You felt a single drop of rain on your face as thunderheads moved in rapidly. You hoped it would only be a sprinkling, but a few more moments proved you wrong as the storm rushed in. The smell of moisture hung thick in the air, coating your olfactory with a sweet yet acidic miasma. Unintelligible arrhythmic speech that sedimented around the span of the field like dregs from a stale cup of astringent coffee rose up into tumultuous roars of ire and hysteria as the cognizance of ensuing events set in among the discordant, fragmented ethos of your squad.
Torrential downpour deluged across the training grounds. It was a long walk to shelter, and your comrades were frantically clustering like festering colonies of famished hornets to go back to the barracks. You sheathed your sword and ran to regroup when you slipped on wet reeds and lumbered to the swampy turf, the rough terrain scraping your knees, stomach and face all at once. Lifting your head to regain equilibrium, you saw the silhouettes of your squad running back to the barracks as the water soaked through your socks and shihakusho.
It was going to be fun trying to get up and catch up with everyone.
Wet reeds all over your face, some conveniently stuck to the infernal ground rashes that sullied your cheek and forehead. Your short-clipped nails weren’t enough to remove the blades from the wounds and only made matters worse as they ground into the muddied, lacerated flesh.
There was no time for that. Worse pain had befell you before in combat; you would clean up when you got back.
You were about to help yourself to your feet when you heard a familiar, rich timbre.
“Y/N, shall we?” You looked up and saw a broad, towering figure offering a hand to you.
Sosuke Aizen.
Your lieutenant– and also your partner, illicitly so. The rest of the squad had not a smidgen of indication that you had been seeing each other in secret for a few months now.
How bold of him to stay behind. No matter. It counts as protocol.
He helped you to your feet. And then he swept you up.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’ll manage. It’s only a scratch.”
He brushed a thumb over your cheek to remove a lock of wet hair from the gash on your face, taking special care so as not to irritate it further. You hissed as the hair follicle swept over the abrasion, and he shifted his eyes, feeling sheepish for worsening the pain.
You reassured him that you would be okay, and insisted on joining the group later as the Seireitei never saw much rain of this caliber. You wanted to watch the storm— and you wanted to seize a rare moment alone with him.
The corner of his lips quirked up in agreement, but he didn’t put you down right away. You rarely got to share this type of solitude together; what with always having to be elusive, often escaping the grounds together or spending time in the library for just long enough not to be suspicious. You had not yet had any intimate physical contact save for subtle hand holding, so you were taken aback when he suddenly scooped you up.
The rain continued to rush down like the heavens themselves had burst when he finally let you step down, curling an arm around your waist and pulling you flush to his body.
A sudden roulade of frisson bloomed through your body at this gesture, but he was warm. You felt cascades of sweat mix with the rainwater at the close contact, but you felt completely impervious, even in the face of the most raucous of storms. The familiar, analeptic scent of the sodden grass mixed with the soft notes of ethereal mist captivated you, amplified by the unyielding embrace of his body heat and reiatsu as he held you tight.
You looked up to face him, eyes meeting for a brief moment before your gaze dropped to his sharp yet plush lips. It had become very difficult to exercise your decorum, and you had caught yourself staring at them on many the occasion as he spoke, fighting to keep yourself from kissing him, wanting to finally feel them for yourself; your heart threatening to crack your ribs at the idea of it.
And he was having difficulty too. You did yourself no favors with the way yours would pout and twist as you nervously put on airs thicker than Hollow reiatsu to keep your current situation covert in front of others, earning you a soft brushing of his hand on occasion as he would lick his lower lip in rapt contemplation of how you tasted. The tension ran thick, and an unspoken agreement manifested itself that this was long overdue.
And as the torrents continued to soak you through, you tugged lightly at the collar of his shikahusho, and he knew, because he had been waiting too.
His thumb grazed your lips to part them; to make room for his own. Time stopped and your chest flared up like an inferno.
And he kissed you, softly at first; pulling back enough to search your eyes in the darkened hues of gray sky without taking his lips off of yours. And you didn’t want him to, anyway; nothing could have braced you for how lush and warm they were despite the myriad of times you had stared at them whilst biting down on yours, the faint aroma of jasmine dancing across them; and your shared saliva mixed with the acidic taste of the rain that had soaked both of your faces.
It was surreal. You could wait a while to head back.
“No one’s around, put that modesty away, Lieutenant,” you whispered, lips brushing as you breathed each other’s oxygen.
How impudent. He would tuck that one away for when you got back to the barracks.
And then you both chased a storm of efflorescent chords and a fiery glow that rivaled any torrent in the heat of an unshaking foothold. It was going to be a challenge to keep yourselves a secret when you went back.
my brain, constantly rotating horse’s relationship with pax…. horse’s relationship with rex… horse’s relationship with pax’s relationship to rex… horse’s relationship with thistle and how it relates to horse’s relationship with rex and pax’s relationship with thistle and thistle’s relationship with rex… horse’s relationship with hollis… horse’s relationship with hollis’ relationship to rex… horse’s relationship with neha… horse’s relationship with hollis’ relationship to neha and neha’s relationship to hollis… horse’s relationship with neha’s relationship to rex:
So apparently there’s a sexiest podcast character bracket tournament thing going on and Dr Richard Strand from The Black Tapes didn’t even make the cut I am aghast
