Keeping the Minutes [Shunsui, Nanao; Shunsui/Lisa/Nanao] [Bleach]
Title :: Keeping the Minutes
Characters/Pairing :: Shunsui, Nanao; Shunsui/Lisa/(future!)Nanao / any variant thereof you want implied.
Rating :: PG
Warnings :: Spoilery for Pendulum arc
Wordcount :: 1,040
Summary :: The little Ise girl is, he thinks, the smartest child he has seen in decades.
The little Ise girl is, he thinks, the smartest child he has seen in decades. Perhaps centuries.
Lisa-chan says it’s because she never stops asking questions, and right now, Shunsui is inclined to agree. Tiny Nanao-chan has been grilling him for no less than half an hour straight, likely at Lisa’s insistence, and he gets the feeling that when she someday comes into her own, she will be just as terrifying a taskmaster as old Yama-jii. (Not that it will faze – or motivate – Shunsui in the slightest, but still, the idea is both adorable and amusing, and it would be a lie to say he wasn’t almost looking forward to it.)
Today, the questions are all about their division, and she does not seem to mind when he periodically shrugs certain ones off with a vague, “Why don’t you ask Lisa-chan that later?” (He does this even on some questions he knows the answer to perfectly well, simply so his vice-captain and favourite prodigy will have another chance to bond. Nanao-chan’s immediate blush whenever she sees Lisa is one of the cutest things Shunsui has ever witnessed, even after all these hundreds of years.)
But most, he is more than happy to answer outright, watching the way her eyes light up behind her glasses at each new nugget of information, the way she squeezes her book closer to her chest in tightly-restrained glee. Her enthusiasm is almost contagious, he will muse later, right before his face hits the desk and he begins to snore, forcing Lisa-chan to hit him once again upside the head.
“Why do you want to know so much about the division, hm?” he manages in between the onslaughts with a lazily amused grin. “Aiming for captaincy yourself someday, Nanao-chan?” His tone is teasing, but the question itself is at least halfway serious – it isn’t as if he’d put it past her to eventually pull it off.
The shaking of her head is immediate, and so emphatic that her glasses slip down the bridge of her tiny nose. Shunsui reaches out a hand to gently slide them back up, sparing her from having to let go of her formidable shield of a book, and the blush spreads like wildfire across both delicate cheeks.
“No, sir, I would never–!”
“Hmm, what’s this, now? You’re more than smart enough to manage it, I’d wager, and no one can argue that you aren’t the goal-oriented type.”
“I – you shouldn’t flatter me like that, sir!” Shunsui bites back a laugh and immediately regrets it, thinking that at least the gush of air might serve to cool her now even more inflamed face. “Besides, I…”
“You what, Nanao-chan? What is it that you want?”
“I would be honoured just to continue serving under you and Vice-Captain Yadomaru,” she blurts, and the look in her eyes before they are shyly averted tells him that she is completely serious – not that he would have expected anything less. He can also tell that there is more to it than this, and that she is too embarrassed to admit it.
“You want to stay in the division and grow up to be like Vice-Captain Yadomaru?” he supplies, and Nanao nods, nearly dislodging her glasses yet again and drawing attention to her hopeless blush.
“Yes, sir. Yes.”
“Then I’d say we’re extremely lucky to have you here,” Shunsui cuts in cheerfully, “and I’m sure Lisa-chan feels the same way. You can stay right here with us, and we’ll both watch you grow up.”
“Do – do you mean that, sir?”
“I could never break a promise to someone as precious as you, Nanao-chan.”
And the blossoming of that hesitant smile is, he decides, almost more refreshing than even the longest of naps.
But there will be no more respite, not after this.
Afterwards, little Nanao is the first in their division, beyond Shunsui himself, to hear anything of the news.
She makes her way into the offices that morning, expecting her vice-captain’s return, and finds instead only an impressively inebriated captain slumped artlessly over his desk.
He lifts his head and slurs out her name before she can even decide whether or not it would be prudent to approach.
“Nanao-chan.”
“Captain.” She inclines her own head respectfully while still eyeing him carefully over the rim of her glasses, attempting to gauge the level of his drunkenness. “I won’t take up any of your time, sir; has Vice-Captain Yadomaru returned?”
And she sees his eyes turn suddenly, strikingly sober.
“No.”
She turns the inclination of her head into an outright bow, clinging to protocol and hoping to let the sense of unease slide off her small shoulders. “My apologies; I didn’t mean to be a bother. I can come back sometime later.”
“Vice-Captain Yadomaru will not be returning, Nanao.”
The words are impossibly flat, and punctuated by a sheaf of paper being thrust in her general direction.
“A transfer order, if you want to take it. If you no longer feel safe here.”
He does not say the words I’m sorry, knows that she is more than observant enough to make them both unnecessary and unwanted.
But he still cannot meet her eyes, and passing out yet again over his desk is beyond a relief, face shoved up against paperwork that he can’t imagine ever getting finished, not without Lisa around.
When he wakes, it is to a spotted swirl of white and black, and he thinks, I’ve really drunk too much this time. (And then, Good.)
Shunsui blinks half-heartedly, reaching up a hand to swipe across his eyes.
And then he realises that he is staring at the paperwork, now somehow completed.
He is startled enough to sit upright, staring muzzily at the neatly-stacked pile.
Nanao-chan..?
He stares harder, trying to force his gaze to focus.
He notes the impeccable penmanship, the precision with which all the forms were filled – and the almost-imperceptible droplets of water scattered at random across them.
Nanao-chan.
His fingers take hold of the pile almost as tightly as she clings to her book, and Shunsui breathes in.
(And out of the corner of his eye, he spots the one form she has not filled – the transfer order, filed neatly in the trash.)
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starcrossedsins,
productive
