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The sweet sounds of morning birds chirping atop tall, majestic cherry blossom trees woke him up in the most pleasant way he could imagine in his life as a shinigami. It had been so long since he had a nice, peaceful slumber on warm, fluffy sheets.
The redhead smacked his lips softly, his eyes squinted from the soft morning light that went through the rice paper shoji. He roamed one arm across the cooling sheet beside him in euphoric bliss, the thick cover of the futon tucked under his chin. He belatedly noticed the heaviness on top of his other arm, another warm body pressed close to his sprawled one.
He smiled, turning to his side so he could tuck the raven head to his chest, his free arm curling around broad shoulders and tugging the slumbering man closer to his own body, until their legs were entangled to one another. It was so rare for him to wake up earlier than the raven, who was currently burrowing his face into the redhead’s sleeping robe, nuzzling against the hollow of his neck.
Peaceful morning, indeed.
The raven stirred in his sleep, unconsciously pressing himself further into the warm body that encased his own, his arm snaked around a lean torso and pulled the body tight against his. A surprised sound that escaped from the mouth above him made him open his eyes blearily.
“Byakuya,” Renji mumbled when the raven shifted so he was looking up at the redhead’s sleep-softened face.
“Renji," the name was slurred out from the noble's thick, sleep-laden voice.
The redhead closed his eyes in bliss as he kissed the raven locks covering Byakuya’s forehead.
“Good morning.”
“It’s rare for you to be like this,” Renji teased languidly, an idle hand running through the soft, black tresses free from their bone-colored ornaments. The other’s hand around his back was caressing his own, loose scarlet strands.
“I cannot?” the question was delivered so innocently, shining slate orbs locking into his own with a childish frown, mouth curling into almost a pout, that Renji felt his heart beat just a little bit faster and his blood rushing to his face.
“You absolutely can.” Renji simply couldn't win against those eyes.
Hiding a satisfied smirk, Byakuya tucked his face underneath his lieutenant’s chin and burrowed into the other’s warn neck, kissing the soft crook and collarbones, his arm coiling just a tad tighter around the other. The sound of soft heartbeats music to his ears.
It would be only in his sweetest dreams that these kinds of mornings would last forever. Or at least last a little longer, before they have to get up and work.
“Captain Kuchiki is a bit different nowadays, don’t you think?” Matsumoto Rangiku mused aloud. They were just finishing off their daily lieutenant meeting, already prattling off to idle chats amongst themselves.
Ise Nanao nodded, pushing up her glasses in contemplation.
“Hm, yes. It’s like he’s,” she paused, struggling to find the right word, “kinder?”
“More approachable?”
“Friendly?” both shuddered at the word. A ‘friendly’ Kuchiki Byakuya?
They came to the same conclusion with a simultaneous clap of hands. “Softer.”
“Don’t you think, Renji?” Matsumoto called out at the redhead who was passing them by, unwittingly hearing their conversation.
Renji blinked. “E-eh?”
He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “Well...”
“That is all for today’s agenda,” the Captain-Commander adjourned the meeting for the day, dismissing the other captains to continue their daily activities.
“Thank you for the hard work, fellow captains,” Kuchiki Byakuya said before leaving the large room with leisurely steps, his windflower scarf fluttering behind him.
The entire room froze. “Did he just—”
“Kuchiki Byakuya just thanked us for our ‘hard work’,” Soi Fon gaped in disbelief.
“What has the world become,” a dumbfounded Hitsugaya Toshiro rubbed his temples, his head replaying the moment over and over again. Even in his short career as a captain, he had never expected such... astonishing display.
“That’s what having a partner do to you,” Kyoraku Shunsui let out with a smile, catching the look on Ukitake’s face. They felt like proud parents, almost.
“Captain, have you heard what people are saying?” Renji looked up from his paperwork in a reminder of something. It was later in the day, only some half-hour before their work was done for that day. The room had gotten somewhat quiet and Renji decided to fill in the silence with some idle talk.
Byakuya hummed from his desk, reading through a proposal. “What of, lieutenant?”
“Um,” the redhead hesitated, his brush hovering on top of the well in his inkstone, “apparently they think you’ve gone... soft?”
Byakuya paused in the middle of signing the approved proposal, his eyes softened. “Have I?”
At the prolonged silence, he hid a smile and stood up from his seat. Renji was watching him wearily as he rounded his large desk and approached the redhead’s work station.
“Have I, Renji,” the captain placed a hand behind Renji’s seat as the other rested casually on top of his paperwork scattered on the wooden desk, “as you said, gone ‘soft’?”
“You do glare less, I guess,” Renji listed off, avoiding the irresistible, doe-eyed look on his captain’s face, ignoring the warmth of Byakuya’s hand that grazed against the back of his shihakusho, “and one time you smiled at the twelfth seat that he fainted, I think?”
“I mean it’s good that you scare fewer people, I guess. The recruits started talking about you in good light rather than being too scared to say anything at all. But the SWA definitely will be trying to get more sneak pics of you, you know, so that’ll be a prob—mmph,” Byakuya swoop down at the babbling lieutenant with a breathtaking kiss.
Renji melted against his seat, his hands grasping blindly at his captain’s pristine haori as he closed his eyes in bliss at the warm lips pressed languorously against his own. He almost let a probing tongue entry to his cavern when he heard the steps of several shinigami passing by the office door that he remembered where they were.
He dejectedly pulled away from the raven’s kiss, stammering a half-assed excuse that “this is not appropriate, captain!” with a scandalous look on his reddened face.
Unheeding of his lieutenant’s excuses, the Kuchiki pulled at the other’s chin with his fingers, turning the embarrassed face to him, and said, “are you perhaps... jealous?”
With that, the dim red on Renji’s skin spread across his entire body, the tips of his ears were scarlet and his heart rushed like a race car. He gaped, mouth opening and closing like a fish, unable to form coherent thoughts let alone speak them through his jerking mouth. It amused Byakuya to no end to see his beloved redhead so utterly flustered in his presence.
Closing his mouth with a firm set in his jaws, even as his lower lip trembled with nerves, Renji looked down to hide his embarrassment. He wouldn’t want to shame himself further in front of his enigmatic captain by showing him a convincing impression of a beached fish.
Suppressing a chuckle, Byakuya tugged once again at the other’s chin, his eyes froze at the look Renji was giving him. His eyes were red-rimmed and glassy, chocolate brown orbs flickering underneath flutters of scarlet lashes, lips were red from their previous lip lock, a plump, bottom lip jutting out in an adorable pout that he would deny later on, and his sun-kissed skin was flushed red, giving him a warm, peachy complexion.
Byakuya gulped. Was the lieutenant deliberately trying to seduce him with that look?
No, he knew better. Renji was always so defenseless, it irritated him.
Touching both sides of flushed cheeks in his hands, he leaned down until he was eye-to-eye with the confused, flustered redhead.
“Never show this face to anyone,” Byakuya warned deeply, “ever.”
Renji blinked.
There was a reason Byakuya never allowed Renji to go out and drink with his friends.
“B-but captain it’s the only time I can hang out with the others!” Renji sputtered out in indignation as they walked out of the office for the day.
“If you so wish it, Renji, you may.”
At Renji’s excited perk, he added, “but I will be accompanying you.”
Renji was only happy that Byakuya would give his friends a chance.
He didn’t know that Byakuya came not to make ‘friends’. In fact, perhaps he was the only one who didn’t know Byakuya’s real intention, what with his friends seemingly shrinking away from the redhead when Byakuya was seated beside him.
Byakuya came as a deterrent.