Characters: Gin, Rangiku
Summary: One last dance.
Pairings: GinRan
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Soul Society arc
Timeline: Soul Society arc
Author's Note: I ship these people. Together. With no one else. This is the only couple I do this with; do I have to underline how hard I ship them?
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

The last night they are together, he is strangely silent. He's always silent, but this time, the silence is marked and his darkness that she's always sensed is almost overwhelming, darker than the black night outside, the moon shrouded in cloud.

Rangiku frowns at the feel of his fingers twining in her hair and can't tell if this is anything to worry about. Gin's been off-kilter for a while now and this may only be a symptom of that. It's almost certainly a symptom of that, and Rangiku's used to his strangeness to begin with.

When they first became lovers in the truest sense, he seemed reluctant to touch her throughout; of course that passed in time, Rangiku likes to point out, and whatever problem Gin had with that, he's long since gotten over.

But beyond that, there is whatever's going on tonight.

Rangiku has always been aware of a darkness in him. She knows not from where it stems, if it comes from Rukongai or from those early years as a Shinigami that Gin never wants to talk about or from the distant past of his human life or even something different entirely. And she's the only one it's never been able to affect.

Whether it's durability or just stupidity no one has ever been able to tell, but though Rangiku is fully aware that Gin is esoteric and arcane she is the only one who's ever known him who can stand at his side and be unaffected by him. She knows him, knows him too well, to not be able to see past eerie strangeness. For Rangiku, those skins are easily enough pulled off like the knots of a shihakusho, stripped bare like always.

And he's always held it back, like it's a well-known secret or a skin that needs to stay on, but tonight Gin's gotten sloppy and can't hold the cloud back. Angry, buzzing darkness that lends a heady flavor tonight, but Rangiku's not entirely sure she likes it.

It's a dance and Gin's insisting on stepping on her toes. Not that he doesn't already does that, but tonight he's pretty much wearing shoes with glass soles, and it hurts.

But she's not entirely sure she cares.

Rangiku leans up, grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him down with her, smiling coolly. Gin casts a bemused look at her, eyes actually open for once, before he decides to go along with the ride and kisses her.

Darkness may as well be a lost memory.

One skin, one heartbeat, one last dance.