Mission Log
Title: Awkward Much?
Characters: Momo, Toushirou
Location: Epsilon 3, Creeping Limit engine room
Timeframe: Few days after the bar fight.
Status: Closed
Warnings: *blinks* Ha. Warn for this?
If there was one thing Hitsugaya hated about arranging for repairs to his ship, it was the paperwork that went along with it. (There were, actually, many more things about it that he hated, but the paperwork ranked right up there.) At this point, though, his paperwork needed something a little extra, and while normally it wasn't a problem... it meant speaking to his mechanic.
As a general rule, captains should be able to speak to mechanics without any sort of weird issues hanging about in the air around them.
As a general rule, mechanics did not usually kiss their captains in a bar fight and then try to kill them by shoving them into the path of an oncoming chair.
Captains, also, usually did not call their mechanics cheap whores, either.
Hinamori was staying on the Limit why?
Well, she obviously didn't like Epsilon 3 much; maybe she was just waiting for a more hospitable port of call. Or the opportunity to kill him.
With a sigh, Hitsugaya entered the engine room. All he needed was a status report. Get in, get the report, get out. No killing. And... why didn't he immediately see her puttering about in the engine room?
"Hinamori?"
Air vents were both her favorite and most hated part of the engine room. Her favorite because they required very little maintenance but when they did she got to climb up into them.
Hated because most of them were a bitch to get into and you could fall out of them so easily. The Creeping Limit’s were something of a painful mystery to her. Getting into them was actually pretty easy. She was tiny and they were bigger than most air vents and this made for easy climbing. However, staying in them was tricky. They were smoother than normal and she ended up bracing herself with both her legs and one arm as she worked.
She had almost fallen three times already and was not pleased with herself over this. She was currently in a mental tirade against her captain and herself for kissing him. She had been avoiding him with all sorts of wacky dirty jobs across the ship. Right now she was cleaning the vents. Earlier she had been down in the bottom of the cargo bay re-wiring the very basic structure of things.
Hiding was good.
If she wasn’t hiding and keeping herself busy with work she was thinking about that kiss. And his mouth. And every time she saw him walk by she couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to kiss him again.
And then she screwed something up and shocked herself or attempted to kill herself.
Why he got to have such a tempting mouth she didn’t know, but she was having issues.
She was in the process of reminding herself why she should be thinking about him or his mouth when his voice rang out in the engine room. Her eyes widened, he was in her engine room and all she had to do was stay still and not breath.
But he surprised her and her hands slipped.
She whimpered as she scrambled to catch her balance and yelped as she lost her footing completely and went down. She tried to twist mid air to help catch herself, but there was nothing to grab.
This…. was going to hurt.
Usually, when one called a person's name, that person did not fall out of the sky. Hitsugaya had been in some strange situations with his mechanic - since she came on board, deliveries on the Creeping Limit had turned into one farce after another - but he honestly could not ever remember a time when someone fell out of an air duct onto him.
As a result, he didn't prepare himself for impact all that well.
Paper went flying.
He wasn't entirely sure what had happened - something; an elbow? Knee? - smacked his collarbone and his knees buckled and he was on the floor.
With his arms full of the mechanic he had been trying to forget about.
Damn.
That wasn’t the floor.
In fact, while her nose had managed to hit something hard, leaving her eyes watering and her gasping for air, she was pretty sure she wasn’t on the floor. The floor didn’t breathe, and it certainly didn’t have arms that wrapped around you, and it didn’t smell that good either.
In fact she was pretty sure her nose wasn’t lying on what it had hit originally because it felt like her face was against someone’s skin, and her nose was buried there… she blinked rapidly to disperse the tears that were forming and tried to breathe, but it wasn’t working. One couldn’t breathe around skin, especially when your face was buried in what she was pretty certain had to be either a neck or area near a collarbone…
Oh…
That was not good.
She whimpered.
Why did these things happen to her? She swallowed and tried to breathe again, but it came out more like some awkward…
She needed to move now. She rolled off of him (because god could things get any more embarrassing between them) and brought her hands to her smarting nose defensively and whimpered again.
Why couldn’t they have a normal meeting? Hadn’t she earned one? Dear god he was going to think she was being whorish again. Her pride just couldn’t take it. She was just going to lie on this floor and hold her nose and pray it wasn’t bleeding and ignore the tears that always came with getting your nose hit.
God… if he hadn’t been about to fire her before, he was now.
Oh.
His arms were full of Hinamori.
That wasn't a bad thing, until he factored in how much she wanted to kill him for goading her into kissing him.
Then he started thinking about the kiss.
With his arms full of Hinamori.
And... she rolled off of him.
Awkward.
Hitsugaya tried to ignore the whimpering and the tear-filled eyes. Easy enough to ignore the eyes since he was very pointedly not looking at her. The whimpering was a little harder to just not hear.
Now, she could add whatever injury she'd gotten here to insult in the bar, and she had ample cause to just gut him in his sleep.
He groaned. Still...
"You all right?"
She couldn’t make up her mind if she should nod or shake her head. Was she all right? Did she look all right? She brought her hands up and blinked rapidly to try to see if her hands had blood on them?
God that hurt.
What had she hit? His chin? His head? Good lord that hurt.
She gingerly prodded her nose and just gave in and nodded. She wasn’t looking at him just yet.
Or his mouth.
When she didn't answer right away, Hitsugaya risked a look in her direction. Well, ok... she was laying on the floor, hands over her nose, and nodding.
That was a start, at least.
He should probably get off the floor. He sat up, shaking his head, blinking and reaching for whatever paperwork was in reach. Time to look busy. Busy picking up paperwork. Paperwork he'd dropped when he got an armful of Hinamori. Hinamori with nice legs.
He thumped his forehead with the fist clutching what paperwork he'd picked up.
Best way to handle this was to get down to business, right? (He choked on his mental choice of words. Idiot. Moron. Stupid. The Limit's business.)
"I need reports from you so I can send them to Gotei."
Ok, so maybe he'd said that a little fast and maybe with a little snappishness, but... it was the point for coming down here.
There was something going on with her captain. She finally managed to turn and peek at him and he was thumping himself in the head.
That was odd.
She sat up much slower and prodded her nose once more. Knowing her luck she was going to end up with black eyes. She swallowed and peered at him again, hands safely covering nose as he spit out something about paperwork.
… okay so it was obvious he didn’t want to be here.
She nodded at his request... well order? Demand?
“What reports?”
Her voice was muffled by her hands but she could handle that, because her hands were hiding the blush that was curving along her cheeks at the realization that she was alone with him again.
God.
Her eyes flickered to his mouth and she looked away quickly.
This… was not good.
Hitsugaya very decidedly held back the wince that threatened. She wouldn't even look at him; she must truly hate him.
Well... fine... he deserved it. And he truly was a moron. An idiot of immense proportions.
As a result, he really couldn't help how incredibly snappish he sounded. He was angry... at himself... because he was a moron.
"Reports," he repeated. "Expense reports, damage reports, what was fixed, what wasn't... Gotei needs as much as we'll send."
Because Gotei was run by meddling morons, and he'd make sure only the things they actually needed to see got there. The rest... well, no one needed to know about a few things.
Especially the fact he was pretty sure some of the new parts in the engine room were not exactly acquired by legal means. He wasn't sure where Hinamori's contacts got parts, but he knew a few of the circles his contacts frequented.
Oh right. That stuff. She made a face. She hated that stuff, it meant she had show how bad at organization she actually was. She sighed and pushed to her feet and managed to make it over to her notebook (the all special notebook) and pulled out a pen and managed to make herself walk back over to him and plop back down.
She took several deep breaths while flipping through it to find her calculations and lists… god she hated this part.
At least her penmanship was neat. Lord knew how she would explain all this if she couldn’t read what she had written down. She settled it on the ground and tapped the pen against her cheek for a moment before sighing and looking up at him. This time she was composed! She could do it!
She motioned to the figures and boxes and her attempts at keeping up with everything that had come through here… minus several very special parts.
“What exactly do you need?”
All right. He could do this. This was just business. He was asking for reports, and she was responding with... questions about what reports he needed.
Didn't she know he was inept in the engine room?
Of course she did. She was planning on humiliated him before killing him. It made perfect sense now.
Silently, he handed her the list Gotei had sent and decided to let her sort it out.
"I don't suppose I have to tell you to leave off certain things?"
She frowned at the report he gave her and nodded absently, “legal channels, normally priced things, right,” she waved her hand.
She blinked.
This was supposed to make sense? How was this supposed to make sense? She peered at it and then her notes and blinked. The price converted into the what? Her frown deepened.
God she hated math. Simple rations, little things that she had to do in the engine room were fine, but this is why she didn’t do math. Dear god… parts were propionate to what of their price?
… he was trying to make her feel stupid by not understanding wasn’t he? She had a good education, she could read in two languages thanks to her dual parents thing, she could write, do normal math sums, and she could take apart and put a whole engine back together. But it wasn’t like she went to a public school. Her mom had been a teacher before she met her dad had kept her home where it was much safer and taught her there…
But this? This was paperwork and it was the enemy of all enemies.
How was she supposed to tell him she didn’t get this math stuff at the bottom? Stupid complex equations of friggen doom. She sighed and picked up her notebook instead, right part… legal part. Okay she could do that. Ignore the rest of the stuff.
Right.
She felt dumb.
Why was she frowning at the paperwork? All he'd wanted was a list of parts. What was she on about? She should already know this stuff. What parts were replaced, what had been simply repaired, and what... didn't get replaced or repaired. And leave off the not-normal stuff.
Hitsugaya frowned, replaying the conversation.
Oh.
He'd just handed off paperwork. His paperwork, without specifying what needed done.
He really was a first class idiot. His hand curled around the top edge of the paperwork and he pulled it back. "I just need a list of parts replace or repaired."
Yes, he was snapping. Idiot.
She blinked at him and this time turned her frown onto him. So now he thought she wasn’t capable of doing this stuff? He really did think she was an idiot. She let go of the paperwork and picked up her notebook and tore off the top page. She should be cruel, or mean, or whatever and let him figure out her equations and abbreviations. She thrust the paperwork forward and dropped it practically in his lap.
Read that then.
“Fine.”
She brought her knees up and settled her notebook on them and started writing.
The faster she finished the faster he would leave and stop making her feel like an idiot
He could take his mouth with him to.
She really hated having him around, didn't she? Why the hell had she stayed on the Limit if she hated him this much?
Maybe she was waiting for him to leave.
Or... something... Drug him and gut him? No one would blame her, after... that... in the bar...
He looked down at the paperwork she'd dropped in his lap, looked back at her writing up her list - God, he hoped that was a legible, not filled with illegal parts list - and crossed his arms.
He could wait.
He hoped.
She sighed.
“How much do you want this to add up to?” She blinked up at him. She had finagled a lot of parts… and there were a lot of expensive parts that were inside the engine that he didn’t know about being replaced….
All he had to do was give her a price range and she could work this out.
Really.
She chewed on her bottom lip and waited for his answer. Really… she had done this sort of thing before she just needed to know what he wanted.
So, she played with paperwork like he played with paperwork. The end result was all that mattered, eh? Well, that he could work with.
He frowned, shuffling through his paperwork. Gotei had sent some sort of expense expected report that he'd promptly forgot about - expenses always added up to more than Gotei said they expected.
Ah, there. He pulled out the single sheet of paper, turned it toward Hinamori, and pointed at the amount.
"I'd also like to see the actual prices, for my own records."
She blinked at the price and quirked a brow at him, “give me a few minutes…” she eyed the report and shook her head.
Were they delusional? Did they really think you could fix a whole ship on that? God… no wonder he had looked so stressed.
She eyed him… now how many parts was she not telling him about? Best to do actual prices first… that way he could get… an idea of things. No need to tell him really. She worked quietly for a few minutes, referring to her notebook every now and then before nodding. “This is the actual price of the stuff… that doesn’t mean that much was spent on it, okay?” She ripped off the paper and handed it to him.
Hitsugaya blinked at the paper. Dear God, if that's how much were actually spent, they'd currently be looking for a new captain.
The old one would be in his death throes in the engine room, expense report clutched in his hand.
Well, if Hinamori didn't kill him first, Gotei might if they ever learned just how expensive this was. (Then again, they might not care, since much of the cost had come from his own accounts and some not quite so legal means.)
"Please tell me," he finally said - after he'd managed to breathe again, "that the report Gotei gets has a much, much lower price tag?"
Much, much lower. With less parts listed.
Momo blinked up at him and blinked again. “I told you I had contacts,” she said dryly. She went back to writing. He didn’t trust her at all did he? Really… as if she had never written out an expense report for a captain before. She had told him she had jobs before, had worked on ships… she knew captains couldn’t always write down everything they spent.
She sighed.
He really didn’t like her did he.
She yanked off a sheet of paper a few minutes ago and held it out for him. “That should satisfy your reports.”
Could he… leave her alone now? She felt dumb and stupid and…. God.
Hitsugaya took the paper slowly, trying not to eye her suspiciously. She really wanted him out of the engine room, and quickly, didn't she?
He couldn't blame her at all.
He'd oblige her soon enough; he really did have other things to do than annoy her in her own engine room.
His own engine room.
Whatever.
Still... while he was here, he read over the list she'd handed him. No sense in inviting another mishap if he went looking for her again, since they seem to have this inane habit of falling on each other.
Momo watched him read for a moment before realizing that she was in fact staring at him, again. She wanted to beat her head against the wall or something; instead she concentrated very hard on not blushing.
Why wasn’t he having any problems? Surely… he thought something about the whole of it? She pulled her knees up closer and tucked her chin on the top of them and settled in to watch him, fine then. It wasn’t awkward, or weird, or anything at all. She could do this. She really could, she could be professional and just go on treating him like she always had.
Yes.
Step one: do not look at his mouth.
Step two: smile.
She managed one… though she wasn’t sure if it would work or not, but it was at least an attempted smile.
“Does that work for you?”
And she didn’t sound like she was trying to throw him out and she was smiling… somewhat. Okay. Good. Score.
God she felt stupid.
The smile nearly sent him over the edge. She was trying to put him at ease before laying into him, he was sure. Step one was, he was certain, bring down his guard by trying to act like nothing had happened. Then, when he was fairly sure nothing was wrong and all was forgiven, she'd… probably kill him. Or leave, which might amount to the same thing. The smile was not good.
But she was skittish; any idiot - including the biggest one of all; him - could see that.
Even so… a part of him wanted to ask questions about the list, even stupid questions, just to stay a little longer.
And that was a bad thought. When had he started thinking like that? Not good, not good, not good.
He blinked at her question, blinked at the list, and realized that, yes; he actually did have a question. She wrote in shorthand and, while she'd been pretty good about using either full words or understandable abbreviations, he had no idea what one of them meant.
God, he felt stupid. (Her master plan? Maybe it was to completely deride his self-confidence.)
He pointed it out. "What's that mean?"
She blinked. Okay normally, because really she was acting normal right, she would be sitting right next to him. Right. Okay. He was trying to get all this figured out now so that they wouldn’t have to go through this again. All she had to do was appreciate the fact that he was very thorough when he put his mind to something…
Oh dear god.
She took a deep breath and just shoved it all to the back of her head. She wasn’t thinking about it, it wasn’t an issue.
She dropped her knees and shifted a bit closer. Sitting next to him was just too much for her, but she could act unaffected right? There was nothing to worry about here, she had washed her hair that morning, she didn’t smell like the engines because she had been up in the air ducks for most of the morning, and she had brushed her teeth.
Right. Okay. Just look at the paper.
God, if anything the sheer awkwardness of this situation was going to kill her.
Oh… that abbreviation. She managed to look sheepish. “Sorry, I always forget that I made that one up myself.” She rubbed the back of her head, “it’s for the internal part of the ship. The pulsar and internal dampeners both had to be replaced… that is what the idp stands for…”
She really was trying kill him. God, did she really have to come closer? Oh, wait… she did because he add asked for help.
At least this time she hadn't fallen on him. (He realized then that he was still sitting on the floor, but that was all right since it was par for the course when speaking with her. Crashing into each other and then continuing the conversation on the floor was normal and that was kind of sad, now that he thought about it.)
He sighed; he had a mechanic that made up abbreviations for things that already had perfectly good abbreviations.
Then he remembered he wouldn't have that mechanic much longer, because there was no way she'd stay on this ship - or anywhere near him for that matter. After she'd told him what it meant, he shifted away; no sense making her uncomfortable with having to be near him.
Yeah, he had to leave soon. Very soon.
She blinked at his sigh and frowned at him. What? It was a perfectly good abbreviation and it kept her from mixing up half the other abbreviations. Fine.
“What?” that was grumpy. She didn’t care. “All the abbreviations run together after a while… and so I fixed it.” Not that he really cared but if he was going to sigh at her and move like then she was defending her mechanical honor. Really.
She crossed her arms and quirked a brow at him… stealing his facial expressions would probably only freak him out more about her, but it would just have to suffice for now because that was all she had.
Grumpy had never been her thing.
She was doing the eyebrow thing. His eyebrow thing.
He never realized just how effective it was upon its victim. He'd have to use it more often. Really. Because he? He was about to bolt - though, to be fair, it probably wasn't entirely because of the eyebrows.
And, seriously, did she have to get that testy over him asking for clarification? It wasn't as if he were the mechanic who made up abbreviations.
"I just asked," he snapped.
Both brows flew up when he snapped at her. Okay so forget the whole eyebrow thing, it was war. Or something like that. If he was going to figure her she was going to at least have a mental reason for that firing really.
“And was clarifying,” she snapped back. Her hands clenched into fists and she was glad she had her arms crossed her he was going to think she was going to hit him.
… not that she wanted to get fired, but… he sure knew how to bring out her defensive side didn’t he?
It was her turn to sigh. God she hoped the awkward stage left soon, fast, whatever. She couldn’t keep second guessing him, it wore her out.
Right. Time to back off; he'd pushed her too far, if the tensing and the clenching fists were any indication. She was really, really angry with him. Completely, totally angry.
Hitsugaya backed off as best he could: by changing the subject. Grumpily.
"Do you need anything else before we take off again?" Clipped words. Grumpy tone. Yeah, that was him being defensive.
Oh right sure, so now he was mad at her. She wanted to burry her face in her hands and just stay that way until the ship crumbled around her, but apparently her luck just wasn't that good anymore.
Did she need anything before take off? Well... she guessed that that meant that he wasn't going to fire her yet. Maybe make sure that nothing was going to break from the overhaul and then he was going to leave her stranded on some god forsaken planet with nothing but the clothes on her back and her name.
Did she need anything else? She rubbed her forehead and thought about the question carefully. She was pretty sure... she pulled out her notebook and glanced through her notes again.
Hesitant.
"Do you have a copy of the over haulers final report? I haven't been able to get my hands on one..."
And marching to his office and demanding that he let her see what they had to say about the damage and what they had to do to the ship to get it space worthy again was no longer an option.
But if he was offering... she was taking. Might as well enjoy the grump as long as she could anyway, because he was going to fire her.
She wanted a copy of the final report? Granted, she should have got one, and he'd have to find out what went wrong there, but… did that mean she wasn't planning on leaving the Limit?
Perhaps she was just being thorough to ensure the next mechanic had good records. It was him she was angry with; she seemed to rather like the rest of the crew, so she might have their sakes in mind.
"I can send it to you," he said. They could be professional about this, right?
Well… he could. Mostly. If he kept his mouth shut in bars. (He was never following his lieutenant to a bar again. Never.)
She nodded. "Thank you... I got a preliminary report thingy," that was currently hidden in a file somewhere, "but not the final one."
She fidgeted. God. What was she supposed to say now? She was not apologizing for the bar and she had nothing, nothing, in her arsenal today. She pulled her knees back up and dropped her chin on them again and just watched him.
He could figure this out. It was his fault anyway.
There were two more things he could think of he needed to do. First was stand up. Second was get the hell out of the engine room.
One at a time, before he made a complete ass of himself.
Well, all right… he already was an idiot and a moron and a bastard, so tacking ass onto that wasn't that difficult a stretch.
Hitsugaya stood up quickly, brushing off his thighs and gathering his paperwork. "Right, then. Final report will be sent down shortly."
He really had to get out of there.
She scrambled to her feet simply because he was standing and she wasn't going to be on the floor. She nodded. All right, final report... that gave her several hours of lying in the hammock reading that thing...
"All right," she nodded briskly and clapped her hands behind her back. "Thank you."
She rocked back on her heels and offered him another slight smile.
Okay good.
Mission accomplished.
All he could offer in response to her thanks was a small nod.
Honestly, it was all he could manage that wouldn't make him look either stupid or mad in the face of her little smile. She done a fine job of completely demoralizing him in the short time they'd actually been together this time. She gotten him to feel stupid, doubt himself, snap at her and then, in the face of it all, smiled at him.
He had to get out of there, if only because he didn't want reminded how much he deserved the treatment she gave him.
But first... he had to step around her.
That would take some courage. He nodded to her again, and sidestepped, then stepped forward.
Hopefully, he wouldn't choose this moment to trip on a wrench.
To her credit she didn’t do a thing when he stepped around her. In fact she made it until he was completely out of the room and the door was shut before she reacted to anything at all.
Then she dropped to the floor and hit her head on the cool tile repeatedly.
Stupid, idiot Momo.
It would be a wonder if he didn't eject her out of an airlock.
God. She was so stupid.
He credited himself for getting past her without saying or doing anything absolutely moronic. She stood stock still as he stepped around her; too much to ask for, he guessed, to think she'd be as comfortable with him as she was... before... that... thing...
He waited until the door shut before groaning aloud and rolling his eyes heavenward.
He was so screwed.
Characters: Momo, Toushirou
Location: Epsilon 3, Creeping Limit engine room
Timeframe: Few days after the bar fight.
Status: Closed
Warnings: *blinks* Ha. Warn for this?
If there was one thing Hitsugaya hated about arranging for repairs to his ship, it was the paperwork that went along with it. (There were, actually, many more things about it that he hated, but the paperwork ranked right up there.) At this point, though, his paperwork needed something a little extra, and while normally it wasn't a problem... it meant speaking to his mechanic.
As a general rule, captains should be able to speak to mechanics without any sort of weird issues hanging about in the air around them.
As a general rule, mechanics did not usually kiss their captains in a bar fight and then try to kill them by shoving them into the path of an oncoming chair.
Captains, also, usually did not call their mechanics cheap whores, either.
Hinamori was staying on the Limit why?
Well, she obviously didn't like Epsilon 3 much; maybe she was just waiting for a more hospitable port of call. Or the opportunity to kill him.
With a sigh, Hitsugaya entered the engine room. All he needed was a status report. Get in, get the report, get out. No killing. And... why didn't he immediately see her puttering about in the engine room?
"Hinamori?"
Air vents were both her favorite and most hated part of the engine room. Her favorite because they required very little maintenance but when they did she got to climb up into them.
Hated because most of them were a bitch to get into and you could fall out of them so easily. The Creeping Limit’s were something of a painful mystery to her. Getting into them was actually pretty easy. She was tiny and they were bigger than most air vents and this made for easy climbing. However, staying in them was tricky. They were smoother than normal and she ended up bracing herself with both her legs and one arm as she worked.
She had almost fallen three times already and was not pleased with herself over this. She was currently in a mental tirade against her captain and herself for kissing him. She had been avoiding him with all sorts of wacky dirty jobs across the ship. Right now she was cleaning the vents. Earlier she had been down in the bottom of the cargo bay re-wiring the very basic structure of things.
Hiding was good.
If she wasn’t hiding and keeping herself busy with work she was thinking about that kiss. And his mouth. And every time she saw him walk by she couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to kiss him again.
And then she screwed something up and shocked herself or attempted to kill herself.
Why he got to have such a tempting mouth she didn’t know, but she was having issues.
She was in the process of reminding herself why she should be thinking about him or his mouth when his voice rang out in the engine room. Her eyes widened, he was in her engine room and all she had to do was stay still and not breath.
But he surprised her and her hands slipped.
She whimpered as she scrambled to catch her balance and yelped as she lost her footing completely and went down. She tried to twist mid air to help catch herself, but there was nothing to grab.
This…. was going to hurt.
Usually, when one called a person's name, that person did not fall out of the sky. Hitsugaya had been in some strange situations with his mechanic - since she came on board, deliveries on the Creeping Limit had turned into one farce after another - but he honestly could not ever remember a time when someone fell out of an air duct onto him.
As a result, he didn't prepare himself for impact all that well.
Paper went flying.
He wasn't entirely sure what had happened - something; an elbow? Knee? - smacked his collarbone and his knees buckled and he was on the floor.
With his arms full of the mechanic he had been trying to forget about.
Damn.
That wasn’t the floor.
In fact, while her nose had managed to hit something hard, leaving her eyes watering and her gasping for air, she was pretty sure she wasn’t on the floor. The floor didn’t breathe, and it certainly didn’t have arms that wrapped around you, and it didn’t smell that good either.
In fact she was pretty sure her nose wasn’t lying on what it had hit originally because it felt like her face was against someone’s skin, and her nose was buried there… she blinked rapidly to disperse the tears that were forming and tried to breathe, but it wasn’t working. One couldn’t breathe around skin, especially when your face was buried in what she was pretty certain had to be either a neck or area near a collarbone…
Oh…
That was not good.
She whimpered.
Why did these things happen to her? She swallowed and tried to breathe again, but it came out more like some awkward…
She needed to move now. She rolled off of him (because god could things get any more embarrassing between them) and brought her hands to her smarting nose defensively and whimpered again.
Why couldn’t they have a normal meeting? Hadn’t she earned one? Dear god he was going to think she was being whorish again. Her pride just couldn’t take it. She was just going to lie on this floor and hold her nose and pray it wasn’t bleeding and ignore the tears that always came with getting your nose hit.
God… if he hadn’t been about to fire her before, he was now.
Oh.
His arms were full of Hinamori.
That wasn't a bad thing, until he factored in how much she wanted to kill him for goading her into kissing him.
Then he started thinking about the kiss.
With his arms full of Hinamori.
And... she rolled off of him.
Awkward.
Hitsugaya tried to ignore the whimpering and the tear-filled eyes. Easy enough to ignore the eyes since he was very pointedly not looking at her. The whimpering was a little harder to just not hear.
Now, she could add whatever injury she'd gotten here to insult in the bar, and she had ample cause to just gut him in his sleep.
He groaned. Still...
"You all right?"
She couldn’t make up her mind if she should nod or shake her head. Was she all right? Did she look all right? She brought her hands up and blinked rapidly to try to see if her hands had blood on them?
God that hurt.
What had she hit? His chin? His head? Good lord that hurt.
She gingerly prodded her nose and just gave in and nodded. She wasn’t looking at him just yet.
Or his mouth.
When she didn't answer right away, Hitsugaya risked a look in her direction. Well, ok... she was laying on the floor, hands over her nose, and nodding.
That was a start, at least.
He should probably get off the floor. He sat up, shaking his head, blinking and reaching for whatever paperwork was in reach. Time to look busy. Busy picking up paperwork. Paperwork he'd dropped when he got an armful of Hinamori. Hinamori with nice legs.
He thumped his forehead with the fist clutching what paperwork he'd picked up.
Best way to handle this was to get down to business, right? (He choked on his mental choice of words. Idiot. Moron. Stupid. The Limit's business.)
"I need reports from you so I can send them to Gotei."
Ok, so maybe he'd said that a little fast and maybe with a little snappishness, but... it was the point for coming down here.
There was something going on with her captain. She finally managed to turn and peek at him and he was thumping himself in the head.
That was odd.
She sat up much slower and prodded her nose once more. Knowing her luck she was going to end up with black eyes. She swallowed and peered at him again, hands safely covering nose as he spit out something about paperwork.
… okay so it was obvious he didn’t want to be here.
She nodded at his request... well order? Demand?
“What reports?”
Her voice was muffled by her hands but she could handle that, because her hands were hiding the blush that was curving along her cheeks at the realization that she was alone with him again.
God.
Her eyes flickered to his mouth and she looked away quickly.
This… was not good.
Hitsugaya very decidedly held back the wince that threatened. She wouldn't even look at him; she must truly hate him.
Well... fine... he deserved it. And he truly was a moron. An idiot of immense proportions.
As a result, he really couldn't help how incredibly snappish he sounded. He was angry... at himself... because he was a moron.
"Reports," he repeated. "Expense reports, damage reports, what was fixed, what wasn't... Gotei needs as much as we'll send."
Because Gotei was run by meddling morons, and he'd make sure only the things they actually needed to see got there. The rest... well, no one needed to know about a few things.
Especially the fact he was pretty sure some of the new parts in the engine room were not exactly acquired by legal means. He wasn't sure where Hinamori's contacts got parts, but he knew a few of the circles his contacts frequented.
Oh right. That stuff. She made a face. She hated that stuff, it meant she had show how bad at organization she actually was. She sighed and pushed to her feet and managed to make it over to her notebook (the all special notebook) and pulled out a pen and managed to make herself walk back over to him and plop back down.
She took several deep breaths while flipping through it to find her calculations and lists… god she hated this part.
At least her penmanship was neat. Lord knew how she would explain all this if she couldn’t read what she had written down. She settled it on the ground and tapped the pen against her cheek for a moment before sighing and looking up at him. This time she was composed! She could do it!
She motioned to the figures and boxes and her attempts at keeping up with everything that had come through here… minus several very special parts.
“What exactly do you need?”
All right. He could do this. This was just business. He was asking for reports, and she was responding with... questions about what reports he needed.
Didn't she know he was inept in the engine room?
Of course she did. She was planning on humiliated him before killing him. It made perfect sense now.
Silently, he handed her the list Gotei had sent and decided to let her sort it out.
"I don't suppose I have to tell you to leave off certain things?"
She frowned at the report he gave her and nodded absently, “legal channels, normally priced things, right,” she waved her hand.
She blinked.
This was supposed to make sense? How was this supposed to make sense? She peered at it and then her notes and blinked. The price converted into the what? Her frown deepened.
God she hated math. Simple rations, little things that she had to do in the engine room were fine, but this is why she didn’t do math. Dear god… parts were propionate to what of their price?
… he was trying to make her feel stupid by not understanding wasn’t he? She had a good education, she could read in two languages thanks to her dual parents thing, she could write, do normal math sums, and she could take apart and put a whole engine back together. But it wasn’t like she went to a public school. Her mom had been a teacher before she met her dad had kept her home where it was much safer and taught her there…
But this? This was paperwork and it was the enemy of all enemies.
How was she supposed to tell him she didn’t get this math stuff at the bottom? Stupid complex equations of friggen doom. She sighed and picked up her notebook instead, right part… legal part. Okay she could do that. Ignore the rest of the stuff.
Right.
She felt dumb.
Why was she frowning at the paperwork? All he'd wanted was a list of parts. What was she on about? She should already know this stuff. What parts were replaced, what had been simply repaired, and what... didn't get replaced or repaired. And leave off the not-normal stuff.
Hitsugaya frowned, replaying the conversation.
Oh.
He'd just handed off paperwork. His paperwork, without specifying what needed done.
He really was a first class idiot. His hand curled around the top edge of the paperwork and he pulled it back. "I just need a list of parts replace or repaired."
Yes, he was snapping. Idiot.
She blinked at him and this time turned her frown onto him. So now he thought she wasn’t capable of doing this stuff? He really did think she was an idiot. She let go of the paperwork and picked up her notebook and tore off the top page. She should be cruel, or mean, or whatever and let him figure out her equations and abbreviations. She thrust the paperwork forward and dropped it practically in his lap.
Read that then.
“Fine.”
She brought her knees up and settled her notebook on them and started writing.
The faster she finished the faster he would leave and stop making her feel like an idiot
He could take his mouth with him to.
She really hated having him around, didn't she? Why the hell had she stayed on the Limit if she hated him this much?
Maybe she was waiting for him to leave.
Or... something... Drug him and gut him? No one would blame her, after... that... in the bar...
He looked down at the paperwork she'd dropped in his lap, looked back at her writing up her list - God, he hoped that was a legible, not filled with illegal parts list - and crossed his arms.
He could wait.
He hoped.
She sighed.
“How much do you want this to add up to?” She blinked up at him. She had finagled a lot of parts… and there were a lot of expensive parts that were inside the engine that he didn’t know about being replaced….
All he had to do was give her a price range and she could work this out.
Really.
She chewed on her bottom lip and waited for his answer. Really… she had done this sort of thing before she just needed to know what he wanted.
So, she played with paperwork like he played with paperwork. The end result was all that mattered, eh? Well, that he could work with.
He frowned, shuffling through his paperwork. Gotei had sent some sort of expense expected report that he'd promptly forgot about - expenses always added up to more than Gotei said they expected.
Ah, there. He pulled out the single sheet of paper, turned it toward Hinamori, and pointed at the amount.
"I'd also like to see the actual prices, for my own records."
She blinked at the price and quirked a brow at him, “give me a few minutes…” she eyed the report and shook her head.
Were they delusional? Did they really think you could fix a whole ship on that? God… no wonder he had looked so stressed.
She eyed him… now how many parts was she not telling him about? Best to do actual prices first… that way he could get… an idea of things. No need to tell him really. She worked quietly for a few minutes, referring to her notebook every now and then before nodding. “This is the actual price of the stuff… that doesn’t mean that much was spent on it, okay?” She ripped off the paper and handed it to him.
Hitsugaya blinked at the paper. Dear God, if that's how much were actually spent, they'd currently be looking for a new captain.
The old one would be in his death throes in the engine room, expense report clutched in his hand.
Well, if Hinamori didn't kill him first, Gotei might if they ever learned just how expensive this was. (Then again, they might not care, since much of the cost had come from his own accounts and some not quite so legal means.)
"Please tell me," he finally said - after he'd managed to breathe again, "that the report Gotei gets has a much, much lower price tag?"
Much, much lower. With less parts listed.
Momo blinked up at him and blinked again. “I told you I had contacts,” she said dryly. She went back to writing. He didn’t trust her at all did he? Really… as if she had never written out an expense report for a captain before. She had told him she had jobs before, had worked on ships… she knew captains couldn’t always write down everything they spent.
She sighed.
He really didn’t like her did he.
She yanked off a sheet of paper a few minutes ago and held it out for him. “That should satisfy your reports.”
Could he… leave her alone now? She felt dumb and stupid and…. God.
Hitsugaya took the paper slowly, trying not to eye her suspiciously. She really wanted him out of the engine room, and quickly, didn't she?
He couldn't blame her at all.
He'd oblige her soon enough; he really did have other things to do than annoy her in her own engine room.
His own engine room.
Whatever.
Still... while he was here, he read over the list she'd handed him. No sense in inviting another mishap if he went looking for her again, since they seem to have this inane habit of falling on each other.
Momo watched him read for a moment before realizing that she was in fact staring at him, again. She wanted to beat her head against the wall or something; instead she concentrated very hard on not blushing.
Why wasn’t he having any problems? Surely… he thought something about the whole of it? She pulled her knees up closer and tucked her chin on the top of them and settled in to watch him, fine then. It wasn’t awkward, or weird, or anything at all. She could do this. She really could, she could be professional and just go on treating him like she always had.
Yes.
Step one: do not look at his mouth.
Step two: smile.
She managed one… though she wasn’t sure if it would work or not, but it was at least an attempted smile.
“Does that work for you?”
And she didn’t sound like she was trying to throw him out and she was smiling… somewhat. Okay. Good. Score.
God she felt stupid.
The smile nearly sent him over the edge. She was trying to put him at ease before laying into him, he was sure. Step one was, he was certain, bring down his guard by trying to act like nothing had happened. Then, when he was fairly sure nothing was wrong and all was forgiven, she'd… probably kill him. Or leave, which might amount to the same thing. The smile was not good.
But she was skittish; any idiot - including the biggest one of all; him - could see that.
Even so… a part of him wanted to ask questions about the list, even stupid questions, just to stay a little longer.
And that was a bad thought. When had he started thinking like that? Not good, not good, not good.
He blinked at her question, blinked at the list, and realized that, yes; he actually did have a question. She wrote in shorthand and, while she'd been pretty good about using either full words or understandable abbreviations, he had no idea what one of them meant.
God, he felt stupid. (Her master plan? Maybe it was to completely deride his self-confidence.)
He pointed it out. "What's that mean?"
She blinked. Okay normally, because really she was acting normal right, she would be sitting right next to him. Right. Okay. He was trying to get all this figured out now so that they wouldn’t have to go through this again. All she had to do was appreciate the fact that he was very thorough when he put his mind to something…
Oh dear god.
She took a deep breath and just shoved it all to the back of her head. She wasn’t thinking about it, it wasn’t an issue.
She dropped her knees and shifted a bit closer. Sitting next to him was just too much for her, but she could act unaffected right? There was nothing to worry about here, she had washed her hair that morning, she didn’t smell like the engines because she had been up in the air ducks for most of the morning, and she had brushed her teeth.
Right. Okay. Just look at the paper.
God, if anything the sheer awkwardness of this situation was going to kill her.
Oh… that abbreviation. She managed to look sheepish. “Sorry, I always forget that I made that one up myself.” She rubbed the back of her head, “it’s for the internal part of the ship. The pulsar and internal dampeners both had to be replaced… that is what the idp stands for…”
She really was trying kill him. God, did she really have to come closer? Oh, wait… she did because he add asked for help.
At least this time she hadn't fallen on him. (He realized then that he was still sitting on the floor, but that was all right since it was par for the course when speaking with her. Crashing into each other and then continuing the conversation on the floor was normal and that was kind of sad, now that he thought about it.)
He sighed; he had a mechanic that made up abbreviations for things that already had perfectly good abbreviations.
Then he remembered he wouldn't have that mechanic much longer, because there was no way she'd stay on this ship - or anywhere near him for that matter. After she'd told him what it meant, he shifted away; no sense making her uncomfortable with having to be near him.
Yeah, he had to leave soon. Very soon.
She blinked at his sigh and frowned at him. What? It was a perfectly good abbreviation and it kept her from mixing up half the other abbreviations. Fine.
“What?” that was grumpy. She didn’t care. “All the abbreviations run together after a while… and so I fixed it.” Not that he really cared but if he was going to sigh at her and move like then she was defending her mechanical honor. Really.
She crossed her arms and quirked a brow at him… stealing his facial expressions would probably only freak him out more about her, but it would just have to suffice for now because that was all she had.
Grumpy had never been her thing.
She was doing the eyebrow thing. His eyebrow thing.
He never realized just how effective it was upon its victim. He'd have to use it more often. Really. Because he? He was about to bolt - though, to be fair, it probably wasn't entirely because of the eyebrows.
And, seriously, did she have to get that testy over him asking for clarification? It wasn't as if he were the mechanic who made up abbreviations.
"I just asked," he snapped.
Both brows flew up when he snapped at her. Okay so forget the whole eyebrow thing, it was war. Or something like that. If he was going to figure her she was going to at least have a mental reason for that firing really.
“And was clarifying,” she snapped back. Her hands clenched into fists and she was glad she had her arms crossed her he was going to think she was going to hit him.
… not that she wanted to get fired, but… he sure knew how to bring out her defensive side didn’t he?
It was her turn to sigh. God she hoped the awkward stage left soon, fast, whatever. She couldn’t keep second guessing him, it wore her out.
Right. Time to back off; he'd pushed her too far, if the tensing and the clenching fists were any indication. She was really, really angry with him. Completely, totally angry.
Hitsugaya backed off as best he could: by changing the subject. Grumpily.
"Do you need anything else before we take off again?" Clipped words. Grumpy tone. Yeah, that was him being defensive.
Oh right sure, so now he was mad at her. She wanted to burry her face in her hands and just stay that way until the ship crumbled around her, but apparently her luck just wasn't that good anymore.
Did she need anything before take off? Well... she guessed that that meant that he wasn't going to fire her yet. Maybe make sure that nothing was going to break from the overhaul and then he was going to leave her stranded on some god forsaken planet with nothing but the clothes on her back and her name.
Did she need anything else? She rubbed her forehead and thought about the question carefully. She was pretty sure... she pulled out her notebook and glanced through her notes again.
Hesitant.
"Do you have a copy of the over haulers final report? I haven't been able to get my hands on one..."
And marching to his office and demanding that he let her see what they had to say about the damage and what they had to do to the ship to get it space worthy again was no longer an option.
But if he was offering... she was taking. Might as well enjoy the grump as long as she could anyway, because he was going to fire her.
She wanted a copy of the final report? Granted, she should have got one, and he'd have to find out what went wrong there, but… did that mean she wasn't planning on leaving the Limit?
Perhaps she was just being thorough to ensure the next mechanic had good records. It was him she was angry with; she seemed to rather like the rest of the crew, so she might have their sakes in mind.
"I can send it to you," he said. They could be professional about this, right?
Well… he could. Mostly. If he kept his mouth shut in bars. (He was never following his lieutenant to a bar again. Never.)
She nodded. "Thank you... I got a preliminary report thingy," that was currently hidden in a file somewhere, "but not the final one."
She fidgeted. God. What was she supposed to say now? She was not apologizing for the bar and she had nothing, nothing, in her arsenal today. She pulled her knees back up and dropped her chin on them again and just watched him.
He could figure this out. It was his fault anyway.
There were two more things he could think of he needed to do. First was stand up. Second was get the hell out of the engine room.
One at a time, before he made a complete ass of himself.
Well, all right… he already was an idiot and a moron and a bastard, so tacking ass onto that wasn't that difficult a stretch.
Hitsugaya stood up quickly, brushing off his thighs and gathering his paperwork. "Right, then. Final report will be sent down shortly."
He really had to get out of there.
She scrambled to her feet simply because he was standing and she wasn't going to be on the floor. She nodded. All right, final report... that gave her several hours of lying in the hammock reading that thing...
"All right," she nodded briskly and clapped her hands behind her back. "Thank you."
She rocked back on her heels and offered him another slight smile.
Okay good.
Mission accomplished.
All he could offer in response to her thanks was a small nod.
Honestly, it was all he could manage that wouldn't make him look either stupid or mad in the face of her little smile. She done a fine job of completely demoralizing him in the short time they'd actually been together this time. She gotten him to feel stupid, doubt himself, snap at her and then, in the face of it all, smiled at him.
He had to get out of there, if only because he didn't want reminded how much he deserved the treatment she gave him.
But first... he had to step around her.
That would take some courage. He nodded to her again, and sidestepped, then stepped forward.
Hopefully, he wouldn't choose this moment to trip on a wrench.
To her credit she didn’t do a thing when he stepped around her. In fact she made it until he was completely out of the room and the door was shut before she reacted to anything at all.
Then she dropped to the floor and hit her head on the cool tile repeatedly.
Stupid, idiot Momo.
It would be a wonder if he didn't eject her out of an airlock.
God. She was so stupid.
He credited himself for getting past her without saying or doing anything absolutely moronic. She stood stock still as he stepped around her; too much to ask for, he guessed, to think she'd be as comfortable with him as she was... before... that... thing...
He waited until the door shut before groaning aloud and rolling his eyes heavenward.
He was so screwed.