For the ask meme (feel free to answer any/some/none):
🌙 - What’s their sleep schedule like? — Yamamoto
🤡 - What’s something dumb they’re embarrassed about? — Kira
🖌️ - Do they have any hobbies? —Hanatarou
💤 - What do they absolutely need to have to fall asleep? —Byakuya (and does this change over time?)
I hope your weekend is shaping up to be nice!
🌙 - What’s their sleep schedule like? — Yamamoto
Here’s his entire daily schedule, because, as you will see, sleep is strongly integrated throughout.
5am - rise, fully rested. Consume a light breakfast of nattou and kombucha. Hit the gym early, when all the young bucks in their short shorts are there.
6:30 am - Drink a glass of vinegar and eat an entire raw sweet potato.
7 am - Squad 1 morning standup
7:15 - Sit down at desk. Fall asleep.
9 am - Sasakibe brings in their morning grapefruit and talks about British things for an hour.
10 am - Write half a strongly worded letter to whichever captain is on his shitlist today and/or the Seireitei Bulletin. Fall asleep partway through.
11 am - Lunchtime. 12oz of cod, two raw eggs, and another sweet potato.
noon - Set things on fire
2 pm - Captains’ meeting, if applicable. Otherwise, wander around and grumble.
3 pm - Dinner. 8 oz of steak (he’s the Head Captain, he can afford it), large pile of veggies, rice.
4 pm - Drills with the youngsters (no one in Squad 1 is younger than 400 years old)
5 pm - Bath. Likelihood of drifting off in the bath: high
6 pm - Drinks sake, contemplates the universe.
7 pm - Before bed second dinner. Another 12 oz of cod, some roughage, more kombucha, 4 pickled plums.
8 pm - A responsible bedtime!!
🤡 - What’s something dumb they’re embarrassed about? — Kira
You mean aside from existing?
Izuru is embarrassed about so many, many things, but this is the dumbest, which is that until very recently, he didn’t think that chameleons actually changed color, he thought it was a folklore-based metaphor, like the way people associate salamanders with fire. The reason he thought this was very simple, which is that Gin mentioned this, in numerous offhand ways, for the purposes of messing with him. I mean, it wasn’t personal, ‘chameleons can’t really change color’ was just one of a number of similar bits Gin did to anyone he thought would fall for it, it just happened that Izuru a) spent a lot of time with Gin and b) isn’t tremendously good at telling when people are lying to him, especially about things dropped in casual conversation. Chameleons aren’t native to Japan and they don’t have them in Soul Society, and who has time to keep track of all the weird animals from other parts of the Living World, some of which are made up. I mean, narwhals are real, but unicorns are made up???
Anyway, at some point after the Winter War, the topic happened to come up in the context of a painting Momo was doing (Shinji had asked her to do something colorful to hang in the office) and they got into a big standoff about it. Izuru refused to take Shinji’s word for it, because the man is at least as full of shit as Gin, so they decided to take it to the man who knows everything about the World of the Living, except that they didn’t want to explain why they were asking, so one night at the bar, Momo just casually asked Renji if he knew anything about chameleons.
Boy, does he. Apparently, at some point during the Advance Team mission, Chad had shown Renji a multipart documentary series called “Remarkable Reptiles,” and he spent the next hour regaling them with Chameleon Facts, including their weird feet, their incredible eyesight, the fact that they glow under UV light, and, of course, their ability to change color (which is not as good as a cuttlefishes, according to a different animal documentary Renji had seen). Momo grew more and more smug as this recitation went on, Izuru attempted to dissolve his own organs through the power of shame. Shuuhei was there also, but was so enraptured by the magic of chameleons, he did not notice that Izuru himself had turned bright red (not for camouflage purposes)
Anyway, Momo is a kind and compassionate friend, and did not rub this in, but it doesn’t matter, the damage was done. Izuru sometimes lies in bed and wonders how many people he casually mentioned the chameleon thing to. He wonders if they noticed. He wonders if there is any possibility that Gin himself was also misinformed about the nature of chameleons.
Shinji loved the chameleon painting (it looks vaguely like him) and hung it in a prominent spot in the office. He also framed the large, extremely random nature column that coincidentally appeared in the Bulletin shortly afterward entitled “Chameleons! Did You Know?” and hung it up next to the painting. Izuru hates going to the Squad 5 offices.
🖌️ - Do they have any hobbies? —Hanatarou
I think Hanatarou would collect stickers! He’s very chill about it, he just buys ones he likes and he occasionally sticks them in notebooks, just making little collages of ones he things look nice together. He prefers ones that are cute or funny or pretty, but he also loves ones that come from different places or that commemorated a particular event or festival. When she gets an opportunity, Kiyone will sometimes bring them back from the World of the Living for him-- he loves the shininess and quality of the printing.
While he does have some hard-to-get ones that he keeps special, he is very generous with his stickers. The Coordinated Relief Station doesn’t see a lot of children, but Hanatarou is the one who maintains the sticker stock, just in case, plus Yachiru will often drop by for the sole purpose of demanding one.
💤 - What do they absolutely need to have to fall asleep? —Byakuya (and does this change over time?)
Like many neurodivergent people, Byakuya had a lot of trouble falling asleep as a kid. Byakuya is a Kuchiki though, he bends the world to his whim. He would carefully consider why couldn’t fall asleep. Was he too hot? Was there a noise bothering him? Was he hungry? Thirsty? He eventually figured out the optimal Byakuya Sleeping Conditions, which didn’t solve the problem, but it helped. From there, he tried out numerous sleep inducing techniques-- counting imaginary animals, visualizing peaceful surroundings, reciting various things he had memorized. He never found a precise recipe for getting to sleep, but he developed heuristics, and was generally able to get himself to sleep one way or another.
He worried, somewhat, in the run-up to this, that sleeping with another person was going to require acclimation. A person. Next to you. Breathing. Making body heat. What if Hisana didn’t like the sheets he preferred? What if she wanted the windows closed when he wanted them open? She was the most wonderful person in the world, though, it would be worth going through all of it all over again.
As it turned out, lying in a dark room next to a person he loved was the most peaceful Byakuya had ever felt in his life and he fell asleep immediately, no alternate nostril breathing necessary. For roughly three years, Byakuya slept easily and deeply and awoke well-rested every morning.
Eventually, Hisana’s illness worsened, and Byakuya would often lay away, worrying, listening to her labored breathing, wanting to be awake in case she needed anything, thinking about how sleep chipped away at the limited number of hours he had left with her.
He slept very poorly in the year after her death, which is when he got into the habit of wandering his garden in the middle of the night. The following year, Rukia came. She also liked to wander the gardens in the dark hours, and Byakuya did not regard haunting the grounds as a group activity, so he returned to his old practices and managed to get himself back to sleep most nights. He is grateful to Rukia for this, actually. Sleep is important, and it is very irresponsible for a Clan Head and Gotei Captain to neglect his own rest.
Rukia’s own need for nighttime perambulations decreases eventually as well. Since night air can be calming, Byakuya slowly allowed himself to indulge in it again, occasionally, if he truly felt it would be effective. Even more eventually, he realized that while haunting is best done by your lonesome, a bit of companionship in insomnia isn’t so bad after all.
That was sad, so here’s a chaser:
Because Byakuya has invested so much effort in it, he can pretty much fall asleep in any conceivable conditions. He can and does fall asleep with his eyes open during Captains’ meetings. He never gets insomnia on field missions, because sleeping must be done in turns and if you do not sleep on your turn, it is a betrayal of your comrades and a risk to the operation, in short: you gotta. Renji is also an incredible Field Mission sleeper, and the two of them will just fall asleep and wake up at any time of day or night with no preamble, basically on command. Byakuya and Renji do a lot of awe-inspiring things, but it is the general opinion of Squad Six that this is the most impressive.
