Requested by Mungetsu- thank you
Ikkaku x Nemu
Responsible
He was not quite sure when it happened, but he suddenly found himself responsible. When he had been young, he had been too foolhardy to ever take anything serious, and then round about when he should have started he just relied on Yumichika to do it for the two of them. He had his duty, but he didn't consider that to be the same thing- even as a high ranking seat of the Gotei, he did not feel responsible- it was just doing what he wanted to do, following Zaraki.
But then, on one innocuous day, he came upon the Lieutenant of Kurotsuchi's weird-ass division, crumbled on the pavement.
He later learnt that she had stumbled out of the twelfth division when Captain Kurotsuchi's division had not been watching, although quite how she had gotten into that state he did not know, and he had never dared ask. He was pretty sure that the truth would make him want to go and punch the freak's lights out, and he was also pretty sure that he would end up autopsied alive on an examination table as punishment.
But on that day, she had just been a girl crumbled on the pavement, and he knelt beside her.
It was only when she looked up that he even realised who she was, for her hair had come loose and was obscuring her face. But her eyes were distinctive, as was her face, which he and his drinking buddies had dismissed a long time ago as 'pretty, but needs to smile more'.
So he'd patched her up the best he could, before picking her up as she slipped into unconsciousness and carrying her to the fourth division, where he stayed by her side out of some strangely placed sense of duty. She sat up quickly a few hours later, as if waking from a nightmare, and stared at him, fingers fisted into the sheets of the hospital bed.
"You're-"
"Don't try and move too much, idiot. You'll only make yourself worse."
And all of a sudden there was a flicker of emotion on her face, the likes of which he had never seen before.
"Did you bring me here?"
"Well, you weren't exactly able to bring yourself, were you?"
She blinked at that, and there was a momentary silence.
"Why are you being kind to me?"
He felt his stomach do a back-flip as she touched his cheek, his eyes as wide as her own.
And just like that, he had a responsibility, because he was pretty sure that he could not forget that sudden warmth of his cheek. Jut like that he knew that the strange, silent Nemu Kurotsuchi was his to look after, because he realised that no one else would do it. Just like that, she was his, and like hell he knew where to start.
But then she lowered her hand to the bed again, and the look of acceptance and the lack of surprise that no response was elicited made his chest ache, just a little bit, in a way that he did not understand. He figured that today was one of those days for not-understanding where things were going- just for following where it would take him.
He took her hand back, and pressed a brief kiss to her knuckles.
"Get some sleep, okay?"
And then the dumbstruck smile that lit up her face, for just the briefest of moments, made all thoughts of responsibility suddenly not that terrifying.
In fact, if she were to smile like that more often, he realised that he would probably start to welcome it.