I disclaim the ownership of everything but this plot and the OC character, 3rd Seat Kimimaru Koji of 10th division.
Happy Reading
Egg Shells
By Aleauxvander
More than a decade together and one stupid mistake causes everything to shift.
No. it doesn't shift. This isn't plate tectonics.
She isn't a shelf of rock strata moving towards him and neither is he. But, yes, they do collide, and yes, the results are catastrophic as any volcano eruption would be, like any earthquake should be.
He is no longer the child prodigy she could easily tease and fluster. He is a grown man. He is just as brilliant, if not more, wiser but his patience had shortened with age and his tenacity strengthened. Years of war have taught him not to capitalize on someone's faults; faults don't always equate to weaknesses and to learn that lesson he was unconscious in the infirmary for months on end.
She knows him better than she knows herself, mainly because he is unnervingly perceptive; he simply observes her, asks little questions but deduces nonetheless and it is accurate. He knows her and trusts her and she knows and trusts him.
It was in the midst of their 90th or so year together when things began to litter the floor.
Eggs shells.
Every shape, colour and size, fragile with youth.
And as all humans do, all organisms, dead or alive, they adapt. They adapt to preserve themselves and that was what they did.
So they walked on egg shells around each other, tip-toeing around the office, never touching never reaching, never thinking in fear of the other grabbing almost tangible thoughts and stringing them into images and words that made sense.
For years they danced around each other, in silence, suffering enough to make any martyr proud. If their division subordinates realize anything they stay silent. They move in, out and around the 10th division, smile, laugh, talk and interact with their subordinates but never with each other.
She smiles, grins, jokes, teases (not him, never him) and everyone accepts that this is their fukutaicho, Matsumoto Rangiku and nothing would change that. He nods, answers politely, waves in recognition when he has to and smiles only when he knows he is right and the context calls for it. This is Hitsugaya Toushiro-taicho. No one is overly familiar with him (except her) and no one knows him well enough (except her) to make casual conversation. Nothing changes except in their attitude with each other.
And yet, when they tell themselves it is best to let sleeping dogs lay, they go dredging river beds. They want to suffer for feeling this way in the first place but they don't want to because not feeling is worse than suffering.
And so they pretend. They talk quietly on nonsensical matters and matters of work and war and famine and troubles in the 7th districts and the hierarchy of their society but never of matters of the heart.
And because they can't live without the other, they continue to pretend. A day never goes by that they don't interact, even on a quiet day, because he will simply go to his room in the barracks and she will simply go to hers in the barracks and sit against their respective walls quietly, unknowingly back to back, praying to hear some form of life and movement in the next room…
So they sit in silence in the office, his paperwork almost complete, hers never started, he feeling uneasy with the silence and her not feeling well overall and they just sit. Or in her case she just lies there.
But it has been more than a few hours since either has said something and she badly wants to tell him anything just to hear his voice…
"Taicho?"
"Matsumoto?"
She pauses to conceptualize her message because this is all a Communication Studies lesson in which she learns the hard way that not every receiver to a message wants to receive a message and not every sender has the will to send it.
"Never mind..." She says quietly from the couch and he pauses to finally look at her.
It was a big mistake but it was one he would do again and again.
Their eyes lock and her words are lost and he forgets what he wasn't writing on the paper he had been staring at for the past hour.
She suddenly feels worst than she did when she woke up the morning when he speaks
"What is it, Matsumoto?"
She loves his voice because that is what lulls her to sleep at night in her head but now, it adds to the nausea and the nausea just sends her reeling back unto the support of the couch and she doesn't move.
"Nothing…." She says faintly and it seems too personal (and it should be) so to counter it, tacks on the formalities it deserves "…taicho."
He continues to watch her, she can feel it, even with her eyes closed, and knows that she has opened a door that wasn't closed by addressing him vaguely with no true purpose. He would simply watch her now, prod her, analyze each word and reaction before he made an assumption (a wrong assumption) on what was her issue (her only issue was him) and then he would say "Go home, Matsumoto" as if her home wasn't a walk away and as though the only thing that separated her sleeping quarters form his wasn't a paper thin wall.
It was quiet and the only indication that he moved was his reiatsu; cold and suffocating to those not used to it but a misty blanket over her own blaringly hot reiatsu.
He stooped before the couch where she lounged, too little space between them for their egg shells to handle and too much emotion in him when he reaches out to feel her temperature.
She flinches not because he is cold but because he is there; so close, so very close.
Egg shells are cracking as he trods heavily on them. But she doesn't care and neither does he but the shells stay intact for the most part.
She keeps her hand over her eyes, fighting a headache and fighting her rising fever, hoping to all that is living and dead that he will leave her alone because if he doesn't, she won't tell him to leave her alone and that in and of itself is a bad thing.
(Egg shells can withstand only so much tension)
She opens her eyes to look at him (wrong move) when fingers brush her hair out of her face and she swallows her sigh and wills herself not to lean into him. She just watches him, unmoving, his hand moves down her neck, then her forehead, along her arms under her uniform and then to her cheeks. He touches her cheeks, not for examination sake but because he wants to, has to, she's sure of it.
He stands suddenly and a wistful hope runs through her that he will go back to his desk, write his reports, complain that she isn't doing anything and trod lightly on their egg shells. But he doesn't. When ever does he?
He takes her hands and unceremoniously drags her to her feet. She does nothing but watch lights dance at the edge of her vision and he says something to her but she cannot hear. She is sick and in love and it is a bad combination and she chooses to ignore it (ignore him) and watches one of the lights dance further up her peripheral vision before disappearing in a spiral of light that sends vertigo rocketing through her.
Boneless, she crumbles and it takes him more time to realize she hasn't fallen willingly; gravity played a trick on her body and demanded she fell but he caught her around her waist, had to drag her quickly back unto his chest and her head bumps his nose. He is stilled momentarily because she smells amazing and he shouldn't notice but it takes more energy than it did to hold her up to stop smelling her hair.
She is shuddering and it has nothing to do with him. She is feeling worse every second and then he is there, making it worst (making it better. Amazingly so).
Right now, they are so close, her body heat replaces his coolness and he now exudes that warm scent she does.
Weak from self restraint, he scoops her into his arms and beneath his feet, egg shells cry their protest.
He is out the door, past their Third seat, Kimimaru Koji who looks no more surprised than anyone else along the corridor does and as though she weighs nothing against him, her arms wrapped around his neck, her face buried in his chest, he is on the roofs and further into the 10th division Headquarters.
The guards at the entrance to the barracks bow to their superiors and step aside to let them in.
Hitsugaya sees nor hears nothing but his own heartbeat melding with hers and hopefully if he lets her go soon, his traitorous heart will beat of its own accord once more and not to the rhythm of her breathing.
The few division members in their dorms are only slightly curious, wanting to know it their fuku-taicho will be okay and she will be. She has to be. If she leaves so does he and sadly if she dies, so does he.
His demeanor is slipping because she is silent and her breathing is shallow and his breathing is shallow and he is silent and he worries as he moves down the corridor and up the flights of stairs to where their quarters are.
He bypasses her own room and steps into his, closes the door behind him and wanders into his bedroom to deposit her on a futon.
Matsumoto sighs. Vertigo has made her tired and his scent is everywhere. His pillow is oozing his aftershave and probably his cologne but the distinct smell that was just him was overpowering.
He is in the bathroom briefly and comes out with a metal basin and a cloth. The water is warm so he breathes over it softly and it cools drastically.
She turned her head to look at his hooded turquoise eyes and like a lover would, she watched him lay the cloth over her forehead.
"What is happening?" he asks and she gets the distinct impression that this has nothing to do with her fever. Bellow his feet and bellow the futon on which she lays, egg shells give up their battle and crack pitifully. But the sound is refreshing and it is an open door and he is no longer terrified of what might happen and she is too tired to care or realize.
"I don't know." She answers honestly but it sprouts a memory of a crying Kuchiki Rukia 5 years after she met Kurosaki Ichigo.
The young shinigami wasn't the sobbing type and so she was one of the many women who cried silently.
And in the silence when she sat next to the Kuchiki and the young woman said nothing to give her a hint of what was distressing her (but knowing them both, she figured it out well before), Rukia looked across at her and said the wisest words
"Love can't be made in fear."
It was then things began to shift when she realized just exactly what was happening between her and Hitsugaya.
Nothing.
Because love can't be made in fear. And knowing this, she kept herself immersed in that fear.
And as a defense mechanism, he simply ignored the fear and ignored the threat all together.
She was crying and it was a phenomenon to him. He had never seen her cry and as she lay, ill, on his futon (his futon), she cried. She shuddered but not a sound left her when the tears streaked her cheeks.
Helpless, he sits her up and pulls her to him and holds her. Egg shells are now cracked and faceless, and when he cant help himself, she doesn't stop him because it is more than 100 years in the making and it hurts living without it (without him).
He kisses her because he is only human (and male, at that) and she is his breath.
And neither think, they just feel. He kisses her, really kisses her, all teeth, tongue and warmth and taste and addiction and his lips slid over hers again and again until she is drunk with his taste and her tears end. He lowers her to the futon and kisses a path down her fever warmed throat, his fingers tangled in her hair, his body covering hers and egg shells turn to dust that simply blow away.
It takes them days, hours, minutes, years, she doesn't know, he doesn't know, to let go of each other and it is never for long. He simply takes care of her, loves her quietly, squeezes the warm cloth out in cold water and replaces it and holds her.
And when the fever breaks and leaves (and takes with it a decade of torment) and he sits with her in between his legs, her pale tired face just below his, he whispers as he normally does, sounding only slightly warmer than his cool tone
"What have you been doing all my life?"
And she tries to stifle a sad laugh because years were wasted for such fragile things as egg shells and sentiments and she is only just starting to feel well. He sounds as formal and as cool and aloof as ever but there is no mistaking his shuddering.
Love can't be made in fear and they were just learning to acknowledge it and overcome. She would wait, he would wait and then they would be fine.
So she answered the only way she knew how
"Laying egg shells."
.: Owari .:
I apologize for any grammatical errors and anything of such seen in this work. I have no beta :( and wrote this on a spur. This is a goodbye gift to FanFic until my exams are over (in June) so, au revoir!
Reviews and welcomed, beneficial and, as always, fuel my passion for writing.
A.V.B