i want to thank everyone who reviewed. please continue to feed the ego (watch out, it bites). i like to hear people are reading what i write, it makes it worth the effort of posting - my frustration tolerance and HTML skills are both minimal. please continue to review!
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"Nanao-chan isn't paying attention!" Yachiru complained banging her gavel on the table. If Nanao ever found out who gave her that gavel, she would shove it up their-
Bang, Bang! "Nanao-chan! Pay attention!"
"I'm sorry, what did I miss?"
From across the table Matsumoto gave her a strange look.
Once the Women's Shinigami Association meeting was finished, Rangiku swept over, grabbed Nanao's ever-present book and paperwork and pulled her to the door by her sleeve. "Come on, I haven't talked to you for days so we definitely have to go out for a drink."
"Now? Ran-chan, it isn't even after noon." Nanao tried to point out while gathering her things from her friend.
"You're absolutely right! We'll have lunch with some sake!"
Surprisingly enough, Nanao agreed knowing she would probably be the one eating lunch and Matsumoto would be the one having the sake. Actually, after the past few days and nights, a drink was starting to sound good. Yet again she had spaced off in a meeting and this time she did it twice in the same meeting! Maybe if she drank enough she could take a nap without dreaming. It was entirely possible sake could make the dreams worse, although she was having trouble trying to figure out how.
When Matsumoto mentioned stopping by the division to see if Shunsui wanted to join them, Nanao stammered that she really didn't have time for lunch and if she was going back to the office she might as well stay there and get some work done.
"Okay, Just the two of us." Matsumoto said leading Nanao to her favorite noodle shop. Shunsui had been right. For some reason, Nanao was avoiding him. Matsumoto had been trying to set the two of them up since the girl first became his fukutaicho. In Matsumoto's opinion, their personalities complemented each other perfectly. But if Nanao didn't even want to have lunch with him, then something must have happened between the two of them and now that her curiosity was piqued, Matsumoto knew she would have to find out why.
Matsumoto spent the next hour and a half trying to get Nanao to open up but nothing worked. Every leading question she asked came to a dead end. Nanao either wasn't paying enough attention or deliberately stopped the line of conversation. It was the spacing off that Matsumoto found most interesting. Whenever she spoke more than a sentence at a time, she would have to pull Nanao's mind back to the table. She also seemed to forget about eating but not the drinking. To Matsumoto's surprise, Nanao had two cups of sake. She knew of one other time Nanao had imbibed alcohol in the middle of the day and that was after a particularly messy battle with some hollows before they were both fukutaicho. They'd both lost several friends in that battle but both came out physically uninjured. From their excellent recommendations by a supervising captain, promotions came soon after that but Matsumoto still had some nightmares about that fight.
Once Nanao had eaten a few bites of her noodles and finished her sake, she quickly excused herself explaining there was another meeting she needed to attend. Matsumoto stayed long enough to finish the bottle before returning to her captain's office for a nap on his couch.
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"My opinion is that she's in love." Matsumoto stated, waving to the bartender for another bottle of sake.
"What?" Shunsui almost dropped his cup. He paused for a moment to run this new information through his mind. In all the years he's worked with her, she'd never even been on a date. Well, not that he knew of. Sure, she had a few friends, but he'd never heard of her having a romantic attraction to anyone. Not even to him. The thought of her with another man left him with a hollow feeling in his chest.
"Who is he?"
"How do you know it's a he?"
"Hummm… " Shunsui's mind wandered and kicked that thought around a few times. Nanao and who… Matsumoto? He looked at her. Oh, yes he could see the two of them together. That wouldn't be bad. Actually, he'd really like to be able to see that. Of course he would like to do more than watch, too, but…
Matsumoto saw the dreamy look on his face and said, "Not me, you idiot."
"Who, then?"
Matsumoto took a sip from her cup. "I don't know. But I'll get it out of her."
"You didn't see her with anyone else?"
"Well, no. But tomorrow I'm going to follow her so I can find out."
"Would you be willing to let me know?"
"I suppose I could."
"Thank you, Rangiku-chan," he emptied his cup and set it at the table. "I have an early meeting tomorrow, so I'll take my leave now. Until we meet again, my dear."
Matsumoto watched him leave with a full bottle of sake in hand. Shunsui never had early meetings; Nanao knew better than to schedule anything for him in the mornings. This must have bothered him more than she thought it would.
The bond between a taichou and their fukutaicho was a strong one. It took many years of observation and training to create the necessary trust for a good team. They knew each other's strengths and weaknesses, and could take that into account, whether in battle or while running their division. Sometimes the bond was like that of family member – Yachiru and Zaraki, or the Kurotsuchis, in their own sick way. Like that of a teacher and student, like Unohana and Kotetsu. Or a bit romantic, like her Hitsugaya taichou (now that he was starting to mature and grow a bit more aware of her… assets) and apparently like Shunsui and Nanao. She wasn't sure what Kuchiki and Abarai had. That was a strange pair, especially since Kuchiki could be such an uptight prick. Most taichos were rather protective of their 2nds, so perhaps that was why Shunsui reacted the way did – or he really did love her.
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Returning to his division, Shunsui was now thinking along a similar line. Working together for the past forty or fifty years had led him to believe he knew his Nanao-chan. Except he couldn't tell when she was in love. He knew it had to be a man, Nanao had never shown the slightest interest in women. Then again, she never showed the slightest interest in men either, or for that matter, toward him. That was probably what hurt him the most, that she had never given him a chance. Or had he blown the chance without even knowing it? Nanao was so prim and proper, so uptight and responsible. She was everything he wasn't and he loved her for it.
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"Kyoraku Taicho, I am Ise Nanao, your new fukutaicho." She said with a bow.
Shunsui appraised her with a practiced eye. Slightly on the thin side, rather short with an immaculate uniform, glasses perched on her nose and hair pulled up into a clip. Nothing on her person was out of place and her uniform covered just the right amount of skin. She could have been on a recruitment poster – except for the book. It was a rather large book that she held tightly to her chest and it was disproportionate to her body so when she bowed, he wondered how she stopped from falling over. So this was the girl Yama-jii sent to be his new fukutaicho. Nothing flashy, like Matsumoto but he wanted a fukutaicho who actually does paperwork. She was probably quite pretty when not wearing a uniform. Actually, he'd like to see her without a uniform – or anything else. Maybe she would loosen up as they got to know each other.
"Ise-san. You are the one Yama-jii sent? He said you were just the kind of person I need and maybe some of your habits will rub off on me."
She kept her head down and flushed slightly. "Kind of you to say so, sir."
"Would you like a tour of the 8th division."
Still not looking him in the face, she replied, "That's not necessary, sir. I have memorized the floor plan of this division."
This took him a bit off guard. She does her homework, he mused. Excellent! She'll probably do the paperwork well, too.
"I think I will call you Nanao-chan."
Her head rose and for the first time she looked him in the eye. The expression on her face was not only priceless, it was also quite pretty. This was going to be fun.
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The sky was full of stars, bright points of light spread over a black background. He liked to lie on the roof of the 8th division's main building and watch the stars. There were so many that they made him feel insignificant. No matter what mistakes a person made, none of it would affect the stars. Until now, he had always thought, throughout the years, Nanao would be watching the sky next to him. Some day she would start to see him as something more than just the taicho of the 8th Division. Some evenings, when she would be looking for him for his approval for paperwork, he could convince her to sit and look at the stars with him. Or if Kuukuku was doing one her fireworks displays he would drag her from her desk to watch from the roof; all in a comfortable, companionable silence.
He would no longer be such a central figure in her life. She hadn't even come to find him in the past few days to do any paperwork. She now left anything that required his approval on his desk. There were no lectures about how much work he needed to do himself or how he had missed another meeting. It was a little lonely and he missed seeing her.
He wasn't sure when his teasing had become real. When his feelings had become real. There had always been the hope that one day she would stop resisting, or would proclaim her own affection for him. He hoped her negative responses to his own proclamations had merely become an automatic reaction and not something she really and truly hated.
When he had spoken with Unohana the afternoon after he had taken her to the 4th division, she had said nothing was seriously wrong with Nanao and the girl had left in better spirits. He should have realized that she wasn't ill, that she was just distracted by another man's affection. Carrying her to the 4th division she was light in his arms, her head was pressed to his chest and it felt perfect there. He wanted to hold her like that forever, with the light scent of the sakura blossoms wafting in the air. Even her fireball was perfectly formed – just like everything else she did. And he knew she would never hit him with it. Probably. Something in his stomach twisted when he thought of her in another man's arms. Her dark eyes looking into his, her glasses off and her hair down, her body pressed to his, waiting for his kiss.
Whoever this man was, he would never be good enough for her and, when he found out who it was, he would make sure that the man took care of her the way she deserved to be. God help the man if he hurt her or if Shunsui ever saw tears in her eyes, for he would, without hesitation kill the man who caused them.
He knew he was jealous, and he hated that part of himself. If this man could make her happy, that was what mattered, right? And she had never really displayed any romantic affection towards him. Still, he couldn't help but be jealous.
He rarely drank to chase away his thoughts, but tonight he didn't want to feel anything until the news sank in. He wanted to be numb and for his brain to stop bringing up painful images and thoughts of her.
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This last dream was a rough one. Dawn was only a few hours away and knowing she wouldn't be able to return to sleep, she dressed and slipped silently out of her room. Walking would give her some time to think and help to pass the night. She was almost afraid of going back to sleep. Who knew what would happen then. After each dream, it became harder and harder to look him in the face. Apparently, her imagination was better than she had ever thought. It was all in her imagination, right? Of course it was.
That didn't mean she couldn't enjoy the dream, did it?
It did if she couldn't keep her mind on other things, like – oh, say - her job. And then it really was a problem. She wondered if there were support groups for shinigami who dreamed of having sex with their taichos. Who all would be at that group? Would it be only for fukutaichos or could it be anyone from their division? Or perhaps someone who dreamed of a captain from another division. Were any of them already having sex with their captains? Maybe thinking about this sort of thing was worse than remembering the dream.
Should she stop by Matsumoto's favorite bar and make sure they both made it home tonight? No, surely they had left the bar hours ago and were both home in bed. Were they sharing that bed tonight?
At lunch, Matsumoto had kept steering their conversation back to Shunsui, so perhaps she had been trying to tell her something. She'd known Matsumoto since they were in the academy together, and while she wasn't necessarily easy or promiscuous, she did consider sex as a bit of a hobby. And with a body like hers, she had really enjoyed using it to flirt with, well, just about anybody. She'd even flirt with Yamamoto occasionally. She had an inner strength that always amazed Nanao. Matsumoto had lived in one of the tougher areas of Rukongai and she had once made some allusions to how she'd earned the money to live on before meeting Gin. Matsumoto was the most social and outgoing people Nanao knew. Just the type to appeal to Shunsui.
Nanao had known from the beginning that his advances were made only to fluster her, to get her to respond to his theatrics. He only wanted to rattle his tight-laced fukutaicho. If she ever responded favorably, he would back away or hide from her. And that was why she never responded, because she couldn't take it when he would react badly. She just wasn't' strong enough for that. She'd never been very good at dealing with emotions and definitely not dealing with rejection. She'd had several boyfriends when she was at the academy and before she became a fukutaicho. Once she was promoted she really didn't have time for that sort of thing and handling all the division's paperwork.
Occasionally, she actually enjoyed some of the teasing by her taichou. It kept life from getting too boring and it gave her an excuse to hit her very frustrating captain with anything in reach. While not exactly a bright spot in her day, it gave her a moment away from her regular routine. He could also be a complete pain in the ass. Some of his outrageous entrances could get overly complicated and even she has a breaking point.
Walking thru the dark, she once again felt very much alone. That was probably the worst part of these dreams, in them she felt whole and complete when she was with him. Once she was back in reality, alone again, she felt like a part of her was missing. Like someone had cut out a part of her soul and was now dangling it before her, tempting her, teasing her with something she knew she could never have. It was that kind of loss that hurt the most. It was the loss of something she'd never had to begin with.
Just thinking about him, the image that came to mind was from her dreams, his eyes shining with a burning desire that twisted her stomach and took her breath away. Now when she closed her eyes he was all she could see and the pain moved up into her chest.
She opened her eyes to find herself standing at his door. She could feel his shielded reiatsu from where she stood and the steadiness told her he was asleep. A distant light from behind cast her shadow on the paper of the door. The fingers of the shadow reached for hers as she extended her arm to rest her fingers on the door. With a deep breath she realized she couldn't open it and she allowed her fingertips to silently run down the door to fall at her side. The one action of opening that door would change her whole life, probably in a negative way. She couldn't risk it. Her heart sank and she bowed her head. There was too much at stake. With a deep breath, she turned and forced herself to leave. Returning to her dark room, she turned on the light, lay back down and pulled the covers tightly around her. She reached for one of the books beside her bed, selecting a slim volume from the stack. It was a nice boring book on the updated reporting procedure for death or injury of a shinigami when on patrol. And although she doubted it, she hoped it was a subject that would chase away her strange dreams until daylight.
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