A/N: This is pretty self-explanatory. I was bitten by the Moon Demon Company fluff bug / the need to make Guren suffer a little. This will involve Guren's Squad banter, the muscling in of Shinoa's Squad (headed by Yu), and later, if I choose to keep it in, some Kureto being Kureto (minus the murder).

This all comes from notes made in OneNote on my phone and will probably be 3-5 chapters.

I hope you enjoy. ^_^

Today was not a good day to be Guren Ichinose. It had started when Shinya decided to let himself into his bedroom, bringing with him the scent of burnt toast and regret. He had then proceeded to force him to eat said meal of burnt toast, liberally spread with butter – so liberally in fact that the butter to toast ratio was pretty much equal.

Still, you might say, at least someone had made him breakfast. At least his friend's heart was in the right place, even if his talents were not. Surely, having breakfast delivered to your bed was the beginning of a good day?

Fuck no. Not when it was delivered at 4:30 in the morning and you were writing reports until 1. That in and of itself made this a bad start to the morning, even before the charcoal and butter were added – which he was sure Shinya had done on purpose because although the man was a Hiragi, he was at the very least capable of a degree of sense. But wait, there was more. There was a meeting he was supposed to attend. At 6am. And he was required to have read certain reports in advance, reports that he had not known existed until he was grimacing his way through the second piece of decimated toast, reports that formed a stack the height of the chair that Shinya sat in.

'I'm not going.' He took the toast from his mouth, leaving bite marks in the butter while the blackened base remained undented.

Shinya raised an eyebrow. 'But I made you toast.'

As if that made a difference. Guren thrust the plate in Shinya's direction and in one fluid motion dropped back into his pillows, pulling the blankets over his head. 'You made me diabetes on a brick.'

Shinya's voice was muffled by the covers. 'It wasn't that bad.'

It did not need saying that it was. But apparently to Shinya, it did. His covers were gone before he could bring himself to react. Cold air assaulted him. He opened his eyes and glared.

Shinya was unaffected. 'You're coming to this meeting. Your loyalty is already under question; you can't afford-'

'When isn't my loyality under question? Does Kureto want me to come lick his boots like a good dog?'

'I'm sure he'd just love it if you did. In fact, I strongly advise you make that the first thing you do when you walk into the meeting roo-ow!'

Guren whacked him with his pillow. Shinya immediately started to laugh. Guren buried his head beneath his pillow. For a few moments, all that could be heard was the soft peal of Shinya's laughter.

And then the pillow rose from his head and let the light back in.

'You're still going.'

Guren flipped over to face him. 'You're not my mother.'

Shinya smiled an infuriating smile and wagged his finger back and forth teasingly. 'Ah, ah, ha. I am your superior officer – and the only thing standing between you and getting reprimanded. I'm serious, Guren. It's too early in the morning for me too, you know.'

Begrudgingly, Guren sat up with a low groan. Shinya, still fucking smiling, held the plate of toast under his chin. Guren's stomach churned at the prospect of actually eating that shit.

'Alright, fine.'

It wasn't worth fighting over. He was awake now, coverless and down to only one pillow. Shinya wasn't going to leave. Shinya was as stubborn as he was – maybe even more so, because Shinya always wore a smile as he engaged in pointless fighting that at this time of the morning, neither of them enjoyed. He wasn't going to get any more sleep and frankly, for once, he could not be bothered to argue.

Shinya's eyebrows lifted. Clearly he had been anticipating more resistance. He blinked once, then cleared his throat, wiggled the toast under Guren's chin and said, 'Well, eat the rest of your breakfast first.'

Guren wrinkled his nose. Fuck no. Nothing looked more unappealing than Shinya's cold culinary efforts – except perhaps the stack of papers that sat beside him.

'…I'll pass.'

Shinya gave him a long look. Guren stared back. Shinya could judge him all he liked, if that was what that look was meant to be for, but he was not eating that.

When Shinya finally turned away to put the plate down on the sideboard, Guren curled his legs underneath him and eyed the tower of reports.

'Please tell me I don't have to read all of them.'

Shinya stretched like a cat. 'I read two thirds of them last night. I can brief you on what I read, but you'd better be paying attention.'

Guren pulled a face. 'Just how long is this meeting meant to be?'

'You don't want to know,' Shinya said through a yawn.

Guren gave him a flat look that clearly said, I do.

Shinya sighed dramatically. 'As long as Kureto's nasty streak.'

Picking up the first report, Guren wondered if he would ever see the light of day again.

After an hour and twenty minutes of intense work, the two of them neared the Officer's Meeting exactly on schedule. Guren dawdled with his hand on the hilt of his cursed sword, Shinya trying to walk faster but not wanting to be seen pulling Guren by the elbow the entire way. He already endured teasing for being the Ichinose's babysitter from time to time. It certainly didn't do for either of their reputations to make it worse.

'I'm tired.' Guren whined as they came within sight of the doors. 'I feel like shit. Can I go home?'

Shinya resisted the urge to grab at his elbow again, keeping a teasing smile to his face. 'I thought you had boots to lick?'

That got the correct response. Guren went from grouchy and disinterested to annoyed and awake in 0.5 seconds. 'Shinya, I swear to-'

Guren revivified, Shinya laughed and raised a hand to the heavy wooden door. The moment for chatting was over. He just heard Guren grumble something about refusing to wag his tail before the creak of the door drowned him out and the rectangular consultation table came into view.

'Ichinose is on time today!' To his credit Seishiro looked as shocked as he did mocking. It wasn't to Guren's credit. However much Shinya defended him to the others, the fact remained that he didn't make it easy; he was without fail either late arriving or early leaving without permission.

Though he participated, Kureto's voice radiated boredom with a hint of disappointment. 'And Shinya is later than usual – coincidence? Honestly Shinya, we've told you time and time again not to bother with him.'

Shinya did not get a chance to reply. As Guren brushed past him to take his seat, Tenri spoke up from the head of the table.

'Well now we are all here on time, let us begin. Has everyone examined the required material?'

Shinya hated the way all eyes settled on Guren. They obviously expected him to be forced to sit through this mammoth order of affairs without a clue of what was going on in each case. Guren was not the most proactive of people. There was a high chance that he would deliberately have ignored those reports if he had been given appropriate notice. But in this case, his copies of the documents only arrived on his desk late last night – long after Guren had relocated from his office to his personal chambers. He had been set up for failure.

Catching Seishiro stifling a snigger out of the corner of his eye, it wasn't difficult to decipher who had been responsible for it this time. Whether Kureto knew had yet to be revealed, as the Hiragi heir simply offered a slight nod.

Guren, for his part, sat with folded arms resting on the table and gave no indication of whether he had read the papers or not – or indeed whether he was listening. Though his eyes were open, the pale morning light entering through the blinds gave them a glassy look. He lowered his head and his hair, loose on account of their rushed morning, fell forwards and shielded them with shadow.

Shinya tore his eyes away from his friend, hoping fervently that at the very least, even if he didn't participate at all, Guren would stay awake this time.

Guren did stay awake, though not by choice. As the meeting dragged into its eighth hour, Guren wished more intensely than he felt he had wished anything that if the meeting wouldn't end then maybe, just maybe, he might sleep through what remained. Usually when old Tenri was droning on about something or other, a light sleep came pretty easily.

Not today. Stupid fucking Shinya and his poisonous toast.

Not long into the meeting, Guren had decided that his breakfast had turned on him, if it was ever on his side in the first place, and he was going to die. It hadn't been the worst pain – Guren had fought many battles and suffered many wounds and almost all of them were worse than a little stomach ache – but it was an inconvenience, and inconveniences were, or so he had thought five hours ago, the most annoying of all pains.

It had been bad enough just sitting through topic after topic that he honestly couldn't care less about, but doing that and suffering the fucking toast attempting to burst out of his belly like that alien film they'd watched before the apocalypse? That really took the piss.

He had tried to focus more on the proceedings, shared a few opinions on report contents and next moves in a bid to distract himself from his blatant betrayal of his body. His contributions had been almost exclusively shut down and his plan had failed. He had immediately decided that this was the worst meeting he had yet to attend.

In the words of the superstitious romance novel Sayuri had been reading (and Guren had definitely not leafed through when she left it in his living room), he had jinxed himself.

Five hours after the failure of Operation Distraction, the pain had intensified to the point that he had dropped his face onto the table and it was all he could to not clasp his stomach and cry out. While it was just a frequent stabbing in the lower right portion of his abdomen, he had at least been able to imagine he was getting hurt in battle. Now, there wasn't anything comparable.

The chills running from his head to his toes were all that told him where one wave of pain ended and another began. Tenri's voice faded into the background, his own heartbeat drowning it all out – thud thud thud between his ears like a fucking jackhammer attempting to split him apart from the inside. Something was – at this stage Guren would not be surprised to find out it was his heart.

After what felt like a lifetime of suffering, a hand clapped down on his shoulder. Guren flinched.

'Hey, we're breaking for dinner.' It was Shinya. 'Are you-?'

Guren slowly turned his head in the direction of the voice and opened his eyes. A white haze hovered over him. The hand trailed up from his shoulder to his forehead. Guren opened his mouth but before he could make it form words, Shinya had beaten him to it.

'You're going home.' He spoke curtly. 'Can you stand?'

Guren pushed himself up into a sitting position. His arms trembled and he cursed himself, biting down on his lip both to in irritation and in a bid to clamp down on the added pain of uncurling his body. He tasted blood and that worked.

The world that had dulled in comparison to his suffering grew sharper. He registered dimly that there was nobody left in the room but them. Shinya must have waited for the others to leave before approaching him. Shinya wasn't smiling.

'Guren?'

'Yeah, yeah,' he slurred as a wave of nausea overcame him. He clamped his mouth tightly shut, pressed both hands back to the table to steady himself. The blur that was Shinya moved aside.

And then his stomach lurched like he was falling; sparks erupted in front of his eyes; he couldn't see the table anymore, couldn't feel it under his hands, grasped for something to orientate himself but there wasn't anything there.

'Shi-' Shit. 'Shinya.'

Shinya's voice came from somewhere far away. 'Woah! Alright, I've got you. Steady, steady.'

I'm not a fucking dog, Guren thought, and it was the last coherent sentence he understood before a fresh wave of pain overcame him and he all he could hear was somebody moaning loudly, too loudly in his ears.

A/N: Thank you for reading! ^_^

Comments and constructive criticism are always welcomed and greatly appreciated.

I hope everyone is having a better day than Guren!