Rangiku was only vaguely aware of the knocking on the front door. She groaned and pulled her heavy cotton-stuffed comforter over her head. She wasn't sure how she'd managed to drink enough the night before to have this kind of a hangover, but sometimes she just got lucky.
She heard the door open and muffled voices speaking in the front room, but she really couldn't make herself care. Maybe Gin had come home or maybe Toshiro was hosting a party in the other room; she just didn't care.
But then the door by her head slid open, and her blanket was peeled back. Nanao was looking down at her with a definite expression of disappointment.
"It's nearly noon, Rangiku," Nanao said as she knelt beside her friend. "And all your son's eaten is a bowl of dried persimmons."
"So tell him to eat some potato chips," Rangiku suggested and tried to pull the blanket back up.
"If you'll get up," Nanao said. "I'll make you both some lunch and tell you about last night."
"What about last night?" Rangiku demanded, sitting up abruptly, and then falling back down onto her pillow with her hands over her head. "Shiro-chan, could you bring me the pink bottle from Unohana?" she groaned.
Nanao watched curiously as Toshiro opened the closet door and pulled out a good sized box which he set on the floor and then climbed on top of to climb onto the higher closet shelf. Then he climbed onto a pile of winter clothes and reached up to a smaller shelf high up in the back of the closet where there was a row of small glass bottles and boxes that looked like various medicines. He stood on his toes to get down the pink bottle and calmly climbed back down, returning the box/step to the closet and closing the door before he brought the bottle to his mother.
Rangiku thanked him and took a quick swig of the bottle.
"That seems like a pretty difficult place to reach," Nanao said to Toshiro as he took the bottle from his mother to return to the shelf.
"It's to keep kids from accidentally getting into the medicine," Toshiro told her as he slid the bottle in place. Then he turned around and added, "Not me, but sometimes neighbor kids come over to play. They're not always real smart."
"Oh," Nanao said, unable to argue.
It only took about half an hour for Rangiku to transform back into an actual person. While she was dressing, Toshiro watched Nanao cook. He seemed quite fascinated by the process and was very impressed that she managed to turn various dried ingredients along with a vegetable or two his father considered a reasonable raw snack into a hot meal including rice, apparently they had some, and miso soup, although she had been a little skeptical about the state of the miso.
"Oh, it all looks delicious!" Rangiku said, as she came out of the room with even her hair and makeup perfectly in place. "Thank you, Nanao-chan. Say thank you, Shiro-chan. It was very nice of Auntie Nanao to make lunch for us."
"Shiro-chan helped," Nanao informed Rangiku.
"He's a good little helper," Rangiku said, smiling at Toshiro who glared back. He never appreciated being called a 'little' anything.
"So about last night?" Rangiku asked after they'd been eating for a while.
Toshiro raised his head. "Is Captain Ukitake alright?" he asked, quickly.
Nanao smiled. "Yes, he's fine. Captain Unohana promised he could go home first thing in the morning. The ash irritated his lungs a little, that's all."
"Then it was that girl's fault," Toshiro said darkly.
"Yachiru had no idea she would hurt Captain Ukitake, and she was very sorry about it. Don't you go holding it against her. She just made a mistake," Rangiku told him.
He rolled his eyes. "She just is a mistake," he said. Then, hearing the shouts of other children outside, he added, "Can I go play now?"
Rangiku nodded and watched him go with a smile on her face. "Look who's talking," she said softly, after he was gone. "My sweet little mistake."
"I took your advice," Nanao said, abruptly.
"What?" Rangiku demanded, spinning back around.
"I-" Nanao looked more than a little annoyed. "I was at Division Four with the Captain for hours, trying to keep him from panicking because when he's drunk he has no sense whatsoever; not that he has much the rest of the time, but he gets weepy and worried if anything goes wrong—and all I could think is that all I am is a babysitter. I'm not his lieutenant because I'm exceptional in any way; I'm his lieutenant because he needs someone to be a grownup and do all the boring grownup work he's too lazy to bother with. Anyone with half a brain could do my job."
"That's not true," Rangiku protested. "Nanao, you—"
"Probably not," Nanao interrupted. "But last night it felt like it, so I decided I'd had enough, and I was going to leave him there to worry on his own. He didn't need me there so why should I stay?"
"Good for you," Rangiku agreed. "Why should you?"
Nanao glared at Rangiku for a moment. "If that was all that happened do you think I would be here now?" she asked coolly.
"Then what happened?" Rangiku demanded, now really curious.
"Unohana has a new Third Seat I'd never met before, Iemura, and he offered to walk me home because it was after two in the morning."
"Oh, no," Rangiku gasped. Toshiro's heat problems meant she spent more time visiting Division Four than the average shinigami. She'd met the new Third Seat.
"All I did was let him walk me home!" Nanao exclaimed. "I got to work this morning and there were flowers on my desk! Flowers! And the captain kept giggling to himself he was so pleased! He thinks the idea of me having an admirer is funny! Funny! Why should it be funny? Why shouldn't someone be interested in me?"
Nanao groaned. "But Third Seat Iemura is so awful! I nearly shunpoed home the minute he started talking about himself, but I didn't want to be rude-rude! I should throw his flowers in his stupid face!"
"That might be a clear enough message," Rangiku said. She felt fairly sure that Iemura would take some pretty serious discouraging now that he'd decided Nanao liked him. He seemed very dense on top of being absurdly vain.
"Well, I can't because I already broke it throwing it at Captain Kyoraku," Nanao said.
Rangiku choked back a laugh. How serious, studious Nanao would go from calmly ignoring her captain's antics to suddenly smacking him or throwing things at him was famous throughout the Gotei, not that she'd ever had the pleasure of seeing it for herself. This was honestly the most upset she'd ever seen Nanao get. She was finding it both enlightening, and, although she would never admit it, entertaining. "Well, you'll just have to be really clear with Third Seat Iemura. Really, really clear."
"This is all your fault, you know," Nanao said. "Telling me I ought to give some man a chance. I was perfectly happy simply going on with my life just as it is until you got in my head and started me thinking."
"I would never have suggested Iemura!" Rangiku protested. "And I never would have suggested anything at all if you hadn't looked very unhappy at the prospect of being single for the foreseeable future."
"My life is fine as it is," Nanao said stiffly. "I have made a fool of myself in front of my captain and my entire division, and likely Division Four as well. I should never have listened to you in the first place."
"You didn't do anything to be embarrassed about," Raigiku said. "You let a Third Seat walk you home late at night after you had been out drinking. It was a sensible thing to do. It's not your fault if he misinterpreted it as something more. You'll set him straight, and that'll be the end of it. You can't let one idiot make you give up on the idea of ever finding anyone."
Nanao shook her head. There were many things she didn't understand about Rangiku, but the one that puzzled her most was Rangiku's desire to see all of her friends married. From Nanao's perspective, Rangiku's marriage was far from ideal. Toshiro was an amazing child, and he would make anyone think that having children could be nice, but if she had to put up with someone like Gin-she'd rather be single for the rest of her life. "I am perfectly happy with the way things are now. I'm not saying that will always be the case. Things could change someday, but at the moment I see absolutely no reason to go about looking for a man."
Rangiku looked very disappointed, but she did accept Nanao's answer. "I didn't mean to meddle," she said softly. "I just wanted to help. I'm sorry I got you in such a mess."
"You didn't do it," Nanao said. "I did, and now I've got to go explain to Third Seat Iemura that I am never going to be his darling. Thank you for letting me complain a little first. I feel much more confident I can handle him without making a spectacle of myself now. I just needed to calm down a bit first."
Rangiku sighed to herself after Nanao left. Maybe her matchmaking plan wasn't quite as brilliant as she had thought. It was, she supposed, possible that Miyako and Nanao were right, and people really were happy with things the way they were-but she doubted it.