Title: Her Visions in Flight
Rating: K+ (general drunkenness)
Characters: Shinji, Hiyori
Summary: While celebrating her promotion to vice captain, Hiyori slips.
A/N: Set pre-series before the Pendulum arc, when I imagine many hijinks occur. A long time ago
tasogaretaichou challenged me to write a fic with Shinji and Hiyori and gave me the prompt "spin the bottle." Various issues interrupted, and while this isn't that fic, this scene was at the heart of it. I was reinspired after recent events in the manga. Go easy on me okay? It's been awhile since I posted Bleach fic.
Seireitei at night, Shinji was surprised to realize, was really beautiful. Gorgeous, actually, with its tall towers and the night sky and the almost weird calm and quiet. It was unsettling, to him, to be walking towards the divisions and have the world around him so serene.
Then he heard a groan from over his shoulder, and remembered why he never got to enjoy Soul Society when it was nice and quiet. Hiyori, unconscious, was the only time he got any peace. (Hiyori sleeping didn't count, since she snored so loudly Ukitake could hear her in the thirteenth headquarters.)
"Oi," he called, pinching her knees where they hooked over his shoulders. "You alive back there Hiyori?"
Another groan answered him, and Shinji smiled to himself. "You drank enough to kill a Menos," he informed her. "What's your first day on the job gonna be like? Captain Hikifune's gonna be ashamed of you."
Suddenly he skidded to a halt and looked around. He'd forgotten he needed to take Hiyori back to the twelfth. He'd been heading back to his own captain's quarters. Served him right, needling Hiyori about how much she'd drank, when he'd had just as much and wasn't even the guest of honor to boot. Luckily, Hiyori was three sheets to the wind and had no idea.
The gates to the twelfth's grounds had just come into view when he heard her again. The party for Hiyori's promotion to Vice Captain had been fun, loud, and had involved more than a few illegal activities that were luckily going to be swept under the rug. He'd been replaying some of those activities in his mind, and wondering how hard a time Sosuke was going to give him in the morning.
Then: "Shinji."
He barely heard it, slurred under her breath, and when he realized she was talking to him he abruptly pulled up. "Wassa matter Hiyori? Are ya going to puke? You don't normally warn me."
Her response was incomprehensible, and Shinji asked again, "Seriously, you okay? Captain Hikifune's gonna be pissed at me for givin’ you back to her in this state."
"Shinji," she muttered, her voice muted by his hair. "I woulda been your vice, if you asked."
It took Shinji a minute to understand what exactly she'd said to him, but once it sunk through the drunken haze of his mind he was speechless. They hadn't talked much, when he'd been going through the process of picking Sosuke. She'd been acting as the sixth seat under Hikifune, and he'd been so busy asking for advice and recommendations from the other captains, had been so intent on making his choice count that it hadn't even occurred to him to ask her.
Vaguely, he wondered if her name had come up among Hikifune's recommendations, and was embarrassed to realize that he couldn't remember.
"Dumbass," Shinji finally said, turning back towards the twelfth’s gates. "You really wanted to get saddled with me? Shit. You don't need any new reasons to want to kick my ass."
She didn't answer, and Shinji was quiet as he slipped through the entrance and headed towards her room in the barracks.