Wednesdays

Rangiku ran into her apartment and slammed the door behind her, hardly noticing when it bounced off the hinges and failed to latch.

"I've had it!" she yelled, slamming a huge stack of paperwork down on the kitchen table, making the whole thing shake. And making all of the dishes, unopened mail, empty sake bottles, and magazines that were perched on the table crash to the floor.

"Damn it!" she huffed, stomping into the kitchen, ready to grab a bottle of sake and just zone out on the couch for an hour. Or for the rest of her life, whichever was easier.

But she checked all of her hiding places, even the one at the back of the cabinet below the sink—the one she had to crawl into sideways just to reach—and all of the bottles stashed there were empty. She was out of sake. And she had no food in the house. And the dishes she'd forgotten to do two weeks ago were rotting in the sink. And she couldn't zone out, anyway, because this time she actually had to do the paperwork.

"Fuck!" she screamed, hurtling an empty sake bottle at the wall. The cracking sound was satisfying. The traces of liquid running down her wall, however, were not. She had the insane urge to go lick them up, just so that burst of effort wouldn't be in vain. But even that was too much work.

She slid down the wall, hugged her knees, and tried not to cry.

It was the worst day of her life. Well, not the worst. That was either the day Gin left with Aizen or the day he died, she wasn't sure which. Today wasn't like that. Nothing catastrophic happened. No one died, no one betrayed her, she didn't get in an accident or lose a limb. And that made her feel so much more guilty for being so miserable.

The horrible thing about today was . . . life. It was everything. Her house was a mess, her bills weren't paid, she was hungry, and tired, and had been so distracted when she'd taken the recruits for a routine hollow-hunting mission that a newbie had had to save her—which meant she'd lost total respect from all the recruits. She'd misplaced her favorite scarf and delivered the Fifth Division's paperwork to the Thirteenth Division and the Thirteenth Division's to the Second, and heaven knew what she'd done with the Second Division's, because she certainly didn't. So she'd had to go through the rounds twice just to sort it all out. And then, to top it all off, Taichou had reamed her out. Not his usual annoyed shouting, either—he'd been livid.

She'd walked into the office, ready to explain everything that had happened and that she was just off today for some reason and to beg for his forgiveness and promise she'd fix it all, immediately.

He hadn't even given her time to open her mouth.

"Damn it, Matsumoto, can't I count on you for anything?" he'd screamed. "It's bad enough you don't do the paperwork and you try to hide it from me, but now you're playing games with delivering it? The paperwork matters, Matsumoto! If the paperwork doesn't get turned in, intelligence gets lost, supplies aren't handed out, promotions don't happen, missions get delayed, souls don't get buried on time, and, to put it in terms you'll understand," he'd added snidely, "we don't get our budget which means you don't get your paycheck and you can't buy sake! So you better start caring enough to take some pride in your work or I'm going to have to replace you with someone who will!"

She'd just gaped at him, trying to keep her eyes from filling with tears, while he'd piled stack after stack of paperwork into her arms.

"This needs to go to the Fifth, this needs to go to the Thirteenth, this is the paperwork you forgot to deliver to the Sixth two weeks ago, and these are the empty forms for the Second, the ones I spent all night filling out that you managed to lose in less than thirty seconds! You're going to do them again, you're going deliver everything else to the right divisions, and you're going to be at work on time tomorrow without a hangover or I'm demoting you on the spot!"

Her life was in ruins. And she didn't even know why. It wasn't like she'd woken up that morning and thought, I'm not going to try today, I'm going to do my absolute worst and see what happens. It had started off like any other Wednesday, until she'd dropped her favorite teacup the moment she got into the office, and things had just gone downhill from there.

Or maybe uphill was the right term. Because it just piled up and up and up, all the little things, until she felt like the proverbial camel and one more tiny thing would be enough to break her into smaller pieces than that sake bottle she'd just demolished.

"I hate my life," she moaned, curling up on her side on the none-too-clean floor and wishing she could just drop through it. It was all bad, but disappointing her taichou was the worst of it. He worked so hard and she had so much respect for him, she wanted him to respect her, value her just a little bit too. But something always seemed to get in the way of that. He was always yelling at her, but she'd thought of it as a game, something he didn't really mean. He'd never threatened to demote her before.

She couldn't fight back the tears any more as they began to overflow her eyes, slide down her cheeks. She ought to just sleep in tomorrow, to let him demote her. He'd be better off for it. Like he said, she wasn't any good at her job anyway. And then she wouldn't have to deal with the paperwork any more, or spend so much time with her taichou, who evidently thought she was lower than scum.

Even Kiki, their third seat, would be happier. The upstart had been angling after Rangiku's job anyway. She was always coming in early and staying super late, offering to help Taichou with the paperwork because he "never got any help," and falling over herself to compliment Taichou and insult Rangiku. She'd even started sabotaging Rangiku, not telling her about messages and meetings and deadlines until it was too late.

Rangiku hated Kiki. Kiki couldn't have her job. She pictured herself bowing to Kiki—the girl would be enough of a brat to be that formal, without a doubt—making Kiki tea, facing the new recruits and the rest of her division as just a third seat—or lower.

Over her dead body.

With that thought firmly in mind, she dragged herself off the floor, plopped down in a half-broken chair, and started filling in the Second Division forms. And three hours later, when she was a third of the way done and her eyes were gritty and her stomach was growling and her brain was crying out half in boredom and half in weariness, she pictured handing her fukutaichou badge over to Kiki, dealing with that smirk, and she pushed through. At last, at five a.m. she finished the final, dry-as-dirt report on the hollow-sighting trends in the sixty-first district of West Rukongai, signed her name, and promptly fell asleep. On top of the paperwork.

She didn't wake up on time.

Hitsugaya paced back and forth in his office, worry, frustration, and anger adding on to his guilt eight a.m. came and went and his fukutaichou didn't appear. She was testing him, knowing he would never be able to demote her, forcing him to acknowledge that.

It pissed him off, but it was warranted. He shouldn't have treated her like that. Everyone made mistakes, hell, even he made mistakes with the paperwork sometimes, and saying that she didn't take pride in her work was a low blow—something he wouldn't say to his most incompetent soldier, yet he'd said it to her.

He didn't have an excuse, except it was budget season and the deadlines actually meant something for once, and he'd been pulling so many all-nighters he wasn't even sure when he'd last seen his own bed, and he hadn't even had time to introduce himself to the thirty new recruits they'd picked up nearly a month ago now, so he'd put Matsumoto in charge of them, and he'd promised weeks ago to speak to first-years at the academy, but hadn't gotten around to writing a speech yet, and Matsumoto was supposed to be helping him with that, too, but she was never around, and he was supposed to organize another trip to the living world that he hadn't even thought about yet, and he was just so overwhelmed by it all, he couldn't think straight.

And she was too, he realized. He'd been taking on too much and she'd been picking up the slack, and he'd been taking his guilt and frustration for not being perfect out on her—for not being superhuman.

He was an ass. She should have thrown the paperwork in his face. As she was doing metaphorically now. He glanced at the clock. She was already an hour late. Five minutes would have made her point.

Someone scratched at the door. "Come in," he called, knowing it wasn't her because she would have burst into the room like a whirlwind. Matsumoto Rangiku had never knocked a day in her life.

His third seat, Takahashi Kiki, entered with a tray. "Good morning, Hitsugaya-taichou," she said, laying out a cup and saucer. "I saw that Matsumoto wasn't able to make it on time again, so I thought I could help by making your morning tea. I know how busy you are and how little help you get."

He cocked his head, throwing an offhand thank you at the simpering girl. He really ought to transfer her; she was entirely too obvious about her ambitions. He took a sip of his tea and tried not to grimace; she was no good at making tea, either.

"Hitsugaya-taichou, if I may be so bold," she began, waiting for his motion, "are you going to do it?"

"Do what?" he asked, checking the clock again. Where the hell was Matsumoto?

"Demote Matsumoto?"

"Matsumoto-fukutaichou," he corrected automatically. Then her words registered. "What?"

"I heard you, last night. We all did. You said that if she didn't come in sober on time today, you were going to demote her. And, well, she's late. So are you—?"

Hitsugaya closed his eyes and sighed. "Takahashi, I think you might be happier in another division," he said. Ignoring the sputters behind him, he turned walked out of the office. If she wasn't coming in he'd just have to go get her.

The door was unlatched when he got to Matsumoto's apartment. Immediately, he went on alert, drawing Hyourinmaru and bursting in to the room—

—where he saw nothing but his sleeping fukutaichou and one hell of a mess.

She sat up with a gasp. "Taichou!" she exclaimed, staring at him. Then she glanced at the clock and seemed to deflate. She sighed, reaching into her lap and fumbling for a minute. "You must've come for this," she said dully, thrusting her fukutaichou badge toward him. "I'm sure Kiki is anxious to have it. Give her my congratulations."

"I'm having her transferred," he replied, ignoring her hand. He peered over her shoulder instead. "I see you finished the paperwork."

"Y-yes, Taichou, but—what do you mean, you're having her transferred? I didn't make it to the office on time. You're supposed to demote me and promote her."

Yeah, right. "Even if I demoted you I wouldn't promote Takahashi. She'd probably murder me in my sleep so she could be taichou instead of fukutaichou!"

Matsumoto snorted. "When would she have time, Taichou? You never sleep!"

"True enough," he said, yawning. "I think I'd like to now, though. Let's go back to the office and you can watch my back while I take a nap on the couch."

She grinned and started to nod before her face fell again. "But, Taichou, your word! Half of the division must have heard your ultimatum."

"Screw my word. Besides," he added, thinking about it, "I believe I said 'at work' on time, not in the office on time. And as far as I can tell, you've been 'at work' for hours now."

She didn't smile. "I'm sorry, Taichou," she whispered. "You're having to cover for me again. I don't mean to be such a disappointment to you."

His eyes widened as they jumped to her face. "Who said you were a disappointment to me? I never said that."

"You said you couldn't count on me for anything, that I didn't have any pride in my work. It's the same thing." She looked away.

He winced. "I said a lot of things I didn't mean. I'm sorry, Matsumoto," he said, tipping her chin up until their eyes met. "I was stressed out and overwhelmed and I took it out on you. That wasn't fair."

The tightness faded from her expression. "I'm sorry too," she replied. "I couldn't seem to do anything right yesterday, and you have a right to expect more of me than that."

"We all have our off days." Sometimes we share them.

"Maybe."

He glanced around, finally registering the state of her place. "Speaking of off, what the hell happened to your apartment?"

"Um—" She broke off, blushing. "I don't know, Taichou, it just . . . built up?"

He shook his head. "Never mind. Just get cleaned up so we can go."

While she wandered into the bedroom and bathroom to do whatever it was women did in there, he set about straightening up her house. The sake bottles went . . . in the garbage, especially the one that had somehow ended up shattered on the floor. The dishes on the floor went in the dishwasher, the dishes in the sink went . . . in the garbage (ew!), the papers and magazines went in neat piles on the coffee table, the miscellaneous clothing that was everywhere went on top of the washing machine (she could do her own laundry, thank you very much), the spoiled food went . . . in the garbage, the garbage went . . . outside, everything got sprayed with plenty of disinfectant, and suddenly it was almost livable in there.

"Taichou!" Matsumoto shrieked. He jumped.

"What? What's wrong?"

"You cleaned! Oh, marry me, Taichou!" she begged, hugging him tight to her breasts and cutting off his air supply in the process. "Do you know how long I've been looking for a man who cleans?"

"It's not hard, Matsumoto," he huffed when he finally got free. "That took all of, what, twenty minutes?"

Her eyes took on a wistful look. "Twenty minutes is a lifetime at the end of the day."

True enough.

"Thank you," she whispered, hugging him again, but more gently this time.

He patted her shoulder awkwardly and shrugged her away. "Let's get going before it's afternoon already."

"I'd better stop by Second Division on my way," she said, scooping up the paperwork.

He took in her weary look. She couldn't have gotten more than four hours of sleep, at the most. He knew he was going to live to regret this, but . . . . "Send Takahashi," he directed. "Just because I delegate something to you doesn't mean you can't delegate it too, you know."

"Really?"

"Really." Pause. "Sometimes."

Her eyes lit up. "Ooh, I bet you won't even have to transfer her. I can get her to quit if I try hard enough!"

He bit back a chuckle. There was his girl.

They walked to the office mostly in silence. He savored the familiar feel of her by his side, resolved never to take it for granted again.

"I wish I knew why I was so off yesterday," she murmured eventually. "Everything I did was wrong, everything took longer than it should have, everything was harder to get through. I just don't understand why."

He shrugged. "It was Wednesday."

"So?"

"Wednesdays suck."

A/N:

Another meaningless attempt to vent frustration and combat writer's block. My first non-romance fanfic (gasp!). Anyway, I hope somebody liked it. Please send me a shoutout if you did. And, yes, Wednesdays suck. Or at least this one did.

~bandgirlz~