Disclaimer: The following characters belong to Tite Kubo.
This was something I came up with in a drift…hope you like it.
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-"Fear merely clouds the mind…"
-"How can you remain locked in here when all that life is unraveling beneath you?"
-"I do this…" She placed a pair of headphones over her ears and turned up the volume; the hard music was almost palpable.
-"Listen to me! There is more to life than just that one event in your past! Why won't you give yourself a chance?"
Hinamori removed one earphone and looked him straight in the eye. Her brown eyes pierced his shocked blue with a headstrong confidence. A fire burnt within their core.
-"Because if I do…who knows what will happen to me next. I can't deal with that; I can't deal with people and their fake masks. Can't you see, when they laugh, it feels forced, as if they want the entire World to know they are having fun when in reality they're not. How can you face people like that on a daily basis, its sickening…I refuse to put on a play just so people don't feel uncomfortable around me. I don't want to pretend like he did, people will just have to accept me for who I have become because change is not going to happen."
Her speech was calm and calculated, unlike his agitated eyes that desperately searched hers for a trace of emotion, even humanity. Nothing. This wasn't the girl he had met so many years ago in college…this wasn't the girl that had laughed with wide honesty in the halls. This was another person, another Hinamori.
Sounds seemed so much louder now. He heard the door to the waiting room open with a squeak and carelessly slammed shut. His secretaries' phone rang and he heard her bright voice recite a memorized greeting.
-"Dr. Hitsugaya Toshiro's office, how can we help?"
He frowned down at the girl sitting on the couch opposite his desk, but she merely returned his gaze with one of nonchalant audacity, her arms resting on either side of her body, one hand clutching a small MP3 player. He recognized it; Aizen had given to her on Christmas two years ago.
-"Why do you still have that?"
-"It would be a waste to throw it away," she replied blandly.
-"What if I gave you a new one?"
He watched her expression darken for a split second before she regained her composure.
-"If you wish to spend that much money on something as trivial as seeing me toss away one of his gifts just so you can feel better about yourself then be my guest."
Hitsugaya felt his eyebrow twitch with annoyance.
-"You know, I can't help you if you don't want help. You have to be…"
-"Open to the possibilities. Yes, I was in your psychology class. Remember? I heard the same lie."
He remembered. He also remembered she used to tie her brown hair in two pigtails. Now, it was wrapped in a bun, hidden within a turquoise cloth.
-"You used to laugh. Did you ever think that maybe you are wearing a well-placed mask as well?"
She regarded him with hurt. He knew he had hit one of her many sore spots.
-"That's all you want isn't it? A happy go lucky person all year round! Forget about reality and pain, as long as we all dwindle in fake amusement, its all good," her voice was shaking now. "Why can't you just accept me for who I am? People change…"
-"Because you didn't change of your own accord. You let someone else do that for you. Did you really want to become like this? Think about it Hinamori, think."
The wall she had so well constructed around herself was beginning to crumble, after all this time.
-"Maybe its for the best, that I don't trust people anymore…"
Hinamori lowered her gaze and kept it fixed on the forest green carpet in his office. She was like a child, rubbing the tip of her shoe against the floor. Even with the hard gaze she had acquired in the past year, there was always something childish and uncertain about her body language.
-"I won't deny it to you, people change Hinamori. People change their minds too. What might feel like a betrayal to you was his human right to choice. You can't deny him…"
-"That's not true!" she burst out, screaming at the top of her lungs. Her eyes were deadly and she had discarded the MP3 player on a corner of the leather couch, half rising from her sit. "Its not true when you promise to remain by their side forever! When you lead them to trust and love! You can't just break it…its like an unspoken contract!"
-"Hinamori!" he countered, rising from his chair, hands flat against his mahogany desk.
They were glaring at each other, neither of them willing to blink or break the invisible strand that connected them. Only the ringing of his phone distracted him and they were pulled back to their cold surroundings.
Damn it, he thought, I thought I had told Matsumoto to hold all my calls during this session.
He picked up the receiver.
-"Matsumoto!" he scolded, sitting back down and composing himself.
-"Doctor, is that any way to talk to your concerned secretary?"
He could almost see her pouting on the other side of the door.
-"No."
-"Is everything alright?"
She had regained her concerned tone and he felt touched by it.
-"Yes, it was just an argument, nothing more."
-"Are you sure?"
-"Yes."
-"Okay then, I will leave you to it, player."
-"Matsumoto!"
She hung up.
He put the receiver back on the holder and turned to Hinamori. She had resumed playing with her music, bobbing her head a little. The walls were back up. The break through they had achieved and their sudden connection had evaporated.
-"So, are you screwing her?" she taunted, half looking up just to catch his outraged expression.
-"No! What kind of a question is that Hinamori?"
She shrugged and removed her headphones, hanging them at her neck. She watched with sarcastic interest.
-"Everyone is doing it…fucking their secretary," she said, her voice full of acid.
-" I am not Aizen," he countered.
He couldn't deny it to himself that her words had stung more than he had wanted them to. It was ridiculous of him, to still harbor these feelings for her. After all, she hadn't gotten over her last lover, and he should have given up the moment she had burst into his office five years ago, sparkling with excitement and joy at Aizen finally noticing her presence while he had always been aware of it.
-"No, you're not…"
That statement had so many meanings but he couldn't catch them all. The ability to read her emotions was lost a long time ago.
-"How many sessions has it been now?" she inquired in a quiet tone.
-"Far too many."
-"Does that mean you're gonna lock me up?"
-"Don't be ridiculous."
-"I can't believe Rukia signed me up to this…"
-"She was concerned."
-"More like tired. I am the one pebble stuck in her glass slipper. She doesn't want a brooding hen at her stupid wedding…"
He was shocked by her language, which had changed massively. She sounded like a rebellious teenager, something she had never been. All of a sudden, the shy and polite Hinamori had faded away, like when water is distillated, leaving behind acrid liquor.
-"Hinamori…"
-"No one wants me around."
-"I want you around."
-"'Cause you're being paid to have me around."
Her words were like knives she held at his heart, stinging and poking him every so often. It reminded him of a cat he had watched as child play with a mouse before killing it.
-"I am not being paid to care about you."
-"You stopped caring about me when we graduated from college."
That caught him off guard.
-"What do you mean?"
She sighed as if she were already weary of their talking.
-"That once you were off and done like the boy genius you are, it was easy to forget about me and my common brain."
He was about to say something but she continued, waving her arms about. "I mean look at this. You have achieved your life's meaning right? Potted plant at the window over looking the blooming park. Your own office with Doctor introducing you name. Ornate diplomas hanging from your blank walls. And a busty sexy secretary to top it all off so the insane patients walking in to your office have something nice to look at before being mentally probed by your sky high IQ. Here you are, years later, being the nice friend and trying to use your God given talents to rescue your poor friend in need…"
-"That's enough out of you!"
Hitsugaya stood from his chair and walked around his desk towards her surprised figure.
He tore off the headphones from her neck, tossing them to the side, ignoring her questioning babble.
He grabbed her slender waist and hoisted her up to his level. He looked into her eyes, not just staring at their hues of chocolate color, but boring into her mind, willing the walls to vanish forever, and the mask to turn to dust. He brought his lips so close to hers; he could feel her raged breath fanning against his skin.
-"I have loved you for the longest time. I loved you even when you kissed that bastard and I still love you now and your hard headed foolishness."
She gaped at his words but he didn't wait for a reply as he closed whatever distance had separated them and crushed his lips against hers.
It was exhilarating and dizzying to be kissing her. To feel her warm lips against his, to part them and slide his tongue inside her mouth, touching hers for a devastating moment before pulling back and watching her watery eyes.
-"I'm sorry," he apologized automatically, though not pulling his hands off her waist, nor separating their bodies. And to his surprise, neither did she.
-"You…you just kissed me…why? Why would you love me?"
-"I don't know, I just do."
She rested her forehead against his chin and he bent down to kiss it.
-"I loved you," she whispered into his neck. "But I didn't know if you did…I preferred keeping it to myself than ruining our friendship. You were my closest friend…I couldn't. And when you graduated, I met him and for a while, I forgot about you and my feelings. But they were still there, and I knew it the moment we saw each other for the first time after I graduated. And it only got worse when Aizen left me. I can't…I can't keep going like this." She was sobbing now, and he felt her tears rolled down his white shirt onto his chest. "I feel as if something was taken from me the moment I saw him with Gin. I felt foolish and stupid for believing that he loved me for even one second…"
He hugged her tightly against him, quieting her sobs against his body.
-"Its okay, shit happens sometimes. Really bad shit happens…"
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-"Matsumoto, please cancel all my appointments for this afternoon," he ordered into the phone, fearing his secretaries mischievous words.
-"I take it things went better this time?"
-"Do your job…"
-"Will you be taking the front door or the back door?"
He paused, hating her, but mostly himself, for this.
-"The back…"
-"Ah! Doctor is a player!"
-"Matsumoto!"
But she had already hung up, and he could imagine her silent laughter on the other side of the door.
-"Shall we go, Shiro chan?"
He was taken aback by the sudden use of his old nickname. He felt butterflies from hell flutter in his stomach. It was good to hear it again.
-"Hai, Bed Wetter Momo."
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Yadda yadda…what a story. Hope it was entertaining.