It hadn't been planned. When the meeting was finished one day, they found each other. Before they knew it, it had become a habit.
Sometimes they sit there in silence and just watch as the sheets rise and fall in the steady soft breaths of her silent slumber.
Some days they talk, at first just sudden, sharp memories that come bursting over shaking lips and then faster. They laugh sometimes, grinning at the stupid mistakes they made then.
And sometimes they cry. When that happens they look away. They pretend that it's not them that's crying. That the hot wetness trickling down their cheeks isn't real. That what happened, didn't.
Rukia doesn't understand why Renji disappears there everyday. She thinks he needs to buck it up, take it like a man. She doesn't like to see him looking so lost over her.
She remembers the Renji on the gravesite of their lost friends. That Renji was able to hold his head up high. She doesn't understand why it's so different this time and it irritates her.
She doesn't wait for him after meetings anymore. They find other times to laugh and to talk, to fill the time they lost between them.
But the twenty-seven minutes from when the vice captain meeting finishes is her time. The time for the other woman, the girl Renji failed while holding his childhood friend close.
He doesn't talk much to Kira outside of this room. It hurts a lot to see him, still bent and broken, twisted to suit Ichimaru's whims and then thrown away, betrayed and forgotten. He likes Kira's smile, stupid and clumsy like it used to be, but he doesn't see it much anymore.
He doesn't see her smile anymore either. Her face is frozen in time, gentle and soft. He doesn't know if it's better this way or not. Without the chains of admiration that bound her to her captain, he's afraid she might have lost that smile as well. Maybe it's better she's like this afterall.
Sometimes, on days when Byakuya is drawn away on Kuchiki business, Renji lurks a little longer outside the room when her next visitor comes, his meeting finished now. The boy who should've saved her. The boy who failed.
He doesn't hear what the captain tells her. Sometimes he wishes he could. But other days, when the young genius comes, leaves a slice of watermelon on her bedside as if she might wake up to the faint smell, he doesn't think he'd understand anyways.
On those days, he just turns away. His twenty-seven minutes are long up. While she sleeps, he'll continue his duty until the day she wakes.