There were days when Ukitake felt very, very old indeed.
Those were the days when he couldn't get out of bed without coughing up more lung tissue than he would have liked, or the days when he inadvertently spotted some report Kaien had originally drafted that was still sitting around his somewhat disorganized office. Sometimes they were the days when he realized just how long he'd been around Seireitei and just how many disasters he'd seen in his time. Regardless, when they happened he tended to just retreat into his rooms until they passed.
It was on one of those days, when he felt very much like Jidanbo had sat on him, that his door slammed open and someone came marching right in without so much as a 'may I'. He jumped, then sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Shunsui, when are you going to learn that doors are there to be knocked on first?" he said in resignation as he turned to face the other captain, who happened to be grinning from ear to ear and had something in his hands.
"Doors were made to be gone through. I don't recall anything about knocking being in their description." He sat down, putting his bag down on the floor before reaching out to tuck some of Ukitake's limp white hair behind his ear. "Besides, you wouldn't be able to get up to get it anyway, so I figured why bother?"
Ukitake just rolled his eyes, though he was smiling at the same time. "You never change. What did you bring?" He looked down at the bag, then blinked as Shunsui upended it and spilled a bunch of what looked like blue, yellow, and red plastic onto the floor. He never quite understood plastic, even if people were always bringing things like that back from the living world. Matsumoto had that one thing...
...actually, he didn't want to think about that one.
"It's called Connect Four," Shunsui explained as he set the thing up. "Your goal is to get four of your color in a row. Rukia-chan apparently discovered it while she was on sabbatical down there, so I borrowed it." He blithely ignored the baffled look he was getting, finishing with the game and shoving a pile of red checkers at his partner. "You go first."
The game proved to be far more engrossing than he thought a simple children's game could be. They played for hours, drawing more often than not, arguing over what constituted 'four' (Shunsui insisted an 'L' shape counted, Jyuushirou objected to that), and generally amusing themselves. It was late evening when Ukitake realized he hadn't been coughing for several hours. He chuckled softly, shaking his head and looking over at Shunsui who was just grinning at him. "How is it that you manage to take my worst days and make me feel like I'm a teenager all over again?"
Shunsui just chuckled, leaning over the game to kiss Ukitake gently. "Because you are, at heart," he said in gentle amusement. "My job is to make sure you remember, when you have days when you forget."
There were days when Ukitake felt very young indeed, and those were always the days when Shunsui was at his side.