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The first time Nnoitra gives her a gift, she doesn’t really think much of it.
Sure, she does a double take. Nnoitra, actually showing appreciation for someone? Especially her, the person who has literally spent all of her time and energy making sure that he doesn’t get himself into the sort of trouble even his family’s money can’t protect him from and has been doing that since long before his family decided to pay her to do it? She must be having some kind of fever dream.
But it’s a slice of cake, and he makes up some stupid excuse about how he doesn’t like sweets (like she hasn’t seen him scarf down half a ridiculously expensive chocolate cake while rummaging through the fridge drunk at three in the morning), and how she should eat it or he’s just going to throw it out anyway. So she gladly accepts the cake and wonders if giving it to her was his own idea or if someone made him do it.
From there, the gifts keep coming. Never so often to raise any kind of alarms, and never after anything that she would think would actually deserve gratitude. It seems like he just picks completely random times to give her gifts and none of them are ever two of the same.
A fun little treat from some bougie bakery or dining spot here. A trinket or bauble from somewhere he’s gone on a trip without her there. He buys gifts like a rich person, but it’s never anything that really seems obviously out of the ordinary.
So when it’s a week and some odd days after her birthday (which went by without Nnoitra so much as wishing her a happy birthday, and he’s pretty sure he had no idea it was her birthday at any point, and she didn’t feel like bringing it up and starting a fight) and he hands her a jewelry box, she doesn’t think twice about it.
The necklace inside is nice, and she has no doubt that it’s more expensive than something she would have ever bought for herself— not that it’s a high bar to clear considering she’s pretty careful with her money, even if she’s never met a cafe or bakery full of sweets she didn’t love. Still, she writes it off not only as one of Nnoitra’s whims, but also as something someone probably told her he should do. After all, she knows a lot of things about him and his family that she’s quite sure they would rather keep private, and even if she has no intentions of ever telling anyone anything that would get any of them in trouble (as much as she might fantasize about it some days, when Nnoitra gets particularly on her nerves, acting like he’s completely untouchable), people like his family probably see it as worth their while to make sure she feels… Appreciated.
So she thanks him (which he completely ignores), puts it on, and goes about her business like nothing at all has changed.
Nel’s job is to take care of Nnoitra.
She doesn’t actually have an official job title, and the description can be a bit misleading. She’s definitely not his servant, or even his assistant; anything falling more under that umbrella is Tesra’s job, and she’s pretty sure if she ever tried to do anything that he normally does for Nnoitra (not that she has any interest in anything like that), he would actually try to strangle her.
He takes his devotion to the Gilga family, and to Nnoitra, very seriously.
Nel, on the other hand, doesn’t. She’s known Nnoitra longer than either of them can ever really remember. They by all accounts should hate each other— and in some ways it often feels like they do— but she’s also been taking care of him that long, too.
‘Taking care’, in this instance, meaning that she’s been watching out for him. Trying to keep him out of trouble. She’s not as successful as she would like— it’s not like he actually respects her, or cares to listen to her when she tells him not to cause trouble or do drugs or anything like that. But she once helped him out with a rowdy gang of delinquents who thought that even if he was twice as ‘badass’ as they were, the fact that he had more money than them made him an easy target, and then she patched him up afterwards.
It must have caught the attention of his family, who were probably just as burned out trying to deal with him as she was, because before long she found herself dealing with him in an official capacity— for an amount of money that she couldn’t really refuse no matter how much of a headache Nnoitra could be.
Still, even though she makes good money, she tries not to live like it too much. Considering what the Gilga family is like, she never knows when she’s going to find herself suddenly out of a job, because one little slip up could mean getting kicked out. So she tries to save as much of her money as possible, because it’s not like she would know how to translate the ‘skills’ she’s learned in this job to a more… Traditional kind of employment.
Maybe she could advertise herself as some kind of bodyguard? She’s not sure how many high profile people would want someone who looks like her as a bodyguard, because people tend to look at the fact that she’s a feminine woman with a feminine figure and just sort of dismiss her because of it, even if that always ends poorly for them.
Not that she’s trying to leave her current position. She’s not sure the Gilga family would let her even if she wanted to, but she’s worked herself into a kind of complacency. She doesn’t get annoyed enough by Nnoitra to want to quit and storm off, and she’s gotten used to all of the ridiculous things she has to do to keep him out of trouble— or as out of trouble as she’s capable of, which seams to be good enough for his family and is thus good enough for her.
It never hurts to be prepared, though.
Nel tries to have a life outside of work. It’s hard, because being Nnoitra’s babysitter isn’t exactly a 9 to 5 plus overtime sort of job. On the other hand, it’s also not the sort of job that really requires her to be on her toes any time she’s actually ‘working’, either— she just sort of follows after Nnoitra and keeps her eyes open for trouble, or for Nnoitra going to cause trouble.
So it’s a double-edged sword; a job that pays well and doesn’t always feel like work, but which can call on her at any moment, making it hard to maintain an actual social life.
Still, she does her best. Most of her friends understand. Most of them have met Nnoitra at least once and just respond with noises and messages of sympathy when she has to cancel last minute to accommodate another babysitting session because Nnoitra has to appear in public with his family, or because he’s decided it’s a good night to go out drinking and whoring, or whatever the problem is this time around.
(She’s also had most of them try to convince her to quit, but she’s always just told them ‘I’m thinking about it’ and left it at that, knowing full well that she has no intentions of doing something like that. After all, if she’s managed to stay friends with Nnoitra for this long, then there must be some masochistic part of her that actually likes dealing with all of his nonsense, in some kind of crazy backwards way.)
It’s a lucky day for her; she’s actually made time to go see Harribel, because Nnoitra is out with his father for the day for something related to the ‘family business’ (she has no idea what the Gilga Corporation actually does, she hasn’t asked, and she honestly doesn’t want to know, because the more plausible deniability she has the better, given that most people who are as rich as they are don’t get that way by especially honest means) and that means someone else can keep an eye on him for the day.
Where Harribel goes, of course her little ‘entourage’ goes, but Nel doesn’t mind. The Tres Bestias, Harribel’s bodyguards turned friends turned maybe something more, are a catty and protective trio of women when it comes to Harribel and most people, but they seem to like her well enough… Or at the very least they tolerate her.
Even though her day is mostly free (with Nel just hoping that she doesn’t hear her cell phone ring and hear a slightly panicked, trying to keep it together Tesra on the other end saying he needs her help), Nel still manages to show up late, sweat on her brow as she drops into the chair across from Harribel.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says as she catches her breath— she’s not exactly out of shape but anyone would be panting after sprinting to catch a train and then sprinting again from the train station to their destination. “I was out late last night, so I overslept and missed the first train…”
“Are they keeping you awake all night again?”
Harribel has money in her own right— the fact that she sort of floats around the edges of the same social circles as Nnoitra’s family is how Nel met her in the first place, since she definitely doesn’t belong to that sort of elite group— but she makes her distaste for how Nnoitra carries himself and, by extension, the way Nel has to clean up after him.
“It’s not a big deal,” she says, because to her, it really isn’t, and because Harribel picking a fight with Nnoitra— no matter how civil she is in comparison to the person she’s going up against— is only going to end in tears for everyone involved. “It was Tesra needing my help with something, anyway— it’s what they pay me for.”
“They must be paying you well,” comments Cyan Sung-Sun, and Nel expects her to follow that up with a comment about how she wouldn’t be sticking around otherwise (it’s what she usually hears, at any rate), but instead Cyan leans in to take a closer look at her… Chest?
Or, more accurately, her collarbone, where the necklace that Nnoitra bought her is sitting.
It’s a fairly chunky piece, with a thick golden chain, and dotted with little white and blue stones, ending in a pendant the size of a large coin with a similar blue stone. It’s definitely on the flashier side compared to what she would pick out for herself, but it is nice, and she doesn’t want it to just sit in a jewelry box collecting dust even if it’s not the sort of thing she would normally wear on a day out.
“Uh, yeah… I mean, no, I actually got this for my birthday,” she says, gently touching the hanging pendant before holding it up so Cyan can take a closer look.
“Did Nnoitra buy this for you?”
Nel pauses for a second. She wonders if she should feel defensive at all about that, just based on the way Cyan is looking at her— and now everyone else at the table is looking at her, with expressions she’s having trouble reading but which all involve suspiciously narrowed eyes.
“...Yes?”
“Hm. Maybe he appreciates you more than I thought.”
She blinks at Harribel, who has turned back to sipping her coffee even while her bodyguard friends are still unsettling Nel with the way they’re staring at her.
“I don’t know if I would go that far,” she says, because now she really does feel like she needs to get defensive— although the fact that it’s an accusation of Nnoitra actually caring about her that immediately makes her jump in to correct Harribel should really be more concerning as far as her job goes. And yet, she doesn’t want Harribel— or anyone else— to get the wrong idea.
(There are certainly enough people when the two of them have been out and about together who have mistaken her for Nnoitra’s girlfriend, and since he’s always quick to correct them on the matter, she feels like she’s perfectly in her rights to do the same.)
“Well, if he doesn’t, then he has a funny way of showing it,” Franceska says. “Because you’re wearing my salary for the year around your neck right now.”
Nel doesn’t even have a drink to sip on yet and she still manages to choke.
“Nnoitra!”
There are few sounds sweeter to Nnoitra’s ear than an annoyed Nel, especially when he’s had to spend a whole day being on his best behaviour so he doesn’t completely fuck up his chances of inheriting daddy’s money.
It brings a smile to his face— or at the very least a sadistic sort of grin— as he turns around just as the door slams open to see her standing there with her face bright red, looking like she’s ready to explode.
“You’re wearing your birthday present. Looks good on you.”
It does look good on her; he knew it would look good on her when he bought it. Which is exactly why he bought it. People can say whatever the fuck they want about him (and most of it true) but his family has beaten a lot of things into him over the years, and an appreciation for aesthetics is one of them, even if he chooses to throw all of that out the window most of the time explicitly to piss them off.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know clothes, jewelry, just about anything that goes into making yourself look good. It just means that he usually prefers to wear things that would make his parents embarrassed of him, but not embarrassed enough to disown him.
You know. As you do.
With one hand in his pocket, he walks over to her and starts playing with the pendant. She immediately slaps his hand away, but Nnoitra just grins the same way he always does.
“You didn’t tell me how expensive this was.”
Nnoitra has never met a woman aside from Nel who bitches about getting an expensive present, but he did pick it for her knowing that she would balk at the price tag. It’s almost embarrassing, how little money she spends on herself when she’s supposed to be part of his entourage— even if he hates having her look over his shoulder all the time, he still wants her to look like she belongs while she’s doing it, or else she’s just embarrassing him.
“So? It’s a present. You’re not supposed to care.”
“Of course I care! I went out wearing it like it was no big deal and then I find out it’s worth more than everything I own combined?!”
Nnoitra just rolls his eyes at that. Even if he picked the thing because he knew it would knock her on her ass when she found out about the price tag, at the very least she could show some fucking gratitude.
But then, it wasn’t like he had even thought for a second about the price that was attached to it, himself: it wasn’t even his money (yet) and even then, the amount of money barely even registered to him, even though it was definitely a considerable amount.
Even if money did matter, it would have been more than worth it just to see the way Nel is turning so bright red she almost looks like she’s about to pass out.
“Eh, it’s not that expensive,” he says, because he knows it’s just going to piss her off more, and does his best not to just grin as he shrugs. “Not to me, anyway… And if you’re really that concerned, you better just be careful not to lose it, huh?”
“Nnoitra—!”
Nnoitra can’t stop himself from laughing as he turns away and walks off, ignoring Nel calling after him from behind, and he raises his hand to wave at her from over his shoulder.
But he also can’t stop himself from looking back at her one last time so he can say,
“I knew that pendant would fit into your cleavage perfectly.”
He makes sure to say it while Nel doesn’t have anything heavy or sharp within arm’s reach.