Notes: Joan requested 'Hinamori and Aizen fluff'. I guess this qualifies? Title was the first thing that looked good from Roethke, but the more I think about it, the better it works! Oh, also, this is set sometimes pre-Rescue Rukia. Pretty obviously.
- And love, love sang toward -
She's fallen asleep at her desk again, it turns out, happily missing the inkstone, if barely. But ther's still a smudge of ink across her cheek from the brush she never set down. He sees it all, outlined by the softness of lamplight. After all, that's why he was there: to check why his lieutenant was burning the midnight oil, quite literally. But no, here she is, still kneeling, a stack of finished paperwork to her right, the much smaller stack of to-be-dones at her left hand, lately become her pillow.
In the doorway, he pauses, observing her sleeping for a long moment. It's not as if anyone else in the division, save the guards, is around to interrupt this moment that's caught his interest. For a girl with so guileless and open a face when she smiles, one would think that in sleep she'd look as innocent and untroubled as an angel. But it seems even angels have troubles when they are gods of death instead, or some dream or nightmare troubles her, for her forehead is lightly creased, mirrored in the slight downward curve of her lips.
What would a good captain do, he wonders silently. Let her sleep, as uncomfortable as she seems? Wake her, and escort her back to her rooms? Briefly, he even flirts with thoughts of what a not-so-good captain might do, with such a sweet and vulnerable looking lieutenant, asleep on her work. But no, as long as this is his role, however temporary, he is the good captain, perfectly cultivating the image and she, well, it is no image for her. She is the perfect lieutenant, his perfect lieutenant, and she should have someone to play captain for her, should she not?
She doesn't stir when he lifts her, and he frowns. The good captain is concerned at just how light and fragile his loyal lieutenant is, how bird-frail and breakable, and takes care not to wake her even as he blows out the lamp, slides the door shut. Her rooms are familiar to him, and it's only when he lays her down atop her futon that she stirs, frown deepening before it breaks with a sigh.
With a swipe of fingers, he cleans the ink from her cheek, smoothes the hair from her forehead. Little gestures that belong neither to the captain nor the man behind that image, but still there, on her skin. She won't remember in the morning, so perhaps, then again, no. Leaving them to dissolve in the dark of night, he stands, feet soft in their tread, hands quiet on the door, and gone.
Hinamori wakes in the morning, and can't remember how she got from her desk to her bed, or why she's still fully dressed, but only the muddled memory, half from a dream, of warm hands, and that protective aura she's spent so many years in now. It must have been her captain, she's sure of it, but things that happen in the night are not the things one gives voice to, especially in the light of day. So she holds it against her heart with the other remembrances of her good captain, and loves him all the more for it.