved into the back of his closet with the rest of his skeletons.
Considering the secrecy of their relationship, the little white lies and the lies by omission, they were a far cry from proper lovers. They’d worked together for over a century, and yet Zaraki didn’t know the first thing about the man: not what kind of food he liked or what he did for fun, apart from scribbling at some desks and bending over others. They couldn’t even be called friends with benefits when there wasn’t anything friendly about them. Kurotsuchi was more a one-night stand that just so happened to have a little longevity. He invited him back, night after night.
Gods, but he was sick; Zaraki couldn’t stop himself.
Not when Kurotsuchi was as wild in the bedroom as he was outside of it. Scrappy and fearless, fierce and bold, where the women that Zaraki had brought back in the past were all kinds of animal-wary: doe-eyed and foal-legged. Staring at his dirty apartment and his mess of sweaty clothes, they’d inch back towards the door, losing interest by the second. He wasn’t naïve. He knew they stayed only for the bragging rights, to claim they seduced a man of his rank and power. It was always the same song and dance: those women, laying corpse-still, eyes screwed shut against the dark. Missionary with the lights turned off. Zaraki wanted something a little bit more passionate. It was a damn shame that it had to come from Kurotsuchi, but if that was the way it had to be, then Zaraki could live with that. Even if he couldn’t stand that nasty old bastard once the sun came up, Zaraki had to admit that, as far as lovers went, Kurotsuchi wasn’t bad.
Maybe he was even the best he’d ever had.
For two hours or maybe three hours, night after night, their short, little fuse burned brighter than the sun. Flames licking up to the sky, it blazed, and it crackled, it howled and roared, only to sputter out to ashes when the magic wore away.
It was never enough. It left Zaraki wanting, every single time.
It was casual sex. That twisting tightness in his chest, crushing his ribs and tugging at his tendons, was only lust and nothing more. Zaraki was fine with the status quo. Fine with two-hour passion and the following frigidity. Fine with sleeping alone, and going to work, and realizing that Kurotsuchi wouldn’t even look at him when daylight came.
He was fine with all of it.
As the days went on, however, it became harder for Zaraki to remind himself of that. He had to start reciting the facts to himself every morning, just to keep himself grounded: it was only ever casual sex, and it wasn’t as though he wanted more. Every time he passed the towering gates of the Twelfth, however, Zaraki began to doubt. From the distant road, he could see it beckoning to him. It called to him, a mesmerizing chant. Sunlight crawled, lethargic, upon the moss-covered statue of Jizō Bosatsu, keeping its eternal, silent vigil.
There was always incense burning at its altar. Kurotsuchi hung charms from its shrine and left little offerings during the holidays, but he didn’t fool Zaraki. Not for a second. That cynical bastard didn’t believe in anything, much less in gods or holiness. Placing that stone figure in front of his gate was nothing more his bad attempt at perpetuating a cosmic joke. That a heathen’s Zanpakutō should share the name of a holy man was somehow the most entertaining notion that Kurotsuchi had held in ages. Zaraki didn’t see what was so damn funny about it, but his partner always had a strange taste for irony. Good and evil were two sides of the very same coin, nothing more than social constructs, based on perception. The twin Jizōs were evidence enough of that. It was a philosophy that Kurotsuchi had explained in the meeting hall, once, and something that Zaraki hadn’t understood.
Not until one bright, summer morning, when he’d glanced at that very same statue that he’d seen a thousand times in the past, only to feel a new, unfamiliar wave of feeling overcome him, seeking asylum. It melded deep with his perpetual shame, coming together like oil and water, coexisting yet distinct in its color. It wasn’t until he saw Kurotsuchi again, later on that evening, that Zaraki recognized the feeling as longing.
It horrified him, sending rancid bile bubbling up his throat.
Disgusting as it was, wrong as it was, it had been the very first time that Zaraki had considered whether it was possible to have some variation of fondness, or at the very least some misguided attachment, for someone that he hated. In the face of Zaraki’s turmoil, Jizō Bosatsu offered no answers. It smiled back at him, calm and expressionless, every bit as enigmatic as the man who burned incense at its altar.
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It must have been another cosmic joke, another bout of ironic absurdity, for a man as horrifically ugly as Kurotsuchi to look as lovely as he did, beneath the pomp and circumstance.
Beneath his makeup, he was… beautiful.
That was a revelation that would never sink in, no matter how many times Zaraki witnessed the miracle. Every time, it stunned him. Bare-faced and naked, Kurotsuchi carried himself with all the effortless confidence of a man who knew he was handsome – and who couldn’t care less about the fact. Zaraki didn’t know whether it was beauty or the confidence that held him like a spell.
All he knew was that he’d been cursed from the start, plagued with a deep and solemn desire, a heated lust, in spite of his disgust for the man, when the paint came back on. With every night, the longing grew, a potent poison in his veins. It spread like ivy, slow and sinister, yet with the strength to pierce through concrete. It set his heart racing every time he saw it: the shamelessness and beauty.
Every time he left him after sex, whether bleeding on the desk or collapsed in the corner, he wanted, not to rub salt in Kurotsuchi’s wounds, but to pick him up and hold him close. The desire, the revulsion – it tormented him. Kurotsuchi tormented him, haunting his nightmares in the darkness and his daydreams in the light.
It was enough to make a man sick.
Zaraki couldn’t deny it any longer. He was sick. Painful as the prospect was, he couldn’t keep living the way that he did, limiting himself to two hours of bursting, beautiful color every night, only to return to dullness and drudgery once the spell was broken. He had to find the remedy. Something had to change sooner or later. Either that, or he’d succumb to the inertia and gravitas.
With Kurotsuchi kneeling on the floor after yet another night, Zaraki stood, silent, with his back against the wall. It made for a pathetic sight: a towering goliath, fully clothed, brought to heel by a naked man, defeated and shivering. Zaraki knew, however, that appearances were deceiving, when it came to Kurotsuchi. Small as he was, that man was anything but a helpless lamb. Though every one of Zaraki’s better judgements screamed at him to kick that snake out into the cold and restore some semblance of normalcy to his life, when he inched closer, when he looked down at the man, pity took the place of reason. Zaraki cleared his throat and tried his best to quiet his voice.
“You want to spend the night?” he asked, feigning nonchalance – and half expecting Kurotsuchi to laugh him out of the room for being soft enough to ask. He’d always spat in the face of charity, that cynical son of a bitch. Whether he was the target of such kindness or not was inconsequential, both, equally worthy of his scorn.
Zaraki sucked in an anticipatory breath and waited for Kurotsuchi’s vitriol. He waited and waited, but the venom never came.
In its place, Kurotsuchi went silent. He sighed a sigh so deep and weary, it sunk his shoulders, robbing the strength from his quivering bones.
Staring, paralyzed, Zaraki swore that he could feel the weight of it. It froze the blood in his veins. Turned his limbs to lead. Kurotsuchi stood, and Zaraki made way for the king, watching in muted horror as bright, red blood trickled down his thighs and pooled around his ankles. It sank into the cracks of the worn, tatami mats, seeping down into the belly of the earth.
“It’s fine if you want to stay,” he continued, mumbling under his breath. The timidity shamed him, considering the war that came before it. Zaraki stretched his back, and he felt his wounds reopen. Angry, parallel rows in perfect sets of five began to slowly crack and splinter, exposing fresh, warm blood to the open air. The part of Zaraki that was the most base could not help but hope that the wounds would scar. “It’s better than walking back in the rain.”
“On the contrary,” Kurotsuchi mumbled, before flicking his tongue over his busted lip. Zaraki focused in on that quick flash of bright pink, searing the color into his memory. He swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. “Trudging about in the storm, waist deep in mud, would make for quite a fitting walk of shame, now, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah right,” he scoffed, glancing down at him in a lethal, intolerable combination of desire and disgust. “You’ve never been ashamed of anything in your life, whether it’s blowing up your own men, beating the shit out of your daughter, or bending over for me. You don’t give a damn about anything. …But you might as well stay, if that’s the way it is.”
“You’re strangely insistent about that. What are you trying to accomplish by keeping me here?”
“I ain’t trying to ‘accomplish’ anything. Why do you always so damn suspicious of me?” Zaraki quipped back, already regretting his decision to offer him a bed. “I’m trying to do the right thing, for once. I owe you that much. I know we ain’t friends,” and they sure as hell weren’t lovers, “but you’re still…”
Kurotsuchi’s golden irises slid towards the corners of his eyes, glancing at him from the edge of his peripheral vision. Wide-eyed and unnervingly expressionless, the man showcased nothing but a meager curiosity, accompanied only by a gentle tilt of his head.
“Do continue,” Kurotsuchi prompted, refusing to let him go so easily. “What am I? ‘We are not friends,’ you say, ‘but I am –‘”
“Nothing.” Zaraki muttered, barely audible. Kurotsuchi was nothing. “I just feel responsible for fucking you up. That’s all I’m saying.”
“What. Are you talking about this?” Kurotsuchi scoffed, swiping his thumb against his lower lip. When he pulled it back, holding his hand towards the light, his dark skin shimmered a bright and beautiful crimson. “This is no different than any other night.”
“No, it is. You always look like shit after I’m done with you, but it’s never been this bad. Look… we don’t have to make this awkward. You can take the bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“My, how very generous: a pox-infested set of blankets,” Kurotsuchi replied in unamused monotone, holding eye contact as he smeared his bloody thumbprint onto Zaraki’s shelf in protest. “One night curled up in that mess, and I’ll be dragging bedbugs back to the Twelfth.”
In truth, Zaraki had been expecting a rejection from the start, but not one professed with such scathing revulsion. Caught off guard, his mind went blank, leaving him helpless. Tongue turned to lead, all he could was watch in paralyzed silence as Kurotsuchi’s condescending scowl slowly turned upward. Baring his teeth, slowly, what had started as quiet hum turned into roaring, all-out laughter, shrill and cruel and piercing.
Kurotsuchi was laughing at him.
Tightening his fists by reflex, Zaraki regretted ever showing him pity. He should have knocked out Kurotsuchi’s teeth when he still had the chance.
“You’re an ass,” he interjected, cutting off his incessant cackling. “You know, every time we do this, and I see you bleeding on the floor, I feel sorry for you – and I start thinking that maybe you ain’t as big of an asshole as I always thought you were. But then you start saying stupid shit like this, and you prove me wrong, every damn time.”
“Of course, I do,” Kurotsuchi sneered back at him, “What did you expect from me?”
In truth, upon further reflection, Zaraki didn’t know what it was he was expecting. Gratitude, perhaps, or maybe just a little bit of recognition – a trace of mutual understanding that they meant something, anything, more to each other than just the simple sum of their parts. But even in the face of his kindness, Kurotsuchi was just as dismissive of him as he always was.
Wordlessly, Kurotsuchi turned his back to him and began gathering up his discarded clothing.
“I don’t know,” Zaraki said, “Some damn decency, for once?”
Clearly, Kurotsuchi hadn’t been expecting a response. At the first sound of Zaraki’s voice, he paused, frozen, half-reaching for his hat. From behind him, Zaraki could see the slow shift of his vertebrae, one bone at a time, as he straightened his back.
“Have you ever heard the tale of the farmer and the viper?” Kurotsuchi asked, suddenly, after some time. The question, coming out of nowhere, caught him off guard, leaving him stammering.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Zaraki asked.
Ignoring his question, Kurotsuchi pressed on, undeterred.
“One frigid, winter night, a farmer awakens to find a viper curled on his doorstep. The creature, freezing and hungry, teeters on the brink of death. Upon closer inspection, he recognizes the marks on its body and identifies it as the very viper that had been killing his sheep all throughout the autumn months, causing his family unspeakable hardship. Though he has the opportunity to dispose of the beast, the farmer is a generous man. He takes the viper into his home and cradles it in his lap, warming it beside the fireplace. Under his care, the creature slowly stirs and looks up towards its savior. As thanks for the farmer’s act of heroism, the viper turns and bites him on the wrist, killing him instantly, before slithering up the stairs towards his wife and infant daughter.”
Zaraki blinked back at him, dumbfounded and confused, waiting for the punchline – but Kurotsuchi simply grabbed his makeup kit and started making his way to the bathroom.
“And?” Zaraki asked with an incredulous scoff.
“That’s it,” Kurotsuchi shrugged. “It’s a cautionary tale. Never second guess a person’s nature. Even in this room, bare-faced and injured, I am still the man you’ve always known. You won’t be getting any decency out of me.”
He looked so handsome with that bold smile, fiercely cunning, with his golden eyes, just barely hidden behind a veil of dark, blue hair. Reaching behind him, Kurotsuchi gathered up his braid and pulled it over his shoulder, tugging out the ribbon.
“That why you dress up like a monster?” he muttered. “So no one ever doubts what kind of guy you really are?”
“Would you prefer that I presented myself like this in an active attempt to deceive the others through good appearances? To make them believe that I am any less dangerous than I truly am?” He spread his arms wide, shamelessly showcasing his body. Kurotsuchi was shockingly thin, beneath his haori: soft and frail. A scholar’s frame. Bone-white makeup hid tanned skin, never calloused. “Well… there’s an idea. People are easily swayed by pretty words and comely faces. It’s a glaring failure of the human condition. I am certain that even the most unsavory of my experiments would be met with far less criticism, were they presented by a man who looked like this. …Perhaps I would be met with far less criticism. You’d hardly be the only man I’d lure to my side. I can already imagine it: everywhere I walk, I am surrounded by a swarm of potential partners, simpering sycophants, all of them. Why, I’d have to start batting them away just to clear my path forward. Or perhaps I could take my pick. Perhaps I could find a worthy man who venerates me like a king instead of being stuck, here, with a filthy brute who ravages me as though I were nothing more than a punching bag.”
It was all talk. Kurotsuchi would never leave him, especially for someone who treated him well. He came to him precisely because he fucked him hard and smacked him around. Even so, the implication was clear: he could do better, easily, when he looked the way he did. Underneath that mess of makeup and gold, Kurotsuchi was precisely the type of sullen, tanned, little pretty boy that the women of Seireitei couldn’t resist. On top of that, he was clever. A hard worker, an ambitious leader, and a good conversationalist. He’d have had no problem finding a lover, or even a spouse, if only he’d change his horrible sense of style – and drop the attitude.
Compared to him, Zaraki was an ogre.
“You know what? Forget I said anything,” he replied, turning his back to him to pick up the fragments of broken cups and plates, knocked off the table through the course of the night. “Hurry up, do what you need to do, and get the hell out of my house.”
“I never intended to do otherwise. I’ve spent far too much time here, already. I can practically feel the bedbugs biting.”
Without so much as a parting word, Kurotsuchi grabbed his things and disappeared behind the bathroom door. Zaraki could hear the turning of the locks and the slide of his door stopper – as if Kurotsuchi really didn’t trust him to resist the urge to go barging in.
As though he hadn’t seen him naked, already.
There was nothing new about it. He’d seen Kurotsuchi in far more compromising positions that stepping into a shower, of all things.
From the other side of the bathroom door, which may as well have been a sealed vault, at that point, Zaraki could hear the gentle squeak of his shower faucet and the steady stream of water – scalding hot. As though Kurotsuchi couldn’t leave his house without throwing one last metaphorical “fuck you” his way, the rat bastard always drained his hot water after every shower. He dirtied all his clean towels and tossed them right on the bathroom floor, right next to the bin, before disappearing wordlessly into the night. For the hundredth time, Zaraki considered living up to Kurotsuchi’s most derogatory perceptions of him. One day, he would barge through that door and drag him out by his hair before he could even think of making another mess.
But Zaraki knew it wasn’t the time.
When he looked down at the blood on the floor and at the little clump of long, blue hair discarded on his desk, he decided, once again, to stay his hand and leave him be, just like he always did. Kurotsuchi could rack up the water bill all he wanted. It was easier to ignore the annoyance and consider it payment for the thrilling displeasure of his company.
In the meantime, Zaraki busied himself with cleaning up the mess: the broken lightbulbs and torn papers, the chairs, strewn about in the frenzy. Even in the middle of chores, however, Zaraki couldn’t stop his mind from wandering back to the treasured, reviled memories of their time together.
He tried to focus on the hatred and the violence, of Kurotsuchi, clawing at his hands as Zaraki tightened his grip around his neck. Kurotsuchi, growling at him in protest, spitting blood against his cheek when he was too beaten down to struggle.
Unpleasant as the memories were, they were better than the alternative – remembering the curl of his toes and the quiet whimpers when he came. He was always brash, at first, but Kurotsuchi was a startling quiet lover, at the end of it all, once the pride and the outrage were beaten out of him. It was every bit as terrifying, as horrific, as it was unexpectedly beautiful.
Zaraki was never going to cure himself with thoughts like that.
After almost an hour, the bathroom door slammed open. A haze of steam, obscuring Zaraki’s view, burst into the living room, and Kurotsuchi emerged in full regalia, cold and pristine against the backdrop of his living room. His headdress shimmered in the moonlight, all polished gold, just like his false beard and his piercing eyes. With his face, fully painted, and his wounds, sewn and healed, it looked almost as though he’d never been touched. Not by Zaraki. Not by anyone. He looked like a pharaoh brought back from the Duat, perfectly preserved, walking straight out of the pyramids. He’d wander the world in search of his canopic jars.
Kurotsuchi the king was something monstrous – and he was perfect, perhaps even more than the man underneath the mask. Zaraki didn’t know whether to disparage that costume, if only out of habit, or to finally give in and admit, in stunned disbelief, that he was beautiful in spite of it. Before Zaraki could make up his mind or to foolishly ask, once again, for him to stay, Kurotsuchi had already returned his makeup case to its hiding place beneath the broken floorboard underneath Zaraki’s rug.
It was hidden in the dark with the rest of his skeletons.
Without so much as a wave goodbye, Kurotsuchi stalked right past him and was halfway out the door. He didn’t even turn to look at him as he left. Zaraki knew that he shouldn’t have felt as betrayed as he did, when Kurotsuchi didn’t owe him anything. It was only casual sex. They’d both gotten what they’d wanted; there wasn’t anything left between them, there was nothing holding them together, once the transaction was complete. Their spark had caught on its wick, and blazed, and burned out for the evening, smothered by the shower stream.
What charming spell had held them had finally been broken.
It was the same as every other night, and yet at that particular moment, Zaraki couldn’t stop a wave of familiar emotion from washing over him. It was the same melancholic desire that he’d felt every day, as of late, passing by the statue of Jizō Bosatsu. For some strange reason that he couldn’t discern, every time Kurotsuchi left him, it became just a little bit harder for Zaraki to stand by his window and track his movements from the glass. It pained and it soothed him. It was an agonizing balm, watching Kurotsuchi’s distinctive, kingly figure disappear into the darkness, walking farther and farther away from him.
That night, when he saw Kurotsuchi pass the gate, he couldn’t bear to watch him any longer. Zaraki turned his head away from the window and distracted himself with the cleanup. When he gathered up the loose lock of hair on his desk, however, when he twisted the strands, strong and bright as cobalt, around his fingers, he cut off his blood and let his fingers turn blue, pretending he’d been plagued by the viper’s bite.