I think that the only way Rukia marrying Renji makes any sense is as a way to maintain a plausibly deniable buffer in between her and Byakuya in an erotic context.
I think that Renji is more her brother than Byakuya ever was, having known each other since childhood, and that she is desperate for everything Byakuya has to offer, his attention, affection, commitment, and yes his sexual desire. The problems with that are 1) he is pining for the sister who abandoned her and died and will never tell her this out of fucked up obligation and 2) this fucked up sense of obligation has led him to introduce himself in to her life via the medium of adult adoption. Neither of these problems preclude Byakuya wanting Rukia badly, which is also obvious, just complicate it significantly.
To square this circle, enter Renji. Byakuya has an interesting relationship with Renji, as anyone who has noticed the relatively strong shipping community for them has noticed. Byakuya could find in him a person who isn't so deeply tied in to his dead wife trauma to connect with, if not for the fact they are basically both brother (one in name one in connection) to her more competent mini-me. I don't think it would be a romance for the ages personally, but I also don't think that invalidates the potential for real human connection there.
That all being said, I think from day dot Renji has always been willing to go as far as Rukia would have him if there had ever been any hint of a possibility there. I also think he would give himself over to Byakuya in his entirety just so Byakuya would know he isn't alone. Renji is giving in that way.
So here we hit on the dynamic I am interested in: Byakuya has a moment of weakness or realization depending on how you frame it and reaches out, breaches the divide between him and Renji just a bit. Rukia smells intimacy (emotional, physical, both) with Byakuya like blood in the water and starts something with Renji, to punish him for having what she has been denied, to feel closer to Byakuya by proxy, and to eventually make her move on Byakuya by adding herself to the Byakuya/Renji dynamic.
This is incredibly destabilizing to Byakuya but is rationalized by saying that he's not really doing anything with her, just letting her see him with Renji, just seeing her with him, just happening to be getting a hand job while she sucks Renji off. It doesn't count if he doesn't touch this woman who desperately wants him and looks like his dead wife and holds his heart on a string. It doesn't count unless he is fully inside her at least. Then it clearly doesn't count unless he is in her specifically vaginally, loophole of all time that one. But fucking her literally through another man does not count, obviously.
Renji is getting pulled from all sides too, Rukia who he can now at least admit to himself has been the master of his heart since childhood (I note the ageing differential for the world of the living residents vs soul society, ten to one, this is a hundred year old flame at the least) but she is not tender and is deliberately inconsiderate with him, first as explicit punishment then as a kind of shield/pecking order maintenance/extension of their existing dynamic/turns out it's pretty fun in the new context. And Byakuya is his literal boss, but he's also very hurt and very human under it all.
Rukia gets to treat Renji like a squeaky toy and finally have Byakuya, yeah not all to herself and yeah not without limitations, but it's insanely better than before.
But, well, the soul society definitely has some societal bounds, and Byakuya adopted her in to the center of one of its most prestigious families. But living all together wouldn't look so bad with just one little step more, one little to do and suddenly it all looks above outside reproach. Who would question her living at the family home with the man who just married in, who would whisper about it with her husband right there, who would suspect a man and his brother in law. She could even have kids, perfectly respectable genuinely not at all Byakuya's kids. But he'd still be head of the house of course and there's no reason to deny them time with their only uncle.
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
pixelskylines
ellievsbear
baratheonpilled
tangentwithtanner
