Tuesdays with Shuuhei

The process of waking up occurred in incremental phases for Rangiku. That is until she felt the unusual heat at her front. Suddenly she was wide awake and blinking her eyes open. The first thing she saw was black hair, the face she’d sat across from so many times in the bar. With dawning horror she realized just how trashed she’d gotten the night before.

With the slowest, most fluid motions she could manage she rolled out of her bed. After making sure her robe was belted and she was mostly covered, she bolted for her bathroom. She almost slammed the door shut in her haste, but ended up pinching her fingers in the frame to stop it from banging shut. Swallowing the urge to curse roundly, she eased the door all the way shut.

She realized that she had no where to run in what she was wearing and no way to indulge in the temper tantrum she desperately wanted to give vent to without waking up the man inside. Taking a deep breath and shaking out her hair, she opened the door and faced him much like would have faced an approaching phalanx of hollows.

He was still sleeping, much to her intense relief. What the fuck had happened? Vague flashes of being unable to stand was about all she came up with, and felt so stupid it was like an enormous weight on her shoulders. There wasn’t any soreness or stickiness that would have signified a night spent fucking his brains out. Which left her to wonder what the hell she’d done. She grabbed a clean uniform and dressed as quickly and quietly as she was able to, leaving her pink kimono in a wrinkled heap on the floor. She ignored the compulsion, the need to clean it up and hurried out of the front door, sliding it just so to avoid the telltale squeak that would have announced her departure.

And promptly felt like a straight-up, flaming coward. She took another deep calming breath, focused on the pale grey sky and streaming pink clouds signaling the oncoming dawn and found a calm spot in her mind. She was a lieutenant in the Thirteen Court Squads for fucks sake. She was a tough bitch. With that firmly front and center in her thoughts, she squared her shoulders like the warrior she trained hard to be, turned around and walked back into her quarters.

Her hand was rock steady as she jerked Shuuhei’s arm roughly, even as her insides trembled violently. He woke with a start, grunted a few times and focused those dark eyes on her face with a sleepy smile that was so sexy it made her want to rip off her clothes and have her wicked way with him.

The issue was really that she couldn’t do that and leave her baggage out of it anymore. If she allowed herself to see him for who he was, that smiling man with the dark eyes who was looking at her like she meant something, she might break into tiny little pieces.

“Time to go,” she said, even as she kicked herself mentally for being responsible and cautious and broken. He looked confused, obviously expecting something else to come out of her mouth. Truthfully, she wasn’t certain she would be strong enough to resist his lure, so she basically threw his clothes at him and tossed him out before he even had a chance to properly dress. It was so much easier to resist temptation if he wasn’t there.

*~*

Weeks had passed since their last encounter. At first he’d sent notes, beautiful in their austere simplicity, “I miss you. You gave me something. I thought I could go anywhere with you by my side.”

When he stopped sending them, she was happy; she was devastated. The emotions were nearly her undoing, and she naturally took them out on the new recruits. Her cute, little captain suffered, too.

When rumors started filtering that he had been seeing a little piece in his squad for months before he even starting the madness with her, she laughed. It was a bitter, simple laugh. She’d known better than to fuck with him, she really had. His type had always been younger, smaller. Cuter.

Of all the things she could have been described as, perhaps the only cute could have applied to her when she was in the mood. One could count on a hand how often that had happened.

Rangiku started to forget to bother to give excuses to skip off of work. The whispered news was suddenly everywhere. People neglected to lower their voices when they talked about the affair with Shuuhei when she was in or out of earshot. Threats and acts of violence didn’t help. It was big news in the court squads, as she’d known it would be, and suddenly, her life was not so neat and orderly anymore. It seemed everyone had a theory of who started it, and some people weren’t at all shy about asking her directly.

The little bar in the middle of the bad part of town became her second, dirtier home. No one recognized her there; no one bothered her when she got too wasted. No one really cared there. She fit right in.

*~*

A captain of the Thirteen Court Squads really shouldn’t have to beg his lieutenant to show up for work. Sure, she’d had a rough few months, what with all the stories of her and Shuuhei suddenly swarming through the rank and file, but she still had responsibilities, to duty, to her squad. To him, damnit. He ran a hand through already rumpled white hair.

With a heavy sigh he lifted hand and knocked carefully at the wooden doorframe to his errant lieutenants quarters.

*~*

The days blended together. The reprieve from monotony only came when the arrancars finally showed their faces in the word of the living. She asked why the white haired kid was there, her voice hoarse and her own hair hanging in tangled and greasy hanks around a face that had suddenly become lined and distinctly gray. The censure in his gaze would have made her flinch, had she not still been semi-drunk from the night before. Gin would never had approved of her appearance…

Shaking her hair out of her face, she remembered dimly that she owed the runt in front of her a semblance of respect. She struggled to care, momentarily. Thoughts of Gin, of Shuuhei, of duty and honor circled to the front of her mind. Had anyone cared? Had anyone seen that she displayed valor and bravery? What did any of stupid trappings of respect have to offer that alcohol didn’t?

“MATSUMOTO!” the undersized thorn in her side bellowed at the top of his lungs as her attention drifted elsewhere. “You will clean up now and meet me back at the office in ten,” she suffered through a long, considered look at her, one that stripped her to her bones and left her bare and embarrassed, “no, fifteen minutes. Do not make me come back here looking for you.”

She’d heard that tone from him before. It just hadn’t been directed at her before. The whine came automatically, “But captain, I’m on my per-“

“Do not even attempt to insult my intelligence, Matsumoto. The only thing wrong with you is that you have taken leave of your senses and sunk to the bottom of a sake bottle. The work you normally do so shoddily has piled up long enough. Make no mistake about it; if you do not show up, I will have you stripped of your rank.”

Her lip curled in a sneer and words she didn’t mean tumbled out of her mouth, “So what? What do I care about a stupid, fucking rank?”

Cold, abrupt and malevolent filled the air. “Do you think that choosing you as my lieutenant was easy, was so simple? You had a reputation, Matsumoto, one for being difficult and lazy. Sure, you had skill and loyalty, but even that seems to have crumbled like so much dust. Get your shit together, woman. My gods. Look at you! You stink and look old. What happened to your pride?”

Something in her mind snapped into place and her spine straightened almost involuntarily. Adding insult to injury was that his words were true.

“Apologies Captain. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

And she was. It just sucked that a miniature man had to be the one to snap her out of it.

~*~

Regaining respect, even a just modicum, was difficult after her behavior. She felt the gazes, heard the whispers and knew that she had lost face. And for who? For what? A quick (or not so quick, as the case may have been) lay?

Regardless, day after day, she struggled through. It was tough, it was humiliating and it hurt. Through all that she knew, like she knew the rules Gin had imposed on her once upon a time, that she would persevere. The hardest thing to deal with was the disconnect she felt with her sword.

Haineko was like her. But it had been so long that all of the things that had bonded them now drove them apart. The laziness, the disregard for authority, the general contempt for people- peers or otherwise- had once offered them common ground. Now it was difficult, of not impossible for Ran to get past all of that and actually work with her sword. It was like trying to run uphill through cold honey.

Still, she tried and through threats and cajoling gradually regained some of her skill with the blade. The mountain of paperwork, however, never seemed to shrink and she found herself chafing against the bonds of duty and honor. The ongoing threat of the arrancars in the world of the living seemed like the sort of challenge that would help her with all of her present issues (she remembered the brief interest that she’d had, and regretted not following through on it) - the sword she needed to fight with, the captain who seemed reluctant to trust her and all the other members of the court squads who found her lacking.

Getting her way had never been a problem before, but it seemed like it might be one now.

~*~

The top of her uniform was loosened to the point of near obscenity and her hair was freshly washed; loose and shiny. In the last weeks of her return to sanity she forgone the trappings of her innate femininity, choosing instead to prove her worth in other ways, but thus far she’d been unsuccessful in getting what she wanted: A place with the team going to the world of the living.

She had gone through phases of blaming herself and then Shuuhei Hisagi and then her midget of a Captain and then the wrinkled bag of bones of a Commander for daring to oppose her will. However, the start of the whole mess always came back to one decision- hers. This meant that the blame was likewise hers- however much she wished it was otherwise.

Then the solution came to her in a flash one afternoon when she’d rather innocently reached up to brush her sweaty hair out of her face while sparring with a seated officer. The fourth seat, who was a young man she thoroughly enjoyed beating, stared directly at the innocently exposed, flushed flesh of her chest as she had reached up. Even after she speared him with a look that set his knees knocking, his gaze had been nonetheless drawn back down as she berated him mercilessly.

It was silly that she’d not thought of it before. Certainly the old her would have thought of playing the boob card long ago. So now she stood, waiting for her chance to join the meeting that would decide whether she got her way or not, with her tits out and her war paint on. The door opened suddenly and she found that she had to tamp down the sudden onset of nerves before she entered. She threw back her shoulders and shook out her hair, remembering the care with which she’d gotten ready. Her eyes were carefully outlined and the shape of her lips delicately enhanced. The chain around her neck tightened just a tiny bit as she took a deep breath before entering.

She kept her face carefully blank as she took in the line of captains who would ultimately decide those of the court squads who would go. She shouldn’t have been shocked when the rest of the lieutenants filtered in after her. She still felt a trickle of sweat making it’s disgusting way down her throat when she had to not only face those of the captains who’d been her drinking buddies, but also Renji and Shuuhei. Renji looked, for lack of a better term, like four day old dog shit. Shuuhei, on the other hand, looked as he always had in a work enviroment, cool and distant. Fucker. Certainly he was not suffering unpleasant effects from the aftermath of their short and ill-advised affair.

For a short and painful moment she felt elated just to see him. Then there was only a simmering anger in her veins. She kept her features under control, but straightened her spine and slid her hand to the hilt of her sword. All it would take for his stupid head to roll across the floor would be three long steps, feint when he tried to side step her attack and then a long stroke of her sword across his neck just above that ridiculous choker and he’d be dead. She could see the attack in her minds eye, clear as day.

She didn’t do it, of course, but the blood thirsty look in her eye and the tight, predatory smile had not gone unnoticed by him. He paled slightly and his adams apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. Rangiku was savagely pleased that his reaction to the threat of her violence was fear. He’d not forgotten that she was superior. I’m always superior, little man.

The logic of her arguments combined with the effect of her appearance on the weak and easily led men meant she got her wish. The Commander seemed slightly amused as he made the final announcement. The squinty slit of his left eye opened for a minute and she saw the almost black color of his iris before he winked at her. At least that is what it looked like to Ran. His voice was strong and held none of the amusement she had thought she’d glimpsed a moment ago as he wished the newly formed team luck along with the strength and wisdom to beat their enemies.

She felt none of the elation and sense of accomplishment she’d imagined she’d feel upon getting her way as she filed out of the room with the others.

~*~

They were leaving tomorrow. Ran’s apartment was clean and despite some minor difficulties her one small (really fucking minuscule) bag was packed. It basically held a spare uniform and some underwear. Still, she’d be able to get a ton of stuff over there between the excessively favorable exchange rate and her practically exorbinate hazard pay. There were definite visions of beautiful new outfits dancing in her head as she did the final round of dusting around her place.

When there was a knock at her door she had no second thoughts calling out a quick “Come in!” figuring it was the grey haired tormenter who called himself her captain. She turned around, dusting rag in had and her hair caught in a bandana as she opened her mouth to greet him. It wasn’t Hitsugaya.

“Hisagi!” she was startled to see him and as a result her voice wavered in a manner she found personally offensive. She tried for a loose and cool expression, one that said I could give two shits, but it didn’t work in the slightest.

He lingered in the doorway as he looked at her in the way he used to before, right before… She shook her head and whipped off the bandana. She was acutely aware of the way she looked; red, blotchy and sweaty from cleaning. Naturally, she was hardly dressed to kill, unless one counted cleaning as murdering messes and dirt. Whatever, she thought, why should I care if he thinks I look like shit?

She dug her toes into tatami mat under her feet as she tried to gather her thoughts enough to come up with an appropriately scathing response to his sudden, unwelcome appearance.

He ran his hand through the messy mop atop his head, managing to look both embarrassed to be there and somehow hopeful. It was enough to drive her to madness and beyond.

Silence ran a syrupy-thick river between them while each contemplated the other.

The words that she’d trapped in her throat while the whole drama played out in public struggled to be let loose.

Bastard. Asshole. Fucker.

It’s not everyday one has the opportunity to say exactly what is on ones mind.

Bastard. Asshole. Fucker.

The corner of his mouth quirked up, and her insides melted.

Bastard. Asshole. Fucker.

The image of the young ass girl he’d been fucking while he’d been playing her pinned itself to the forefront of her mind. She regained the sense of righteous indignation she felt upon seeing him in the meeting.

Bastard.

Asshole.

Fucker.

“You’re too late, Hisagi,” she found herself saying in a deceptively calm and kind tone of voice. She felt a smile creep up.

“As you know, I’m leaving tomorrow.”

~*~

Matsumoto-san was even more beautiful than he’d allowed himself to remember. The relationship he’d found himself in was unsatisfying on so many levels. The girl he’d been seeing was young and excruciatingly dumb. Simple comments turned into long explanations he soon realized he had no patience for. Even a drunk Matsumoto managed to participate in conversations that stimulated him. Maybe it was the fact that she knew what she wanted. Maybe it was the fact that she’s lived and learned and experienced… He was flummoxed as he stood before the one woman he’d been with who left him wanting more. The one who’d challenged the perception of giving in as she stood strong.

~*~

She was unfortunately horny. It was a definite disadvantage dealing with a man she’d been unable to categorize beyond unrepentant horn-dog. The one part of her- the part of her that was desperate to get laid- was screaming in her head to drop her clothes and grab her ankles as she told him to get busy licking her twat.

The bigger part of her, the so-called sensible part of her, the one that she hated ever-so much, was advising her rather sensibly to tell him fuck off.

The sensible part of her was lost as the hospitable part of her wouldn’t stop demanding her to be polite; to offer him sake and a seat. She hated herself. Hated the bits of her warring personality that wouldn’t be calm in a situation that was so difficult. Something about him called for extreme reactions.

She left him briefly; the egotistical, vain part of her needed to be fed by cleaning up her appearance. She felt like a complete traitor as she brushed out her hair and washed her face. Like, why should she care what he thought of her appearance when he’d been such an utter and complete shit-ass? Still, it’s always better to face anybody one has strong feelings for one way or the other looking as good as one could manage. At least that was how she justified it to herself.

~*~

Shuuhei waited patiently in her living area for her to return. It smelled of her, evoking memories he’d tried not to acknowledge. He’d known she’d be hurt when she found out about the chick he’d been seeing, but he hadn’t known that the girl was going to spill everything she’d figured out to her little friends. He supposed he had something to learn from Ran when it came to controlling his conquests. He’d been petrified that he would do anything to upset her, but still there was a little part of him that had wanted to rebel.

He missed Rangiku. He missed her fiercely, knowing all the while he’d fucked up something awesome. It had taken all his courage to come here tonight. He’d needed to do it, though. The mission she’d practically begged for was excessively dangerous. It wasn’t that he didn’t have faith in her ability to take care of herself, it was that she meant something to that him he was not only reluctant to define; he was unable to put it to words.

~*~

She felt calmer after her ablutions, more centered. He was sipping sake with a cup from her best set, looking at ease in her innermost sanctum. It fucking irked the shit out of her. It wasn’t right that he should be so goddamned comfortable while she was on pins and needles. All the parts of her personality that were at odds with each other at other times united in utter disgust for herself and him; her for still feeling anything at all for Hisagi- and him for making her feel that way.

She no longer felt at all calm. There was nothing peaceful about how she currently felt. The urge to kill was almost undeniable. The clothes she’d taken to wearing after work, a more comfortable version of her uniform were hardly flattering. Then, she’d been careful to make sure she was not presenting herself as if she actually cared.

Ran sipped a cup of sake from the not-so-good set she kept in the back of her cupboard. The major difference, other than the chips out of the sides, was the sheer size. Still, she kept their last encounter front and center in her mind.

No need to let alcohol get the upper-hand.

No need to let good alcohol go to waste either, she thought as she tossed back the entire cup in one shot. She hadn’t had drink in weeks, and if she ever needed one, now was definitely the time.

~*~

Shuuhei couldn’t sit still another moment in the deafening silence that had fallen since she’d pounded the shot of sake. She looked utterly at ease if one looked away from the slight expression of distaste across her features. It was sort of surreal, like being in Ran’s home on a regular social call, only not. He could tell that she was not pleased to see him, but some perverse part of him, perhaps that part of him that had kept him coming back to her and her rules as long as he had, kept him from leaving outright.

He got up and walked to the spotless counter, leaning his weight against it as if he really needed the support. Maybe he did.

The words left his mouth without conscious effort. It was not what he’d planned when he had shown up, but her expression- her very countenance- made it difficult to express himself in front of her, especially when faced with her pressing censure.

“Sorry”, he said, “I’m so fucking sorry, Ran.”

~*~

The movements of her body seemed to have been taken over by a puppet master. She saw, as if from a great distance, her body straighten effortlessly from the slouching position she’d taken. The next sequence happened so quickly it was over before she knew it. Six steps, and her hand had snaked around his neck. Just enough force was used that he fell to the floor, and there she was. On top of him. Her knee pressed against his throat. The cadence of her breath hadn’t even changed.

Her lips curled into an approximation of a smile as she said, “You call me Matsumoto-sama,” enunciating clearly.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~

My dear readers,

Sorry about the wait. Things have been... Well, suffice it to say this whole year sucked saggy old man balls and was steeped in drama and bad decisions.
Whatever. I'm determined to finish this. It won't be quick, but it'll fuckin' happen, goddamned it. So, I'm asking for a bit more patience. The reward? Well, that'll be smut.

So, merry holidays and all that jazz.

Chapter title is a song by Temper Trap.