WARNING: Tolkien'sInkwell attempts to write something humorous. Results may vary, proceed with caution, and don't say I didn't warn ya.
Toushiro had not meant to mention it to Rangiku at all. But the truth was, Toushiro did not have a whole lot of confidantes, and his Lieutenant had been acting so nice and friendly that he momentarily forgot that she was a twisted demon woman bent on making his life as awkward as humanly possible.
The two of them were having a quiet evening at the office (for once both present and sober). Toushiro had sent Hyourinmaru off to visit Tobiume while he battled with the influx of new Sword Fiend-related paperwork – because otherwise, Toushiro knew, he would just stay in the office all night, getting progressively more stir-crazy. Rangiku was sprawled across the couch – she could never just sit at her desk, she always had to be sprawled or perched somewhere random – chattering about something Toushiro wasn't really listening to and actually filling out a form about once every ten minutes. Which, for Rangiku, was practically light-speed.
Suddenly she poked her torso up over the couch and announced, "You've got a Look on. What'cha thinking about?"
"I've been sort of wondering about something."
"Ooh, something about girls, Captain?" Rangiku immediately purred in her demented-sisterly way.
"No!"
"Ooh, so Captain –"
"'S not about ANY of that," Toushiro amended, heading off the approaching comment about his sexuality. Which, for the record, he was determined not to think about one way or the other until he absolutely had to.
His Lieutenant's mischievous curiosity was then replaced by the more benign, friendly sort. "So then, what's up?" she asked kindly.
And Toushiro, distracted by his paperwork and admittedly a bit lonely without a certain ice dragon to talk to, answered, "Well, when Hyourinmaru and I were coming back from the Captains' meeting, it seemed like people kept – looking at us. Shinigami and zanpakuto both. To be honest it kind of made me uncomfortable."
Rangiku thought about it for a minute. She was starting to get the "Aww, Captain is so cute!" look in her eyes. It was unsettling. "Quite frankly, O Captain of mine … they are jealous!"
"They – what?"
Rangiku nodded emphatically, apparently delighted to have to elaborate. "The Shinigami are jealous because your zanpakuto doesn't harbor any latent murderous feelings towards you."
Toushiro opened his mouth to say something about how it wasn't like he had such an easy time getting Hyourinmaru to come back. But that wasn't a subject he felt like discussing with anyone. He suddenly wished he'd let Hyourinmaru stay, even if he wound up dragging Toushiro into another boredom-induced conversation about why, precisely, the interior of Lieutenant Abarai's soul looks like that.
Rangiku, oblivious to all of this, was still in full flow. "Okay, so Captain Zaraki probably just heard about the thing with Ryuujin Jakka and smells a good fight –"
"Over my dead, broken body!" Toushiro cried and made a mental note to remind Hyourinmaru to stay the hell away from Squad 11. Not that he wasn't smart enough to figure that out on his own, but still. It wasn't like he'd ever actually, physically been in Seiretei before, and it was just hard not to worry about someone who walked around looking so oblivious all the time.
"Oh, don't worry. Even Zaraki knows better than to mess with someone else's zanpakuto. Probably. Anyway … the zanpakuto are jealous because Hyourinmaru has a master he likes enough to return to so willingly."
"Wait, does everyone else treat their zanpakuto worse than I do?" Toushiro asked in confusion. In fact, until recently he'd assumed that all Shinigami and zanpakuto were as close as he and his.
"Well, as far as I can tell everyone treats their zanpakuto about the same. Maybe yours just puts up with it better? I know I've tried to be nice to Haineko, but she's just impossible!"
"Uh-huh." Toushiro, having now met both Haineko and her master, decided it would be best if he didn't say the comment running through his mind.
Rangiku folded her arms across the couch back and pouted a little at him. "Honestly, Captain, you have no idea how good you have it."
Toushiro, meanwhile, was guiltily remembering several occasions on which he had been less than a model of kindness toward his zanpakuto.
"Of course, anyone female was probably just staring because your zanpakuto is gorgeous."
All thoughts, guilty or otherwise, were immediately wiped out and replaced with, "I'm sorry. WHAT?"
"I said –"
"I-heard-you-you-don't-have-to-repeat-it!"
"Come on, you've never noticed Haineko's enormous crush on him?"
(Hyourinmaru, while capable of defeating what amounts to a wall of sentient flames, was apparently helpless against cat-girls wielding hair ties. Toushiro was pretty sure that image would be engrained in his mind for the rest of his life.)
"Or wondered why Tobiume always comes hanging around here?"
"Yeah, but those two know him –" Toushiro protested weakly, his mind quickly approaching the point of Emergency Shutdown To Prevent Further Damage.
"Oh, it's not just them," Rangiku stated knowingly.
"Rangiku …" Toushiro's mind passed Emergency Shutdown and had to be forcibly restrained from entering Freezing Everything in a Ten-Mile Radius.
"The SWA had a meeting about it! Not on purpose of course, but y'know, we got sidetracked and before we knew it we were having this epic discussion …" By now Rangiku was fully immersed in her happy rambling, thus failing to notice the ominous blue aura beginning to permeate the room. "And I mean, I can see where they're coming from –"
"Rangiku Matsumoto, if you start having Thoughts about my zanpakuto I am going to have to kill you."
Rangiku burst out laughing. "Oh – Captain," she snickered, "you sound like an overprotective father!"
The next day the Head Captain was surprised and annoyed to find the paperwork from Squad Ten late and rather crumpled to boot. When questioned, Captain Hitsugaya turned bright red and muttered something about having to thaw it out.
The tenth squad members' questions about why the Captain's zanpakuto appears to be locked in the squad offices have yet to be dignified with a response.
