Chapter Text
Hinamori would describe herself as a very empathetic person. She easily feels around her, eager to absorb the spectrum of emotions of people surrounding her into her being, often so that she’s painted as the resident crybaby, the softie, the vulnerable. That’s just how she is - far from the assumption that shinigamis have nerves of steel, and opposite to Hitsugaya Toushiro of the tenth division with icy indifference.
These moments of empathy are plenty, but real despair comes rare. Only when it involved the people she loved the most.
First when she thought her captain was murdered.
Second when her best friend stabbed her.
Third when she realized the betrayal.
Fourth when Hyourinmaru was stolen.
In the midst of the fray, she heard his scream, and the painful silence that ensued. In the midst of the fray, in the battle for life and death, she stopped moving. She only heard her heart, beating erroneously against its chambers as she tried to sense his reishi.
“Shiro-kun, please be alive.”
xxx
Hinamori jolts awake from her recurring nightmare. It has been two years - quite short for their indefinite lifetime - and her childhood best friend is alive and well with his grumpy personality still intact.
Paperworks and renovations hound her since their victory, but even these are not enough to steer away the sheer terror of truly losing him, this town, and this life.
Or maybe it’s the realization that despite her effort to become much, much, much more powerful, it simply wasn’t enough to protect the people around her. She couldn’t assist a captain in fighting or take revenge for Kira or support Hitsugaya. Again, she found herself relegated to the sidelines and shadows where her doubts eat her alive.
The mere thought of being weak keeps her on her toes, so much so that she has developed a routine for walking at night. Maybe she could stay vigilant long enough to hear the first splinter of shakonmaku breaking. Maybe she could be useful that way.
Her walking sometimes leads her to Hitsugaya’s quarters, a long way from hers, but the road to him is as straightforward as the moon on its path to orbit.
His room is dark, he never sleeps with the light on, and by some inkling, she knows that he’s out there in some part of the district, doing training. Like other captains, lieutenants, and staff as well.
In an era of peace, the peacekeepers are restless.
Maybe they simply aren’t accustomed to it.
She feels the familiar warm reishi near her. Ah, he’s always good at masking his presence.
“Momo?”
Hinamori turns to face him, her spin a little too fast to feign surprise, and she almost falls to the ground if not for his arms. Why is she such an idiot? “Hey Shiro.”
His smirk is visible under the night sky. “Hey there clumsy toes.” And why does he put up with her?
Hitsugaya has started his puberty spurt - if one can call it that. He has grown inches taller than the last time she saw him at the assembly dinner. His hair has grown longer too. Still in his cradle, she reaches up her fingers to the silver tips, and she realizes her proximity to his face. She pulls on them rather harder to regain her footing.
“Aw! That kinda hurt Momo!”
She crosses her arms and tries not to appear flustered. “They’re too spiky.”
He absently fiddles with the strands. “Do you want me to cut them?”
“Of course not, you look good with long hair,” she blurts them out before she catches herself. Hitsugaya looks at her, seemingly stunned as well. His cheeky grin widens long enough for her to rack up an excuse.
But nothing comes.
“You’re doing better with the sarcasm.” And he saves her yet again.
“Thanks.” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other.
“So why are you here?”
The half-truth she prepared many weeks ago rolls off her tongue. “I can’t sleep.”
“Same here.” The lingering doubts resurface when he touches Hyourinmaru’s sheath. To some extent, she knows that he’s too scared to shut his eyes and wake up to find him stolen again. He simply can’t let his guard down. “Do you want some tea?”
So he says but it’s her who prepares it anyway; she’s the only one who can prepare his drink down to his exact preference while Rangiku comes a far second. Hinamori doesn’t mind. The task keeps her hands busy - almost a routine like her bokken practice. But not too busy for her mind to stray to the fact that it’s her first time being alone with him in his quarters at night.
What a scandal.
If not for the presumption of everyone that they’re childhood best friends. At this point, her chuckle became audible.
“What’s funny?” He magically appears beside her and takes the cup she just filled with milk.
She shrugs and hides behind a smile. “Same old, same old. Your taste never changes.”
He leads her to the couch at the corner of his room - the only available seating area apart from his bed where they could have their tea. Hinamori’s brow shots up as they traverse the littered paperworks on the floor.
“Please don’t comment on it.”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Your eyebrows did!”
“They can’t speak, Shiro. They’re just hair.”
He grunts as the couch sinks to accommodate both of their weight. The banter comes to a head in the comfortable silence that accompanies tea drinking. Even the conversations in her head stop.
“You really need to let Matsumoto-san help you with tidying.” She can’t help but notice.
“We both know she’s not the right person to ask.” They both chuckle at that yet it is the perfect coverup for his anxiety, the compulsion to check every report in case he might have missed a hint.
She sees a box under the pile on her feet and pulls it up to survey. It’s a square-shaped thing with a picture of a group of people on it. “Oh but what’s this? ABBA Greatest Hits?” She flips it over to find several titles.
“Ah, it plays music. Karin gave me one during my last visit at Ichigo’s.”
Hitsugaya disappears in his closet as he rummages for the contraption that can produce music for the two of them. He emerges successfully a few minutes after, her teacup already emptied. The first few notes waft through the room.
Look at her face, it’s a wonderful face
And it means something special to me
Look at the way that she smiles when she sees me
How lucky can one fellow be
It doesn’t take much - until they start to hum together with the melody. Halfway through the fourth song with a woman belting Dancing Queen, Hinamori starts to yawn. It’s her cue to leave, she apparently overstayed her invitation for tea.
“Just finish the song, Momo.” He wiggles in his seat in a poor attempt to dance, and this effort at humor endears her to stay. She sinks deeper in the comfort of his couch; the tea, the music, and the calmness of his companionship encourages a different kind of relaxation in her veins, and she finds herself tucking her legs under her, her cheek on the seat, her sight on him.
She closes her eyes at the last chorus and Hitsugaya’s incorrect lyrics.
She wakes up to the sound of the birds chirping and the heat of the sun on her face. “Oh no.” Her eyes frantically search for the clock despite all of her senses screaming it’s already morning - like morning morning, and that she’s late for work.
She falters in her scrambling once she realizes the predicament she’s in.
Her legs are no longer tucked under her. They’re stretched out, her legs resting on Hitsugaya’s lap, secured by his hands. He stirs from his own slumber, and she takes the chance to escape from his hold, stand, and appear composed.
She fell asleep on Hitsugaya’s couch….with him. “I…I gotta go, Shiro.”
Oh kami, may no one see her leave.
xxx
Hinamori’s scent pervades his senses and the atmosphere of his room. Remnants of her warmth and presence are marked by a slight depression on her side of the couch. The record has stopped turning, it’s eight in the morning, his staff is outside rushing for the morning exercises, and his cup is rimmed green. Yet he is still stuck at the moment she stretched her legs and unknowingly kicked him on the knee.
Hence the position they were that morning.
He resisted the urge then. To tuck the stray strands behind her ear. He stayed content with the sight of her sleeping face right before he drifted off to sleep. It seemed like a different lifetime when they still slept together at the same house.
Hitsugaya shakes off the daydream embers from his being and prepares to go to his office.
“You seem well-rested.” It hasn’t been an hour, but he should have known Rangiku would be the first to see through everything. “Saw your guest shunpo-ing out of your quarters.” A brow raise earns a stern glare from him.
“We just had tea.”
“Whatever you say.” She hands him a handful of papers to sign. “Take it from me - labels are very important so it’s better to define it as early as now.”
“Friends.”
“Friends…who drink tea together at early morning.”
“And sleeps on either end of the couch.”
She laughs so loud she had to clutch at her sides. “I really didn’t need to know the last part.”
“Shut it.”
“Okay, have a great day. You know very well what I think, right?”
If Rangiku asks him what Hinamori means to him (like she would after she catches them at every interaction), he really wouldn’t know what to say.
Just that, her presence brought him a good night’s rest.
xxx
Hinamori didn’t have to say a word. They assumed she was there for paperwork, and Captain Shinji was actually happy that she got “time off for herself”. He knew she had trouble sleeping, and her eyebags and unusual irritability sometimes complicate simple tasks.
She can’t deny, however, that it’s the first time she ever truly slept. Without waking up every thirty minutes. Without shivering. Without nightmares. Without voices. Without guilt. Hitsugaya’s couch must really be something else.
So why is she totally avoiding him? She hasn’t stepped within the vicinity of Hitsugaya’s quarters and untangled herself from situations in which he is likewise present.
That peaceful sleep only lasted for a day, and she’s back with the nightly simulations of hell. She misses the calm, that one she couldn’t deny. Soon enough, she’s back on the streets, walking until the evening becomes dawn. On the third night of this routine pilgrimage, Hitsugaya finds her, littering outside his quarters no less.
Hinamori refuses to catch his eyes. Suffice to say, the sleeping thing was embarrassing - yes they’ve slept like that as kids, but they’re adults now. He must have misconstrued the whole situation.
“So why are you avoiding me?”
Wow, he’s insufferably straight to the point. She shifts from one foot to another, basically giving away her anxiety.
“I wouldn’t be here if I was avoiding you.”
“So why are you here?”
“I was just passing through.” He smirks and that’s all it takes to break down her facade.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s my first time sleeping like that for a long while too.”
She now looks at him, caught offguard by the casual confession. “Must be your couch.”
He shrugs. “Tried to sleep there last week, only got back pain.”
“You didn’t have back pain recently then?” She remembered his position, and it was objectively uncomfortable.
“That and stiff neck.” He chuckles. “And a really good night’s sleep. You must have put something in your tea, Momo. Is there anything I should be wary about?”
“Silly! I did nothing of the sort.” She crosses her arms in front of her, and thrusts her chin out a little. “Maybe it’s my brewing method.”
Hitsugaya’s relief shows through his smile. Like her, he must have been overthinking things and finding ways on how to lessen the resulting tiptoeing. Centuries of friendship truly has its benefits. He angles his head towards his room.
“Would you care to brew me that tea again?”
xxx
All papers are organized on the foot of his bed according to Rangiku’s filing system. It only took Hinamori a few glimpse at Rangiku’s notes to know which ones go where. That leaves the floor free for taking and to obviously avoid another couch encounter.
This time, she’s sure she’ll leave after brewing.
“I also found this yesterday during my futile initiative to clean.” He flashes another record, and this time it’s of an artist named Aimer. “Wanna hear it?”
Her resolve falters at the interest.
Two songs later, they’re both lying on the floor, a meter’s distance away and only an arm’s breadth, silently humming along to the clear crooning of her voice.
Hinamori doesn’t know where the compulsion comes from. “I can’t sleep.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
She turns her face towards him and finds him already looking. “Every night, I see their faces and every iteration of their deaths. Even the ones I did not witness but retold through the reports. Each time, I’m only standing, unable to move, to act, to help. In the biggest war of our lives, what have I truly done?”
“I think all of us are going through that, Momo. You’re not alone. It’s normal to feel like that.”
“You don’t understand,” she says under her breath.
“I lost Hyourinmaru,” he replies, like it’s a bigger loss. His hand instinctively reaches out for the sheath beside him, reassuring himself that it is still there. But this, she knows, is something incomparable.
“You don’t understand,” she repeats, and he almost talks back. “I thought I lost you.”
Her words hang in the air, stringing the patchwork tension between them. How could he possibly know the gravity of her declaration? “How could I live…knowing I did nothing to save you?”
“You weren’t there,” he tells her matter-of-factly.
“I could have been and yet I would have contributed nothing.” She shifts her gaze to the ceiling. “You have saved me time and time again and yet I have done nothing.”
The needle suddenly goes off track and the turntable stops playing. In the silence, she hears his nervous intake of air. She has definitely spoiled this semblance of a sleepover.
“You don’t understand,” he echoes her words. His arm slowly reaches out to her, his fingers lightly tapping the center of her palm, “how relieved I was you survived.” His touch lingers a little more. “How could I live knowing I did nothing to save you?” He throws back her words to her, and the question feels more of a declaration. She just isn’t sure what it leads to…or if she’s ready to know.
She takes the easy way out. “Stop repeating them dummy.”
“You see how awful you sound?” His fingers go away, and she’s left with the ghost of his hold. “We could go over and over about it in our heads, but it has happened, and we managed to pull through. Maybe we’re just meant to live with the guilt and the grief, and try to honor what we are left with by living. It just takes a little getting used to.”
“Quite a tall task.”
“What else can we do?” Hitsugaya yawns.
It’s her cue to start getting up. She has taken too much of his time again. “Thanks for this conversation, Shiro-kun. I..I should go.”
“I thought you liked the couch?”
“I’m imposing on you, silly.”
“It’s not silly if I’m offering it.” He stands up and quickly disappears to get a set of beddings he evidently set aside for her. “Besides, you sound too ruffled right now. I’ll make sure you don’t get nightmares.”
“Eh? How will you do that?”
“I’ll watch you sleep.”
She frantically waves him off. “Oh gods no.”
“Then I’ll watch out for those screams.” He pats the side of the couch, and she allows him to get her to settle.
“Okay fine but one scream and you’ll have to kick me out.”
Hitsugaya gives her a thumbs up. “Your snores can be quite something too, Momo.”
“Hey, stop it.”
“Good night, Momo.” He leaves the night light on for her and trudges to his bed.
“Good night, Shiro.”
xxx
Hitsugaya stirs gently from the familiar scraping of her feet against his wooden floor. Through drowsy eyes, he spots her putting away the beddings and fixing her hair. He has grown accustomed to the chirping of birds and the muted activity of the early rousers in the training grounds, but this is a sight he is not prepared for. It almost feels like a privilege to be with her like this before the work of the day takes away her quiet stillness.
She sees him waking up through the soft light of dawn. “I need to go now. Thanks for letting me stay again.”
“Hmm,” he says his thanks. “Let me get the door for you.”
He only notices now, but Hinamori is slightly trembling. He glances outside and finds that it snowed over the night. “You can’t go out like that.”
Yep, not with her usual work robes. He finds a poncho he has grown out of. He only ever wore it in the human world when his body there cannot withstand the winter season. She’s already at the door when he throws it over her small frame, the clothing still too large for her.
“Thanks, Shiro-kun.” Her cheeks are bursting red in the dark, and he chuckles at the sight.
“You look so cuddly like that.” He stuffs his hands into his pockets, afraid of what he might instinctively do.
“Really? That’s nice,” she proceeds to smile, and he thinks he lost it all.
His body moves of its own accord, his hands out of their confines and now around her body, pulling her in for a hug. Hinamori stiffens for a second, and he almost pulls away, forgetting how this might offend her, but tentatively, he feels her arms rise and return the hug.
They stand like that for a long minute, and within that minute, he forgets how to breathe.
All that he is aware of is her body wrapped in his hold, safe, warm, alive, real. Hinamori is here, she exists, she isn’t gone, she isn’t harmed or killed. She smells of carnations, and the aroma of tea clings to her clothes. Her face is at the perfect height to rest on the crook of his neck. In that moment, he becomes conscious of the fact that she is there with him, and she’s not going away.
That simple realization breaks free the emotions he had been suppressing.
He pulls away, suddenly anxious of her reaction. He starts to breathe again in rapid gasps while she stands there unaffected. He waits for the awkward excuse, for the floundering, and the messy exit, but she is still.
Hinamori then reaches out and touches the tips of his hair, and he is frozen in her presence. She refuses to level with his gaze and maybe it’s because she’s so close to crying.
Under her breath she murmurs his same prayer, “You are real.”