A/N: Cuz why not?

Piano Keys

What would you do if your lover pointed a gun at your head?

The answer doesn't have to make sense.

The keys of the piano felt cold and slick under his fingers, an assembly of music notes locked in the hard teeth of the instrument where they cried out or wept every time Gin stroke them. The movements were there, but somehow dulled, thoughtless, like a decision made amids the contours of a dream. His eyes were almost closed as his hands danced their half-aware dance, and his slightly bowed head, the dimming light of the approaching evening and the quiet suburbia outside threw a cover of calm over him. He didn't need any sheets of crinkled pages to guide him or any mentors to whisper the correct following step in his ear; the symphony was buried very deeply and thoroughly in his mind, in the very texture of thoughts beneath the threshold of human perception. This was easy. Relaxing. And when he felt the end approach, the avid, agony-saturated melody fading down into resignation, something inside him gave a weak jolt – a twitch of apprehension and bitterness that was swallowed in the caverns of his apathy.

The idle, emphatic clapping that came behind him was expected and unnecessary. He didn't react to it with the startled leap his spectator may have expected, but after a moment of so, he did spin around on the piano bench to face the other, his unnatural grin plastered widely across his face.

"That was beautiful," the scarce audience appraised with a mildly mocking tinge in his voice. Gin nodded his head in appreciation.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm not sure I'll have the chance to perform anything else any time soon."

Gin didn't even look at the gun pointed at his head. His attention was solely on the person holding it, the black leather gloves and dark, perfectly isolated military boots and clothing that hugged the killer's entire body from head to toe. If it weren't for the unusual attire and the weapon in his hand, Toushiro might've looked like a completely ordinary guest, making himself at home at his boyfriend's house. He was seated on the end of the sofa, half-slumped across it with one leg folded under the other and his right elbow propped on the hand-rest while he lazily took aim.

"Muffler?" Gin suggested, arching a brow. "I see you got one."

Toushiro blinked and glanced down at the gun as though he couldn't quite remember if Gin was right or not, then straightened the muzzle again. He was holding the lethal weapon like one might balance a glass of whiskey – a relaxed, almost friendly manner that gave the false sense that the thing could be knocked out of his grip with little to no effort.

"Sure. Only the best for you."

"I can't hear you very well with that thing over your mouth."

It took a few seconds of still silence, but then, eventually, Toushiro reached up with his free hand and hooked a gloved index finger around the black scarf covering the lower half of his face to his eyes, pulling it down under his chin. The gesture was somewhat condescending – as though he was doing the man a mildly jarring favour that couldn't be helped.

"Better?" he asked, the corner of his lips tugging in an ironizing smirk as he tilted his head to the side, regarding his lover humorously. There was a tiny dark spot under his jawline – barely visible, barely there, but Gin knew where to look and the presence of the love-bite made but a few days ago made him want to laugh and laugh until he ached all over.

"Immensely," he said instead, and dropped his palms on his thighs, sighing in unnatural, inexplicable content. The music was still ringing softly in his mind, a gentle echo that eased his nerves to the extents to which there was only numbness left, and willingness to accept defeat. "I suppose it wasn't difficult to get in? You having a key and all?"

"Piece of cake. Would've even said hi to the neighbor if… you know," Toushiro gestured almost forlornly at what he was wearing. "I'm not decent."

"Aizen is sending his kind regards?"

"Yup, he is," Toushiro's hand went over the spine of the gun, pulling the hammer back with something oddly akin to a loving caress. The jagged click of it came out playful and teasing; something of a jest, thrown sideways into an overly serious conversation. "He says he'll miss you very much."

Gin's smile thinned and withered as he watched. The fear that was obliged to come was stalling and stalling – perhaps he was in denial, or perhaps he had just accepted and buried his own soul a long time ago. Or maybe he thought it was fair that Toushiro would be the one to take his life away – he couldn't be sure. He only knew for a fact that the suffocating, crushing feeling of betrayal that he wished would collapse him would not arrive, and all that he could see now, could ever see, was the man he loved, right there in front of him. Planning to kill him.

"Can't say it's mutual," Gin found himself saying with a half-hearted shrug. "I'm a little disappointed – it took him longer than I expected."

Toushiro's eyes flickered up with curiosity and for a minute there he resembled a child, fascinated by the response or explanation he'd got for one of the little mysteries in life. His hand went up and he scratched his brow with the muzzle of the gun, uncaring for the removed safety precaution or the fact that his 'enemy' was not threatened by anything while he nursed his itch.

"Well, he knew where you were within two weeks of you trying to leave," Toushiro recited that part quickly and diligently, like a student who'd learned his lesson by heart. "A family always knows, Gin, you must've been told this a thousand times."

Gin did not react to the mild provocation. He didn't even think Toushiro was waiting for him to.

"I expected something cleaner, faster… Out of respect at least, for the many years of loyal service, but I suppose a simple murder wasn't enough, was it?" His hands were starting to feel cold and clammy, and it wasn't nerves that were doing this to him – it was as though already his body was trying to die, becoming completely still, utterly frozen while his shattered insides slowly stopped to function.

"Nope," Toushiro agreed with a single shake of his head. The tiny crease between his brows – a spot Gin had kissed so many times in attempts to chase away the tension and worries – was becoming deeper now, carefully stripping the humour from the boy's voice. "He wanted you heartbroken, too."

"Of course, Aizen always gets what he wants. Even if I think he failed in making me miserable."

"Oh, did he now?" Toushiro flipped carelessly. Gin felt something in his throat thicken, his muscles gradually tensing up as he watched the other as though waiting for something more, words more engaging than the simple half-assed question chucked in the middle of an aimless dialogue.

"I was expecting it, Toushiro," Gin said at last, and his voice was quiet and paralyzingly serious. "I knew you were coming."

"Course you did," Toushiro snorted, slowly putting both his feet on the ground as he pushed himself from the sofa without hurry. Gin's smile was crooked but mirthless – the fact that he'd been misunderstood seemed both tragic and entertaining in these circumstances.

"I've known for months now," he clarified and the calm with which the confession was made unclogged a pain in his chest he hadn't realized he'd been suppressing for so long. The silence that followed was tight. Petrifying. But as he watched Toushiro's brows furrow together, a mixture of doubt and confusion grappling to take over his otherwise perfectly controlled features, Gin let out a small curt laughter and slowly stood up himself. "You won't shoot me, kitten."

The speed with which the gun whipped up was in almost painful contrast with the previous languidness of the smaller man's movements. There was a new, cruel hardness about Toushiro's face, and it only became firmer as he narrowed his eyes at his lover and elicited a strange, almost offended huff.

"Yeah?" Toushiro mumbled. "Wanna bet?"

Gin's mind registered the half-muffled sound of the gun before the pain that tore through his thigh. His knee buckled without him ever having a say in the matter, and the moan of agony that should've come locked itself somewhere in his gullet, ending up in a choked, mute gurgle in the back of his throat. He felt the floor collide with his kneecap as his hand fell over the hole in his leg, covering it, applying pressure over the seeping red as he tried to keep himself from tumbling completely down on the ground.

"Right," Gin hissed, a sort of hysterical chuckle managing to bubble on his lips. "I stand corrected. You won't kill me is what I meant."

Toushiro's steps came closer and it was then that Gin realized he was staring at the floor, bent over in pain, tempted to just squeeze his eyes shut and forbid himself from looking.

"And why not?" Toushiro's voice was different than before, dissected, like a strange species that had been experimented on over and over and over again. "Do you honestly think you mean anything to me?"

Another one of those crippled laughters and Gin's blood-covered hand shot behind him, grabbing the gun he had tucked in his belt under his loose black shirt. The metal handle fit into his grip like a lover and the familiar rush of adrenaline exploded in his draining blood, making the situation seem surreal and uncomplicated.

You can kill him if you want.

But surely, Toushiro must've seen the gun when he'd come in – he must've known Gin might try to defend himself, and yet he hadn't shot him in the head while Gin's back was turned to him.

"Funny," Gin ground out through his never-faltering grin. "Funny that you keep confirming my suspicions."

"Gin," Toushiro whispered, a touch of warning in his voice, though again, the second bullet did not come when it should have. As Gin's hand snapped up, holding the gun at level with the other's stomach, the younger male visibly flinched, and yet the much anticipated shot did not follow. Instead, through the reddened pain of his unhappy smile, Gin let the entire magazine with the bullets drop out from the gun, tumbling heavily on the floor.

"Jesus, Toushiro…" he said as he threw the emptied gun and went back to applying pressure on his wound. His features flickered in a grimace, but still he looked up at his lover, searching the now cold, desolate turquoise eyes for an answer. "From day one… From the very first time we-"

"Really, Gin?" Toushiro interrupted in disgust – disgust so fake that it felt as though it had been rehearsed a thousand times in a thousand places in desperate need to seem realistic when the time came. "Are you going to talk to me about the first time we met?"

"The first time we fucked," Gin spat out, clenching his teeth for a second. "It just so happens to be the same night. But you remember, don't you? You remember I never kissed you on the mouth, I never bothered. I thought you were merely a random whore I'd just encountered, and I did you like one."

"What difference-"

"And then we met again because, by some stroke of luck, you turned out to live 5 minutes away from me, and I fucked you a second time, and I still didn't care to so much as look you in the eye, let alone kiss you. Then I met you again, and again, and again. And we had coffee together, and we talked about sex and casual engagements, and we even stopped fucking, just because none of it mattered too much and we both knew it. And then-"

"Gi-"

"-I got that crazy idea one night in the summer that it was too warm and too early to sleep. So I came to your flat and woke you up at 2 in the morning – you were asleep on the sofa in front of the TV. You were wearing that creased blue T and striped shorts, you didn't even look like an adult. I took you out in the park and we put our feet in the fountain, just because we could. We had breakfast the next day, then a few days later, we had dinner. And then I kissed you for the first time."

"This is ridiculous," Toushiro mumbled in distaste.

"And you know what happened after, Toushiro?" Gin continued, feeling a little light-headed as the memories kept coming, spilling from his mouth aggressive and undeniable. "I fucking made love to you. You cried after so much, I thought I'd hurt you and I did not know what to do. You just lay there and wept and for the life of me I could not figure out why, and it took me months, months, to understand that it frightened the hell out of you that you'd let me do what I did to you, and you'd done the same to me, and not been shot on spot for your mistake. Touching you then was the most terrifying, yet most rewarding thing I'd ever done. I just held you and let you tell me nonsense about being afraid and not knowing why…"

"You think all this talk would make a difference?" Toushiro cut him off, the sudden, blade-like tension in his voice quivering with a sort of vulnerability that made Gin sigh. "Are you really stupid enough to assume so?"

"I don't care what you are, Toushiro," Gin said. "That's just it. I care who you are."

The gun in Toushiro's hand didn't tremble but something in his eyes seemed to. He blinked, very slowly, and shook his head as though to rid himself of some intrusive little thought.

"You've always been very skilled in twisting words around, haven't you?" he stated nastily, and a muscle under his eye gave up an annoyed twitch. "Making them appear what they are not. Did you play with your victims like that? Did you convince them they wanted to die before you pulled the trigger and trotted away to be Aizen's lapdog?"

"Is this what you are now?"

"Don't play dumb, Ichimaru. Once a killer, you can never stop. You'd been a damn fool to assume otherwise."

Gin closed his eyes and waited. This was Toushiro's call to act, the moment when the bullet should've come. But a second passed, then another, then another, and still his pained breathing did not halt, and he remained there, kneeling on the floor and bleeding while Toushiro stared at him in silence, his cold gaze blank and utterly eviscerated of all emotions but the calculative wonderment of a machine that was measuring all potential scenarios.

"For all it's worth," Gin muttered, wincing a little as he tried to sit back on his wounded leg and failed. "You know how I feel about you."

Toushiro didn't react. It was hard to tell if he'd even heard his lover's words, yet alone processed them through the intricate sieves of his brilliant mind. Then, after another moment, his free hand went to his pocket, pulling out his cell phone from the many little compartments in his perfectly isolated clothing. His eyes never once left Gin's as he dialed and held the device to his ear, waiting to be connected.

"Hello?" he said, his voice dull and nearly inhuman. "I'll need an ambulance, as soon as possible." He recited the address, hung up and, not waiting for his victim to try to understand what was going on, pulled the trigger.

Finally.

As he fell on the floor, holding onto his shot shoulder, the last thing Gin saw was Toushiro's boots as they made their way out of the room, never once stopping in their wake, never hesitating. The darkness started nipping at the edges of Gin's vision, curly and fantastic, and a passing thought reminded him how close the hospital was to where he lived. In a few minutes, he'd hear the sirens, and by that time Toushiro would most probably already be at the airport.

On the run, just like him.