"I have a problem," said Shunsui, laying back in the grass. Birds were chirping overhead, and cherry blossoms made a slow pink rain around him. The breeze whipped the petals into frothy drifts and tugged at the pale hair of his oldest friend.

"That's a fresh bottle of sake," said Ukitate, "and the grass doesn't look poisonous, so I'm stumped."

"It's Nanao-chan," said Shunsui, pulling his hat down.

"You've had that problem for years, my friend."

"Ah, true…my sweet, cold Nanao-chan…I believe I love her," said Shunsui, to the inside of his hat.

"You always do. That's part of the problem."

The hat shifted slightly as Shunsui nodded in acknowledgement of the fairness of this statement.

"Your capacity for love is rather like Kenpachi's capacity for violence," said Ukitate dryly. "Broad, indiscriminate, and completely unpremeditated."

"Ah…" Shunsui grinned into the depths of the hat. "I knock down fewer buildings, though."

"There's that."

The pink blossoms continued to fall, forming fluttering patterns across the equally pink haori. Ukitate rested his sharp chin in one hand, a man all white mane and angles, like an arctic fox.

"This is different," said Shunsui, almost inaudibly.

"Since when?"

"Yama-ji."

"Ah."

They were both silent for awhile, remembering. Shunsui did not know what Ukitate had carried away from that final fight, but for a week afterwards, he had slept only in sweating fifteen minute cat-naps, something he'd never experienced before. It wasn't fear of the old man, or of his own death—Shunsui had faced his own death plenty of times, and although he would prefer to avoid it as long as there was sake to be drunk and naps to be taken, it held no particular terror for him.

No, it was Nanao-chan. He hadn't expected her to follow him, not really. He'd gone the way he had deliberately, to give her an excuse to lag one step behind. He and Ukitate were breaking any number of rules, laws, traditions and possibly a few commandments as well. He did not think his vice-captain would betray him, but he had expected her to delay for a moment—only a moment or two—long enough for plausible deniability of his actions. It had been the logical thing to do. There would have been a terrible shakedown of the thirteen divisions no matter what, but she would have been able to escape the worst of suspicion. Nanao was tough as tempered steel, and Shunsui did not believe for one moment that they would have executed someone with such a mastery of paperwork.

He had not truly expected her to throw logic to the winds, and follow him with such grim determination, nearly to her death.

For most of the week after, he would wake up over and over again, hearing Yama-ji's voice like an enraged volcano—"I don't have the patience to teach you how to breathe." And he would see Nanao on her knees, gasping, an expression of shock on her face that was shading rapidly to terror.

He'd been fast enough. He knew that he'd been fast enough, flickering away from Ukitate's side and pulling Nanao free of the old man's suffocating reitsu. And yet for that awful week afterwards, he'd woken up time and again convinced that she was dying. For a man who valued his naps, this was intolerable. He'd felt as if he were the one suffocating, unable to get enough air until he had tracked her down and listened to her breathing.

It was easy enough during working hours, but Shunsui had even stepped into her private rooms a few times. He wasn't particularly proud of that, but in the middle of the night, his breath rattling in his chest, it had felt less like voyeurism than a matter of life and death.

Not that there's anything wrong with voyeurism, mind you… Once he'd stopped panting like a broken horse, and started thinking clearly again, he'd been amused to discover that his ramrod-straight Nanao-chan slept in a nest of tangled blankets, like some small animal. Her permanent faint frown wasn't erased by sleep, though. One could not hope for so much.

He'd left immediately, of course.

Well, almost immediately.

Pretty quickly, anyway.

She hadn't caught him watching her, and that was the important thing. She was remarkably tolerant of his constant professions of affection—the smacks with the fan were just her way of playing along, he knew—but there was a difference between enduring "My darling Nanao-chan…" and waking up to discover your captain staring at you from eighteen inches away, listening to your breathing as if it were music. The one was within the bounds of their admittedly odd relationship. The other was just this side of creepy.

"Assuming I was going to give you advice—which you probably don't need anyway—" Ukitate said, "why should I believe that you won't get tired of this one as quickly as all the others? Ise-fukutaichou is what keeps your division from sinking into a quagmire of unpaid bills and unsigned forms. I would not recommend breaking her heart."

"Mmm…" Shunsui reached for the sake bottle, found it, and drank. After a moment, he said "I haven't looked at another woman since."

"Good god!" Ukitate sat bolt upright. "It's been weeks!"

"Mmmm…."

"Are you sure you're not ill?"

"Desperately heartsick for my darling Nanao-chan, perhaps…" and then, when Ukitate put up one pale eyebrow, "No, I'm fine." That was true, so far as it went. He was sleeping better now. The nightmares had tapered off, mostly. He was back up to a healthy fourteen hours of sleep a day.

Ukitate reached over and yanked the hat off. Shunsui blinked up at him in mild dismay.

"You're serious," said Ukitate, staring down at him. "You're actually serious."

Shunsui, who hated to admit to being serious about anything, shrugged and made a half-hearted grab for his hat.

"Why now? Nanao has been your lieutenant for years. Which is impressive in and of itself, since for awhile there you were going through lieutenants like bottles of sake."

Shunsui abandoned his hat and reached for the sake. Ukitate snatched it and held it out of reach. Shunsui groaned.

"She could have died," he said finally, putting his wrist over his eyes to block out the sun.

She very nearly did, eh, old man? All out of a loyalty that you hadn't even given her credit for. She had seemed very small when he picked her up, shaking like a leaf in a gale, as if the gasps tearing through her body were bigger than she was. It had shocked him. Normally he only thought of her as small the way that, oh, a hornet was small, or a particularly pointed rock in one's sandal—something capable of generating pain all out of proportion to its size.

Ukitate drummed his fingers on the side of the sake bottle. "Guilt is not the same as love," he said finally.

Shunsui feinted for the sake and managed to grab his hat when Ukitate moved to protect the bottle. He yanked the hat down over his eyes again.

"Are you sure you're not just feeling guilty? You shouldn't. Nanao's a tough girl. She's not a bird you can carry home in your hat."

"It was an excellent bird," said Shunsui indistinctly. Why did they always give him a hard time about the bird? "It grew up and had a nest outside my window for years. I don't know why everyone always has to bring it up. It's not as if I devoted my life to ornithology."

"You're thinking of devoting your life to Nanao," Ukitate pointed out ruthlessly. "She won't take anything less, and if you get tired of her in a week, you'll be out the best lieutenant you've ever had."

"Mmmmph." He waved a hand lazily. Ukitate rolled his eyes and drank back a slug of sake, stifling a cough.

"It's all moot anyway," Shunsui said finally, long after Ukitate had given him up as unconscious. "My darling Nanao-chan sees me primarily as a source of paperwork and annoyance."

"So change her mind," said Ukitate dryly, wrapping white strands of hair around his fingers. "You, of all people, should be skilled at attracting the attentions of women."

Shunsui muttered something into his hat.

"I didn't quite catch that."

"I said," said the captain of Eighth Division, enunciating each word, "Not. This. One."

Ukitate sighed, and passed over the bottle. "Then, my friend, you do indeed have a problem."

"I've been saying," said Shunsui, much aggrieved, and drowned his sorrows in sake again.

"Have you tried showing her how you feel?" asked Ukitate.