Title: Glory In Surmounting, Chapter One: If Hungry, Eat
Author: Lys
Characters/Pairing: Pre-slash. Eventual Yumichika/Ikkaku, Kenpachi/Ikkaku/Yumichika.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 this chapter. Past!fic, eventually coming up to present.
Status: Incomplete ongoing. 2,000 words.

a/n: the bleach anime makes me want to write sex between weird people. and so, the zaraki squadron. And gay sex.



What beautiful eyes, Yumichika thought, the first thing that came to mind when he found the scrappy, freshly-dead man face-up in a ditch in one of the less-civilized districts on the edges of Rokungai, more than a day’s walk away from the shine of Seireitei. The man was quite tall and far too skinny for the attractive height that he had. He had puppy proportions, hands and feet larger than logically necessary and endearing to Yumichika’s sensibilities. Additionally, he was naturally bald but healthy-skinned, where you could see his peach-toned skin under the mud, at any rate.

What beautiful, searing, anger-dark eyes.

The bald man stared, scowling, up at Yumichika as Yumichika stared, blinking, down the edge of the ditch at the other man. Yumichika chewed at his full bottom lip, eyebrows knit in morbid curiosity. He cleared his throat, smoothing his chiming voice. “Would it be rude of me to ask what you’re doing in a ditch, sir?”

“Yeah,” the man scratched out, harsh and dry and full of hidden pain. “It fucking would be. What is this, a circus? People’re gonna start to stare. I mean, ones that aren’t you, jackass.” The words were rough, but his face smiled honestly.

Undaunted by foul language (rather, if he was honest with himself, encouraged), Yumichika slid carefully down the side of the ditch, held above the mud by the thick, femininely rounded heels of his ornamented geta. He held a well-manicured hand down, bending slightly at the knees as he sunk slowly into the wet earth. The man shook his head in irritation. It was obvious to Yumichika that the movement held great physical effort and that the man had all but reached his limit, head heavy and loose beyond the wide, sword-scarred shoulders.

“We’d best get you out of this ditch soon, sir. It’s about to rain torrents if the clouds are any judge, and in your state, you’re likely to drown.”

“What state would that be?” the man argued, but he reached up and grabbed Yumichika’s smaller hand anyway, cringing as he yanked himself out of the mud with a disgusting sucking noise. Yumichika wrapped an arm, swathed in the festive fabric of his kimono, around the other’s malnourished waist. He tutted in a motherly fashion, helping him bodily up the hill. The bald man leaned heavily against Yumichika’s slight but hard side; this was when Yumichika noticed what had been initially striking enough about the stranger to draw his rapt attention into a filthy water-runoff ditch. The pale but tangible pulse of reiatsu coming from the bald man’s form was hot and familiar.

“A smidge more than death warmed over, I’d say.” Yumichika’s petal-pink lips curved up in a delicate, relieved smile. “You honestly have no idea how lucky you are I saw you down there.” He nudged the man with his hip, getting him moving unsteadily down the dusty Rokungai street, zori scraping with each slow footfall.

“So you’re right. I have not a damn clue how lucky I am. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Yumichika chuckled softly, noise bubbling up from high in his chest. “How long have you been here, do you think? In whatever terms you can rationalize it. Don’t push yourself.”

“I have no idea.” He frowned, looking away from Yumichika and out into the distance, past Rokungai altogether. “Feels like I been here for years. Feels like I just got here.” He wobbled.

“Ah, so you’ve just got here, then.”

“Not exactly what I said.”

“But it is what you’re really saying, of course. I’ve got a place,” Yumichika sighed. “Very close to here. It’s not very large or very attractive, but I’m taking you there, so please, don’t put up too much of a fight.”

“Don’t take me lightly just because you found me dead in a ditch.”

“Of course.”

“Do you have a name?” Yumichika looked over at the bald man, questioning in the middle of his smalltalk. After all, you couldn’t rightly carry on a conversation with a man if you didn’t know what to call him, and you couldn’t spend a great deal of time thinking about him either, before the lack of a name would begin to rub on your nerves. Yumichika’s nerves were easily rubbed.

“I’m glad you asked,” smirked the bald man, white teeth showing beyond his thin, dehydrated lips. “My name’s Madarame Ikkaku.”

“Ikkaku,” mouthed Yumichika slowly, testing the feel of the word on his lips and tongue. “It’s an attractive sort of name. I think I’m going to like you, then, Madarame Ikkaku-san.”

“Just Ikkaku, thanks... none of that formalities crap, doesn’t feel like they matter much in a place like this.You got one?”

“Ayasegawa. Ayasegawa Yumichika.” Yumichika stopped walking for a moment, giving Ikkaku as much of a light bow as he could, supporting another person’s weight against him. Ikkaku held more tightly onto the silk of Yumichika’s kimono.

“Nice to meet you, Ayasegawa.”

“Yumichika,” Yumichika corrected with a wry, lopsided sort of smile. “I’ll call you Ikkaku, and you’ll call me Yumichika. It’s fair this way, and friendly.”

Ikkaku snickered at whatever it was he was thinking in his bald head, pleasantly warm against Yumichika’s side, even with all the mud. They made their way slowly down interlocking streets and alleyways, companionable silence cut only by the clack of a single pair of geta and the quiet slap of a hardwood bokuto against the naked flesh of a thigh. After some amount of time passed, perhaps thirty or thirty-five minutes, Yumichika brought them to their destination, a smallish three-storied building, clean but dismal.

“We’ve arrived,” Yumichika bubbled, slipping gently out of Ikkaku’s grip and sliding open a thin rice-paper door that hissed on its track. Ikkaku frowned, stepping over the thresh-hold. Yumichika followed the tired man, slipping his slightly muddy geta off inside the door.

“A little too damn trusting, aren’t we?”

“I prefer to assume that people, given the chance, will err on the side of Heaven. It’s a better thought than being suspicious of everyone and everything. Worrying will give you wrinkles, you know.”

“Yeah,” muttered Ikkaku, throwing himself heavily into a wooden chair close to the doorway, shoulders slumping heavily, head resting in his hands. “So will getting old.”

“I won’t have to worry about that here, will I? Getting old. Not for a hilarious amount of time, anyway.”

“The point was, this isn’t the sort of place you can leave your shit out, begging to be stolen and sold, or pissed on just because somebody could.”

“They won’t.”

“I might.”

“You won’t.”

“But I could if I wanted to.”

“So you could.” Yumichika raised a finely-shaped eyebrow at Ikkaku before disappearing into the depths of the small home with a short wave. He busily set a pot of water to boiling over a small fire-pit in the tiny kitchen, grabbing and setting aside some clean white rags. He slid a pair of chopsticks into a bowl of some sticky, warm vinegared rice from the counter. It was from that morning, and it was certainly simple—there was minimal technology this far into the outskirts of Rokungai—but, it would have to do. He reappeared in the doorway, staring at Ikkaku without speaking, large bowl in his hands.

Ikkaku favored him with a mixed expression, skin above his brow folding in concentration. Yumichika stepped over, pulling a chair of his own up and folding himself into it, bowl held out in front of him with the chopsticks sticking invitingly out. The rice was old, but it smelled sweet and had bits of nori hiding in it. “You should eat this. I’m certain you’ll feel a lot better if you do.”

Ikkaku took the heavy white and blue china-bowl full of food, nestling it between his legs. He stared strangely at Yumichika.

“Go ahead. Eat up.”

“I’m dead,” Ikkaku observed rationally, obviously under the impression that the afterlife was rational in any way, shape or form. Yumichika sighed, long-suffering, and pinched a small clump of the rice out of the bowl. He sat it daintily on his tongue and swallowed, demonstrating that it was entirely reasonable for the dead to be hungry.

“You’re not average, though. It’s no wonder I literally and not figuratively found you half-dead in a ditch. You’re so starving you probably blacked out and fell tumbling in, you poor thing.”

“I don’t think I understand where you’re comin’ from…”

“You will eventually. Eat it before I decide to take it back.”

A wet, pathetic noise came from Ikkaku’s stomach and eventually he resigned himself. He shoveled the rice into his mouth ravenously under Yumichika’s steady, amused stare. Yumichika watched his lips move, strong and bowed in the middle. They were, he believed, almost as beautiful as his eyes, but Ikkaku needed a few good meals in him and some water to bring back any suppleness they should have had.

Oh, right. The water. “Forgot something. Just a moment.” He excused himself and scurried back to the kitchen, removing the heavy pot from the glowing coals with a thick, rough towel. He dumped a portion of the steaming water into a bamboo bowl and snatched the white rags, carefully walking back to Ikkaku in the front room without spilling a drop. His balance was impeccable, as always. Ikkaku was finished with the rice and looked up to watch Yumichika come in, rubbing his scraped knees with his palms.

He looked as if there was a question on his tongue that he was aching to ask.

“Yumichika. Are you one of those, you know…okama, or something. Not that I’d have a problem with that. It’s all fine with me, whatever, it’s your thing. You wear all that…” Ikkaku waved up and down, a generalizing motion, gesturing at Yumichika’s expensive-looking patterned silk kimono, obi and long hair which was tossed over his shoulder in a Heian costume ponytail.

“No,” Yumichika said, heat rising on his cheeks. “For one, I’d never want to do something as droll as pass myself off as a woman if it wasn’t for theatre. It would be laughable and entirely apart from the point. And most okama are ugly. Most actual women are ugly.”

“Then what’s the point?”

An excellent question; Yumichika was unsure that he had the words to express the answer to it, himself. His violet eyes glanced at the ceiling, deep in thought. “The point is that there is no point. All the best things are pointless. It’s very pretty and I want to wear it. It looks good on me, don’t you think, Ikkaku?”

Ikkaku frowned. “I think you’re vain, and it’s going to get your ass kicked and robbed, is what I think.”

Yumichika smirked. He rolled the sleeves of his kimono up gently and dipped one of his rags into the steaming water, wetting it and then twirling it and wringing it out with fast, pointed hands. “So I’m vain; however, you’re sorely mistaken if you think anyone in this place is going to manage to kick my ass. What is it they say? You can’t judge a book by its cover, no matter how beautiful and expensive the cover is.”

Ikkaku raised both eyebrows, face suddenly interested by this talk of ass-kickings and deceptive book covers. “What do you mean by all that?”

“Visit me again some day,” Yumichika leaned forward and whispered coyly in Ikkaku’s large ear. “And maybe I’ll show you. But not today. There wouldn’t be any fun in letting my hair down when you’re sitting there in that state, like some stray dog.”

He pressed the damp fabric against Ikkaku’s head, giving it a few rough but careful scrubs, admiring the way the pale, bare skin reflected the golden evening light leaking in from the still-open doorway now that the rainclouds had left for someplace less dismal. Ikkaku neither moved away or protested the touch, unconsciously reacting to the strong reiatsu of the dark-haired man which answered his own.

Yumichika wet the top of his thumb in the bowl and ran it across Ikkaku’s dry lips. The other man’s eyes narrowed in confusion, his prominent adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed the last remaining bits of rice that were lingering in his cheeks.

Yumichika had wanted to do that for nearly an hour, now.