Gin and Rangiku Drabbles 1

There is a hole in the roof of our abandoned barn, our home.  It's slaking down rain through that hole, giving us no shelter.

She stands up in the rain because she thinks there's no escaping it anyway.  Her eyes are the same color of the grieving sky right now, but there are times when I catch them in a fugitive light that makes them a far brighter blue.  I would give anything to catch such a light for good, to shove such a light in a jar and feed it to her like thick golden honey, so that it would shoot out the tips of her hair and her fingernails and toenails and especially her eyes that grieve with the sky right now.

"Gin." She turns those eyes of cool pewter on me, frowning. "Gin, I'm cold. I'm wet."  Then she reconsiders standing to meet the rain head-on, and squats; her thighs, her milky calves, are beautiful. Her slender ankles, which the rain cleanses of a habitual peppering of dirt, are beautiful.  She is ore and heaven and her feathery tendrils of strawberry blond hair should not be waterlogged.  "Fix it, Gin."

Simple words, and she speaks them to me because it is an implicit truth that I will make everything better.  That has been my job for many, many years.  And I don't think I've ever reconsidered it. Never seemed to be a point in complaining.  Hell, it's clear. I'm the lucky bastard in this. The weird and hungry snake that the golden girl has stooped to need. I coil tightly around her.  I always will.

"'M'kay, Rangiku."  I stand in the stinking wet straw and saunter over, and I give her my mask—my slinking smile and squinting eyes—to reassure her, just by its consistency. I take off my threadbare robe, the one I wear over my black yukata with the white chain pattern down the left sleeve, and I drape it over her like a tent. I stand there over her like that, for hours. The time passes vaguely with the rain's pattering, and I realize my arms are shaking badly from strain.

I hear a giggling, and I perk my head up, and cock it to the side, and peer down inquisitively through the short sodden hair whose silver hue is my namesake.  That sound is a reward to me, a relief like warm food in an empty belly on a chilly winter night.  A chuckle stumbles out my mouth. "Nanda?" My arms are practically convulsing.

"Dumb Gin! Gin no baka, baka, baka," Rangiku titters, reaching up, curling her fingers around my gangly forearms, massaging them slowly and gently.  The hue rises hot in my cheeks and I feel myself throbbing and tightening at her touch.  "You could have just tied the ends to some poles or boards," my golden girl informs me as I struggle against the humming and roaring of desire in my ears.

"Na, Ran-chan," I hum. "Don't'cha get it? I want it so's I'm all ya need."

"You are," she insists, with zeal.  I love it when her face is like that. So wild and serious.  And there is a place on her right cheek, just by those full delicious lips, a mole that I always like to call her "dot" and kiss.  It wiggles when she talks and makes faces like this one.  

So I laugh again, which makes her punch me in the gut.   Her punches are pretty rough. I double over and keep laughing.

"You ARE, Gin! Don't get hurt for me, stupid. Not just to prove that to yourself. I'm wet again, Gin."

I snuggle up to her, and wrap us both in my robe.  "Iie, Rangiku. You'll see. Someday when we go places that're more special than here, everyone'll see yer so perfect. Everyone'll fight t'make ya laugh, an' kiss yer dot.  But don't feel sad, Rangiku. I'll be happy, coz that's how it should be."

"I thought you said you wanted to be all I needed."  She is both petulant and tickled.  I can tell.  She purses her lips when that is the case, and they are pursed right now.

I turn my face to peck her mole. "Sure, but. That don't matter. Like, you just stay warm an' dry, an' I won't feel the cold an' wet on me.  It's simple."

I have to shift away from her then to shield her from another onslaught of rain.  It seems natural to me, but she doesn't like this at all. She seizes both my arms and pulls me against her.  

"Someday you'll get it," she pledges through chattering teeth. "I'd rather be cold and wet too, than without you."

I don't know what to think or say to this. To me it seems so obvious, so fundamental, but Rangiku doesn't like it. She wants it another way.  I'll try to understand.  I'm bad at these things. I observe the world keenly, but somehow, I always miss emotional nuance, I miss…WHY one is supposed to be tender, or soft, when it is called for by others.  I can't even recognize it; I certainly can't muster interest in it.

Except with her.

So we cuddle, and I feel steam rising off me, and I imagine myself inside her, part of her, moving, not a slither, more a rocking, content and complete only thus.  One day it will be so.  One day I will be her sufficiency.