Disclaimer: Bleach is not be mine, folks!

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Coffee, Cars and Kurosaki

Chapter 1

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She'd been thinking about it, she could really do with a job.

"I've been thinking about it for a couple of days now, I could really do with a job." Inoue spoke into the receiver of her Skype microphone, at the same time adding a couple of words to her History assignment in the adjacent window. "I was thinking maybe 'Zoo' down the main road, they have some nice clothes and I could get a discount!"

Rukia made a face, and the green-ish quality of the webcam added to the effect. "Zoo's where all the mums go shopping for their prepubescent, twelve year old daughters. Why would you wanna work there?"

"I can use my discount to get you clothes?"

Inoue laughed as Rukia gestured a punch on the computer monitor. She looked like a little angry rabbit. But all things aside, she really needed a job. She had been thinking for more than a couple of days like she'd said, she'd been thinking about it ever since her brother, Sako, had been hospitalised.

Sure, she was still at school, but that never stopped any of the other kids who juggled them both at once. People like Rukia would never understand her need to provide necessities for her family, because Rukia was from one of the richest families in Japan, and had people to drive her to school and call her down for dinner. Here, the only person Inoue could depend on was herself and her brother. And since Sako's illness had started to kick in, it was just her.

Eyeing up the numerous boxes on the floor, Inoue decided that it was best to switch off the computer and finish her conversation and homework later.

"See you on Monday, Ruki-chan!"

"Don't call me that, it's disgusting." came a retort on the loudspeaker. "But love you too."

It had been over a month since the move, and it really couldn't have come at a better time. In between unpacking, cleaning and cooking, Inoue had barely any energy left to study. Most days she came home from school she felt like collapsing on her bed, knowing that five minutes later she'd have to recommence the organisation of their little apartment. And when she wasn't doing that, she'd be visiting Sako in hospital nearby.

The place where they previously lived had been targeted for demolition. The old landlord wanted to build a new, twenty-storey apartment block where their three-storey one stood, to "pave the way for modern times and a higher market" he'd said. That definitely destroyed any chances of their living in it; they could barely afford hot water as it was.

Anyway, Inoue thought, there's no point in looking back, especially as there was so much to do right now! She needed to head down to the shops for some milk and sugar, and return the paint roller she'd borrowed from Renji.

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School came as usual on Monday, and Inoue had the tedious task of lugging a paint roller to school. The last three times she'd called for Renji he hadn't been home, and therefore was forced to take drastic measures.

There he was, leaning against a shiny red convertible, seemingly nonchalant. It was another one to his collection, no doubt. How a seventeen year old could own so many automobiles was beyond Inoue's grasp. His family must be so rich, she thought. Sometimes she wished she had a car, but then proceeded to wonder what she'd do with it. It wasn't like she needed to go anyplace far, and even if she did, the trains worked fine.

"Renji! Where have you been? I've knocked for you three times this week."

With that, the redhead diverted his attention to his orange-haired friend. "Hey Inoue, I've been busy. Those my paint rollers?"

She handed him the items in observation, glad that they were no longer in her awkward possession. Images of dropping the rollers on her head sprang to mind, resulting in the painting of her face bright blue.

"Are you coming to class, Renji?"

"Yeah, sure." he said, and for a while they walked quietly up the steps of the courtyard, after which Renji broke the silence. "You getting anywhere with the History?"

"No... I've been busy myself." she shot him a sideways glance, to which Renji's face dropped.

"Oh, Sako. How is he?"

"'His internal environment is good', the doctor said, but she didn't tell me any more than that. I'm visiting him tomorrow. Will you be coming this time too?"

"Ah, not tomorrow, I have something I need to do. Sorry, Inoue." Renji said, to which Inoue smiled politely. She pushed back a strand of hair from her face and furrowed her eyebrows as she tried to work out how much money she'd have left after lunch and bus fare. She'd forgotten both at home today, so she would have to buy it. "Inoue, you there?"

She jumped at the sight of Renji waving his massive hand in her face. "Oops, sorry I kind of zoned out."

"That's alright. I asked you if you were still looking for a job." Renji laughed heartily, the sun gleaming in his hazel eyes, and upon the lines his mouth made. Inoue's face lit up at his smile, which she had always thought was much better than his scowl. Funnily enough, the scowl was all most people ever got. Did he say a job? Intriguing. What sort of job would Renji know about? With his background it could even be high paying, Inoue calculated, and suddenly became excited at the prospect. "Yes I am! Why, do you know something?"

"Yeah, it's not much, but I hear old man Shunsui's looking for help at the garage."

"Old man Shunsui?" Inoue asked, "Who is he?"

"Oh, I totally forgot, you have no idea. Well, you see, he's the owner of Blossom Garage- quite popular actually- and his clerk, or should I say monkey boy, has moved away to France, so he's employing."

Inoue thought about the idea. Her, in a garage? Was Renji deluded? What in the world could she ever achieve in one of those places?

"Renji, what in the world could I ever achieve in one of those places?" she asked, voicing her thoughts. "I don't know anything about cars, my biceps are about the size of M&Ms, I get really flustered under pressure, and there's no need to mention that there'll be about a million guys in the place, right?"

Damn, she was right, Renji thought. Putting Inoue in a place full of guys could only end in catastrophe. The job wasn't even that bad though. He knew Inoue was a fast learner and that she was actually quite tough underneath the girly exterior. Ah, never mind then, she seemed pretty flustered that he even asked.

"But I'll do it."

WHAT?

"What?" Renji almost tripped over himself trying to make eye contact with Inoue, to check if she had gone mad somehow. "But you just said-"

"I know, but I figured none of that matters. I need a job so badly. And plus, I trust you not to advertise to me false choices, am I right Renji? Where is this Blossom Garage then?"

He couldn't help but smile at his friend's determination. Renji always knew Inoue was a tough girl. A tough girl, who was a little weird too.

--

"Right! Everybody to your seats please! I don't wait for this class, this class waits for me!"

At the head of the class stood Matsumoto Rangiku. As well as being their Biology teacher she was the Head of the Science department at their school. Never had a Science teacher been so popular with the students at Karakura High, whether it was because of spirit or looks.

"Right," she exclaimed after she finished registering the class, "We're on a new subject today, and what a better way to start than with a big fat assignment?"

The class groaned. When Matsumoto-sensei said assignment, she absolutely meant it. You had to achieve 95 or above for her to not throw daggers at you in the hallways.

"In a minute half the class'll pick their partner's names out of a hat, which I'm sure will be fun. You might even get someone you like." Several people in the class giggled, mainly the girls and boys from the large social circle. Matsumoto rolled her eyes and continued. "But before that happens I'd like to introduce you to a new student, Kurosaki Ichigo. Please come in, Kurosaki" she gestured to the door, through which a young man entered. Since her back was to the door, Inoue had to turn her head to look.

"Check him out." she heard a low voice. It had obviously been Rukia opposite her who'd said that underneath her breath. She looked at the newcomer, and was startled by, first things first, his hair colour.

"Hey, Inoue! It's your brother!"

The class burst out laughing and Inoue blushed. While doing so, she made eye contact with the young man, which made her turn away quickly and blush even more intensely. In doing this, she missed his sheepish grin.

"Enough, Kiego. Do that again and I'll make you work through this two-man project on your own. Apologise to Inoue and Kurosaki at once."

"Sorry" came a half-assed reply.

When the commotion died down a little, it was time to pick lab partners.

"Rukia? Kuchiki Rukia?"

An audible 'What?' was heard from the part of Rukia before she was told to hurry up and move seats. Finally, it came to the last person's turn, but there was one slight problem: there were two names left yet only one person choosing. Tatsuki picked up one of them and opened up the folded piece of paper which would determine who her lab partner was. 'I hope it's me', thought Inoue, seeing as she was rather fond of her raven-haired friend.

"I'm with Chad." she announced, and with that, they swiftly exited as if on cue, leaving only two people, who happened to be Orihime Inoue and Kurosaki Ichigo.

"Right, you two, I'd love to watch you stand and stare at each other all day but I've got a class to supervise. There're two seats over there by the window. Watch out for the draught, but whatever you do, don't close it; I won't ever get it open again. I thank my lucky stars for that Professor Ichimaru. Scrawny men never possessed so much strength. Why I remember..."

Inoue started fiddling with the gas tubes when she ran out of things to say to the person next to her, and so far that consisted of 'Hi, I'm Orihime Inoue, but you can call me Inoue.' and 'Do you like fire?' The latter had been an attempt to make conversation relevant to the task at hand, which involved handling a Bunsen burner. However, it hadn't come out the way she expected. Actually, it had, but Inoue's perception of normal and other people's perceptions of 'normal' weren't exactly identical. Nevertheless, Ichigo wasn't a difficult person to talk to. He just stuck to himself when Inoue wasn't talking to him.

"Hey!" Ichigo briskly grabbed Inoue's arm, pushing her away from the flame that was coming threateningly close to her jumper, knocking over a pencil stand in the process.

"Ow! My hair!" Inoue gasped timidly as his grip locked in a small patch of her long, auburn hair. Ichigo let go of her slowly and she turned to look at him.

"Please be more careful, Inoue-san" he ordered, to which Inoue raised her eyebrows and showed a hint of a smile.

"Sorry, I'm very clumsy." she beamed. "No need to worry about me! I'm always doing something stupid." She subconsciously grazed the spot where his hand had held her.

"You'll end up in trouble if you carry on like that."

Inoue laughed, thinking how right he actually was. "My older brother says that to me all the time."

"Is that so? I have two little sisters, they're a lot like you, and I'm always having to take responsibility, being the eldest." He paused, "I must have seemed a lot like your big brother just then, huh?" he added, and then smiled wryly. "I haven't really introduced myself, I'm Ichigo. Nice to meet you, Inoue."

He held out a hand, initiating a handshake, and Inoue was just about to move hers towards him when she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, Rukia punching Renji in the head.

"Baka! I told you, it's 200ml of Thiosulphate, not distilled water! Ever wondered why our mixture was purple instead of green like everyone else's?" Inoue came to her friend's side in an attempt to prevent any more violence. Boy was Rukia mad; madder than Inoue had seen when Mizuiro knocked her favourite juice out of her hand with a football.

"Shut up! Look at me, does it look like I care about anyone else's anything? You're gonna pay for hitting me" came the retort from Renji. Ichigo had ran over to him forcefully, positioning himself in between Rukia and Renji and holding back Renji's arm, preventing him from pouring said purple mixture onto Rukia's head. Renji was equally if not more mad. The top button on his shirt had popped open from all the madness. From an outsider's point of view, you could have thought that Ichigo and Renji were having a fight. It would be unfortunate for them in the long run.

For a brief moment, in typical Inoue style, when everything around her was in chaos, she noticed that the two of them were appetisingly strong and muscular. Posed as though sparring (despite the fact that it was Rukia and Renji the real fight was between), their stature and build were accentuated through their school uniforms.

"What's going on here?" came a calm voice from outside their little group. It was Matsumoto-sensei, wary and ever ready to settle disturbances in her class. If it was one thing she hated the most, it was a disorderly class. It seemed contradictory to her wild nature. "Looks like someone can't get along. You too, Kurosaki?" she stated, obviously having already established the situation from her point of view. "What am I to do? Oh, that's right. Kuchiki, Abarai, Kurosaki: detention. Half an hour, after class. That'll be all. Oh, and pick up those pencils."

--

"Since you two both have common ground in being friends with me, we might as well be civil to one another, right?"

It was seriously going nowhere. And fast. "Why are you guys so stubborn? You're so different when it's just me that's around!"

It was no news that Abarai Renji and Kuchiki Rukia hated one another. It had been that way from the first day of middle school, and it was going to stay that way for, well, forever. There was something fundamentally missing from their abilities to be rational and polite around one another, or at least even to pretend the other wasn't there. They were like two bulls in a china shop, or like grass and a weed, one always trying to be superior to the other. The problem was an obvious one, yet had no easy solution. Keeping them apart was only a temporary break from the fateful day that they'd bump into one another again, and that day, without a doubt, was going to happen no matter what.

Today could have well been that day, Inoue thought as she recollected the near miss of the glass beaker upon Rukia's head. It had landed on Kiego's instead, which was extremely funny, and potentially dangerous had Renji really used Thiosulphate instead of distilled water.

Inoue was just about to leave the Detention Airing Cupboard (it was so small the younger kids had come up with the nickname) with Renji and Rukia, who were walking ahead of her in pure and heavy silence, when she noticed a mass of orange hair in the corner of the dimly-lit room, also getting up to leave.

"Kurosaki-kun?" she called out. Indeed, he lifted his head up so his brown eyes met her cerulean blues. "Hey, are you coming?"

Unsure of what to say, Ichigo scratched his head for a few moments before gathering the rest of the books he'd been reading in detention and made his way towards her. "Sure." he smiled. His gaze lingered on Inoue for a few seconds before he broke it with conversation. "So am I missing something?" he gestured towards the two others nearby.

Oh boy, this was going to be a long story, Inoue thought.

"You can tell it to me on the way home," Ichigo beamed, as if he'd read her thoughts. "I've got time."

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End of Chapter 1

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Author's Note: Did you guys like that? I've got grand plans for this story, so stay tuned! Oh, and remember to review! Nothing beats good ol' feedback from the readers... unless you're here to give me Pocky sticks xD