#toshiro

go my toshiros

Bleach

Separate panels under the cut

Chimera laios au

Tocat blurb

It had been a couple days since they entered back into the dungeon. They had fought all day and now it was time for them to rest. Cat always hated sleeping in the dungeon. The floor was hard and the air was cold. It made it hard to actually drift off. So it left her alone in her thoughts. They had gotten worse since their encounter with the red dragon. Just the memories of that fight replaying in her head. Cat needed something to take her mind off all of her spiraling thoughts. She sat up and her eyes fell on Toshiro, it was his turn to be on look out. Normally she tried to keep her distance from him. Not because Cat disliked him, quite the opposite. She respected him quite a bit. She found that he was very polite, very skilled and relatively nice ,in his own sort of awkward way. The real reason Cat kept her distance was that she couldn't tell if he even liked her. Sure, Falin and Cat were able to convince him to come back down here with the rest of the party. But did that actually mean anything? Cat really needed someone right now. So I guess he’d have to do

She got out of her sleeping bag and padded over to him. He looked up at her confused.

“Is something wrong?”

She shook her head and fiddled with her hands, “No…just couldn't sleep”. She avoided eye contact like she usually did, “would you mind if I sit with you for a while. I mean till I get tired”.

He made a face, It looked like a mix of hesitance and uncomfortableness. She briefly wondered if he was aware that he made these wild expressions. She always found it quite funny, how someone who seemed so stone cold could express so much emotion in their face like a flip of a coin.

“ Sure" he said.

cat sat down next to him without another word. It wasn't even five minutes till it started feeling completely awkward. This always happened,Cat not being able to fit into a comfortable silence with anyone. They only made her antsy. Her eyes scanned over at their other sleeping party members, then back to him. His face was back to his default expression: completely unreadable. She needed to say something, the silence was unbearable now.

“Soo… do you ever have trouble sleeping?”

“Sometimes” he simply responded.

Cat blinked. That’s it, ‘Sometimes’? Why was this so hard? Maybe she needed to say something more interesting.

“Well, uh… well I have trouble sleeping all the time in the dungeon. I mean the floor definitely doesn't help, ” Cat laughed awkwardly. But he did not.

“I … used to travel and play music before I started adventuring. We had to sleep in sleeping bags like these,”

Then he looked down at her confused, “really?”.

This was finally her in.

“Yeah! It was a long time ago but I would travel town to town playing music for money. I was in a group filled with girls from the town I grew up in”.

“I never expected you to do that kind of thing,” he mumbled.

“Well, I didn’t really have any other prospects,” she said. She intentionally omitted the fact that her ‘lack of prospects’ was just her way of saying ‘I had no suitors’.

“Why did you stop?”

“Uh well… tensions in the group happened so we kinda…”, she made vague gestures with her hands “... split”.

“I’m sorry”, he almost sounded sympathetic.

She waved her hand dismissively at his concern. “It was for the best”, she simply said.

“After that happened I had to find another job. Eventually I found someone who was traveling to the island. He said I could join a party he was making to explore the dungeon. Then I got on a boat with him and sailed all the way here”.

She looked up at him, “you went through something similar right? I mean coming to the island from far away”.

He nodded, “ I came here from the Eastern Archipelago”. He paused ,seemingly in thought, before he added “My father sent me up here. I have to find something of note before I can go back”.

“That must be stressful” she empathised.

“It’s fine”, he sighed, seemingly not wanting to elaborate any further.

Then the silence settled back on them. To cat’s surprise it didn’t feel as oppressive as it did before. It almost felt nice.

She took a peak at him. Maybe his face wasn’t as intense as she originally thought. His brows were relaxed and his gaze almost looked soft.

Cat couldn’t tell how long they stayed like that. Hours. Minutes. It all blended together till her eyelids started to droop.

Cat yawned. Her mind felt calmer now, less jumbled.

“I guess I should head back to bed now. Thank you for this, ” she stood up. Cat turned before she addressed him again, “I liked talking to you. It was nice. We’ve worked together for so long. Maybe we should talk more often “.

He stared at her. His gaze made her feel nervous. Was she reading too much into this? Did she make it weird?

“We can do that,” he said softly.

Cat smiled at him.