First Bleach story, and only third story overall! Hope you enjoy and leave plenty of reviews, 'cause I'm super nervous about this one! Thanks!
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Minding the P's & Q's
The best kept secret of the Tenth division was not, in fact, Matsumoto Rangiku's secret, rabid love for ikebana.
If you could call that a secret. Floral arrangements turning up all over the Tenth division headquarters on the mornings where Rangiku had spent the night? It didn't take a particularly bright shinigami to pin down the fukutaichou's secret addiction.
No, the best kept secret of Division Ten was, ironically, an actual secret. It involved the diminutive captain of said division and his secret addiction.
Hitsugaya Toshiro, taichou of the Tenth division, loved pudding.
Most wouldn't have considered it something to be hidden. Indeed, Kuchiki Byakuya's secret, fiendish obsession with crochet-knit blankets was much more humiliating than a simple food preference, neh?
And perhaps it would have been perfectly acceptable for the Tenth's taichou to gobble up pudding whenever he felt the urge (after all, his fukutaichou certainly never abstained from the sake just because someone might accidentally see her), except Hitsugaya-taichou, Toshiro, had one tiny problem.
He was tiny.
Doll-like, in fact, with delicate features and soft hair, his most defining characteristic was his height, or rather, lack there of. He'd long since accepted he would never surpass four foot five. In short (no pun intended, of course), the captain looked much less like an imposing captain of the formidable Gotei 13 and looked remarkably like a twelve-year-old boy.
So there was his problem. Any captain, even the uppity Kuchiki, would have no problem digging into any food, confident in their ability to look sophisticated while doing so.
Toshiro did not have this luxury. He ate plain meals, because anyone seeing him with a bowl of steaming curry would have a fit, imagining "the little boy eating spicy foods and upsetting his poor widdle tummy". He couldn't even pick up a watermelon without someone making some cutesy little comment about "widdle bitty hands". And woe unto him if he even so much as thought about candy, for he would have Ukitake Jushiro chasing after him, pelting him with boxes of sweets and licorice, yelling how adorable he was.
But the most heartbreaking loss Toshiro had suffered due to his child-like appearance was the loss of pudding. He could hardly plunge headfirst into a bowl of pudding, stuffing his face like a heathen, sending pudding in every direction, if he was to be a captain of Gotei 13, could he? Pudding was for children, and hardly anyone past a certain age ate it.
And when they did, they were careful to take small, disdainful bites, and to pretend as if they weren't enjoying the treat.
Toshiro could no more pretend to not like pudding than he could stop breathing, so to avoid the awkward looks he'd receive at formal dinners if he ate it, he always politely declined the offers, and instead threw covert, jealous glances as everyone else devoured his secret love.
So it was that the secret remained very secret. But of course, his fukutaichou Matsumoto Rangiku knew, because she was a nosy, lazy, drunken woman who should do her damn paperwork instead of spying on her captain when he's trying to secretly stuff his face with chocolate pudding.
He very nearly considered throwing her out of the division when she caught him groaning in ecstasy as he tongued a spoonful of pudding. He'd eventually forgiven her, once she'd promised him that she could be discrete. And get him more pudding, of course.
And she didn't disappoint. Pudding in and out nearly every week, discreetly packaged in a boring lunch sack, Rangiku would keep watch at the door, back to Toshiro, as he would gorge his face with pudding.
She also made a point to tactfully ignore the rather lewd exclamations Toshiro made every time he ate pudding. He really did seem to love it, a lot.
Yes, one could say that the taichou's secret love for desert was the biggest secret of the Tenth Division. But it wasn't the only one.
Strangely enough, it was on a day where Rangiku had managed to doubly surprise and please her taichou that the secret to end all secrets finally came out. Not only had she brought him a rather massive bowl of chilled chocolate pudding, but she'd done her paperwork.
Toshiro couldn't remember the last time he'd been in this good of a mood.
"Matsumoto," he fairly gurgled over a mouthful of pudding, "You' da best!"
"And don't you forget it," Rangiku replied, winking, before clearing her throat, "But uh, taichou, there's somethin' I gotta tell you."
Toshiro waved a hand for her to continue, obviously too absorbed in his pudding to pay much attention to his fukutaichou. Maybe if he had, he would've seen the look on her face. It was entirely too serious for Rangiku.
"Well, uh, Tosh- uh, Taichou," Rangiku began, taking a seat in the hard backed wooden chair across from his desk and smoothing the pleats of her robes, "You heard about what happened to Ichimaru Gin?"
Toshiro frowned and nodded, eyes flicking up at her before returning hungrily to his pudding. He shoved another massive spoonful into his mouth, no longer caring if Rangiku saw how slovenly he could be.
"Well, I was wonderin', taichou, how much you know 'bout Gin?" Rangiku started nervously, twirling a lock of hair around a finger and biting her lip, "I mean, I know ya weren't close, but, uh…"
She broke off, and Toshiro ignored her for the most part. He really was too obsessed with his pudding. Rangiku hoped he'd stay that way and steeled herself for her next few lines.
"You're from Runkongai, right?" she asked randomly, but continued on, gaining speed, without waiting for a reply, "Yeah, of course you are! I found you down there, when you were livin' with your granny. You were in district one west when I found ya, remember?"
Toshiro rolled his eyes; obviously he would remember. He waved his hand, indicating for her to keep going and to hurry it up.
"Yeah, yeah, a'course," Rangiku said quickly, nervous, "Yeah, I mean, that's not where I grew up. Where we grew up. Me'n'Gin grew up together, y'know, in the sixty-fourth north district. He saved me from starving to death, taichou, did you know that? I pretty much owe him my life, and so do you, I guess, in a strange way, huh?"
The spoon, half-way to Toshiro's mouth, stopped suddenly, and fell back to his nearly empty bowl. "How do you figure that, Rangiku?" Toshiro asked acidly, suspicion (and pudding) making him drop his usual formality. It was no secret the snowy-haired taichou disliked Ichimaru Gin, and he couldn't very well have his right hand fukutaichou running around everywhere telling people he owed Ichimaru a debt.
"Well," Rangiku began, a little defensively, "If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't'a become a shinigami, and I never would've found you and told you to go into the academy. Who knows what woulda happened to ya then, taichou. Ya mighta ended up freezing yourself to death, and half the people in Rukongai, what with you spillin' your reiastu all over the damn place."
"Fine," Toshiro said, coolly dignified, even as he lifted his loaded spoon back to his mouth, "I'll concede that, were it not for Ichimaru, I would perhaps not have been as fortunate in life as I am now. I maintain, however, that my life, while not as obviously fulfilling or fitting as it is now, would have continued in the Rukongai uninterrupted, even without your intervention."
"I wouldn't be so sure'a that," Rangiku muttered, shifting nervously again in her seat and shooting Toshiro a furtive look.
Toshiro rolled his eyes, as if to say Whatever. He waved her to continue, even as he began scraping the bottom of the bowl with his spoon to get the last dregs of pudding.
"Toshiro, there's something I need to tell you!" Rangiku spat in a rush, face reddening, hands gripping her skirts tight, eyes wide.
"Don't call me Toshi-" He began warningly, spoon hovering in mid-air, but she cut him off-
"Toshiro, Ichimaru Gin is your father!"
CLANG!
The spoon fell to the bowl with a clatter. Toshiro's eyes bugged. He couldn't make a sound. She plunged on before he could recover.
"And I'm your mother."
THUD!
He hit the floor so hard the pudding bowl toppled off his desk and conked him on the side of the ear. It didn't faze him in the slightest, because he'd already passed out cold.
So perhaps pudding wasn't the biggest secret the Tenth Division had.
Don't forget to review and let me know if you liked it! Thanks for reading. :)