Understanding
He doesn't understand her. She doesn't understand him.
Vice-captain Abarai is loud, tactless, and quite possibly the closest you colud get to a pompous chauvinist jackass when you were beaten all the time. (So he's not pompous. Much.)
Vice-captain Ise is restrained, uptight, and the closest a woman's ever been to being accused of having a stick up her ass. (Meaning she has. Often)
They were bound to deal with each other eventually, and, according to the laws of narration, that first time would turn out badly.
It did. Very badly. Final tally included two cracked ribs, one cracked collarbone and numerous bruises. All on Renji. On the other hand was the mountain of destroyed paperwork, broken glasses and severely mussed hair of one pissed-off Nanao.
Renji thought Nanao was over reacting. He had not meant to fall on her; it was her fault that she hadn't been looking where she was going.
Nanao said that was ridiculous- she was carrying paperwork, ignorant one, heard of it? And wasn't it laughable that the 'famous' (she made the bunny ears) Abarai Renji was unable to either sense or evade her?
Renji glowered that she was hardly a threat (she made to hit him, but her captain reminded her that Renji was an injured man) and that she was lucky to have only broken her glasses.
Nanao purred, sweetly, that surely Abarai-fukutaichou-kun did not need luck, not the man who'd managed to crack his ribs and his collarbone just from falling down the stairs, and still resourceful enough to cop a feel on the way down. (The 8th division captain discreetly vanished from the room.)
Renji snarled something about not wanting to feel up a skinny bitch like her (what he knew where soft, soft curves were traced by his traitorous eyes) and that she was clutching him pretty hard too, are we too repressed to admit something, Nanao-chan?
Nanao retorted that being barreled down 500-odd steps with someone will do that, yes, and who the hell did he think he was calling repressed, Mr. I-talk-to-my-sword?
Oh, I don't know, Renji had said airily, maybe someone who only got her fukutaichou's armband because she was the only one anal-retentive enough to deal with division 8's paperwork?
Better than being unable to do paperwork at all, Nanao had advanced on him, face flushed, reiatsu rising. Better than someone whose best approach to paper work was hiding it in his captain's piles, better than some undisciplined thug whose only worth was that he could swing a sword faster or harder than other thugs.
Renji (trying very hard not to think about how she looked sexy like that, face pink and hair and clothes mussed from her reiatsu), had snarled that hey, this undisciplined thug had saved her from a face full of marble, was she completely ungrateful or something?
Nanao had stiffened, then twitched. Actually, she had forced out between gritted teeth, she'd come here to… to…
To what, had prompted Renji.
Nanao had blushed, and Renji repressed the desire to see how far that sun-deprived skin that blush went. Apologize, actually, she had stammered. It had been… very nice of him, to protect her from the fall, and he had been injured because of her (she traced lines of hard muscle under bandages), and… she was really… very sorry…
Renji stared.
Nanao paused. So that's it, she had said, then rushed out of the room.
When Renji left the hospital, he took her out for dinner. They spilt.
They still didn't understand each other. But Renji was willing to learn.
-end-