Author's Note: I do not own Bleach or its characters. This is AU.
Chava
Rangiku arrived at her office in a much more cheerful mood than usual. The problem Gin had presented her was proving quite fun to tackle. She had always enjoyed mathematical challenges. And it didn't hurt that Gin was insisting on doing things like taking her out for lunch or dinner on a regular basis since she was helping him with this. Rangiku wasn't quite sure if the meals counted as dates or not. On the one hand, they really weren't all that different from the meals that they had shared in the past. On the other hand, however, Gin hadn't been this physically demonstrative with her before either. He had developed a tendency to hold her hand and kiss her cheek over the past week or so.
Ordinarily it wouldn't take Ran so long to deal with a math problem like this, but she kept getting interrupted by things like work and classes. But she was almost done. Rangiku hoped that wouldn't bring an end to their current closeness. She had missed Gin too much to go back to the way things had been. And she wanted to know if there could be more between the two of them. Gin was the one person Rangiku felt like risking her heart over, and she knew she would regret it more if she never tried. Of course, that didn't mean she knew how to go about moving into a romantic relationship with him.
But she would worry about that after she got his numbers straightened out. It would probably be another week before she was completely done with them at this rate. Rangiku hadn't intended for it to take so long, but she'd had a sudden influx of work lately. She had completely forgotten that midterms were coming up, and that meant both an excessive about of review assignments as well as actually making up the midterm. Rangiku had a policy that no two midterms she ever gave were exactly the same. It meant more work for her, but it did make it easy to spot anyone who had tried to use last term's answers.
Still, that didn't dampen her mood the way it would have normally. Rangiku hummed absently as she worked. She didn't realize that there was someone else in the small closet sized space that she called an office until the shadow fell over her computer monitor. Rangiku looked up to find her boss standing awkwardly in front of her desk.
Rangiku arched an eyebrow. "Can I help you?"
Hitsugaya looked uncomfortable and ran a hand through his hair. "I noticed that you've been spending a lot of time with Dr. Ichimaru lately. Given his role in recent events, do you think that's wise?"