Hey guys! This is just a random one-shot that I came up with while I was sick. Much later I fixed it up and KazeNoSakura beta'd it for me! Thanks a ton for that!

So then, without further ado, please enjoy!

Title: Chemistry

Author: MeteorLeopard (HoneyBadger)

Toushirou's POV

Annoying. Just plain annoying.

"Are you stupid or something?"

"Me? I'm not the one who dreams about snakes on motorbikes!"

"What did you say?"

"You heard me carrot top!"

"Eh?"

Annoying. So damn annoying.

"Where did the snake come from?"

"Why ask me? You're the one dreaming about them!"

"I don't! Rukia! Tell skinhead that I don't dream about snakes!"

"…"

"Come on!"

Like flies. Really big, annoying flies.

"C'mon guys! Are we really supposed to be fighting here? I thought we were supposed to work!"

Everyone stopped trying to suffocate each other by sticking a spoon down the other's throat, long enough to turn and stare at Matsumoto. I almost gaped at her too. Matsumoto never offered to work.

Obviously oblivious to everyone's attention, she simply flicked her hair annoyingly – something she had picked up from the girls of this world. It was like they all had a twitch in their neck. Well, one girl didn't. But I was trying very hard not to think about thatgirl right now.

Abarai scratched his head. "Matsumoto…you feeling okay?"

"Hm? Why?"

"Well…" It was Madarame who spoke this time. "I think I just heard that…you wanted to…work."

She whipped towards him with a million-dollar smile. "Of course! The sooner I get out of this death trap the sooner I can hit the town!"

I silently groaned. Just why did we, the Shinigami only posing as students, have to do the same assignments as the living world students?

Kurosaki sighed and pulled out his textbook which was emblazoned with a huge picture of some man with lightning-shocked white hair sticking up in random tufts from his scalp. Kuchiki had told me that he was called 'Einstein'. Weird.

"Anyways, we'd better get started."

Ayasegawa brushed his hair away. "Kurosaki, it's not beautiful to frown all the time."

"Shut up," he replied as he continued to flick through the pages.

"Why do we have to do this boring 'practical' too?" Matsumoto whined. "We're not even real students here."

Kuchiki popped up with one of her signature Chappy drawings clamped under her arm. "On the contrary Matsumoto, this human subject 'Chemistry' can be quite amusing from what I have gathered."

"Eh? Really?"

Kuchiki got that serious look on her face and began flicking through her pad. "There are these 'Chemicals' that these people wearing strange white coats mix together until they get something cool."

Matsumoto looked about as lost as I felt. However, I was vaguely associating these 'people wearing strange white coats' with Mayuri.

"Cool?"

"Yup! See?"

There was a general 'ooooh' in the room as everyone leant forward to examine Kuchiki's Chappy drawing of an exploding table.

Madarame grinned like a maniac. "I see. So this 'Chemistry' is just another word for blowing stuff up?"

Kurosaki looked shocked. "Eh? N-no, that's not-"

"Makes sense I suppose. Humans can be rather violent." Abarai looked convinced.

"Oi! Guys, that's really not-"

I tuned them out again. Evidently this 'Chemistry' wasn't some form of instant death that Madarame and Abarai were envisioning. And I also had the sneaky suspicion that Kuchiki's version was somewhat selective. But right now, I really couldn't care.

It didn't take long before they started arguing again. And their incessant arguing turned back into that annoying buzzing. I scowled to myself as I leant against the wall and focused instead on keeping my thoughts well away from her.

A hand tapped my shoulder. "Are they always like this?"

So much for that idea.

I opened my eyes again and glanced over at Kurosaki Karin standing beside me. "Yes."

She studied them with mild interest. I suppose, to those who hadn't seen it before, watching people threatening each other with imminent death by asphyxiation, strangulation and decapitation would be amusing. To some. I just found it…annoying.

"This is all your fault, Renji!"

"Me? How's it my fault, Ichigo?"

"You're the one who spilled the Hydrochloric acid over the lab table during third period today!"

"How was I to know the see-through stuff wasn't water?"

"It had a freakin' label on it! With a skull!"

"So? In Soul Society everything has a skull on it!"

"If you hadn't been so stupid we could have been long gone already like everybody else!"

Kuchiki checked her Chappy watch. "It is getting rather late…"

Abarai pointed an accusing finger at Kurosaki. "How the heck is it my fault that we had to re-do the practical?"

"You're the one who kept bickering with Ikkaku!"

"What'd you say?"

"You heard me!" Kurosaki retorted. "We'd be outta school by now too if only you'd behaved! Orihime, Ishida and Chad went home because they didn't screw around!"

"Excuse me?"

They were beyond annoying now. This was just infuriating! I was grinding my teeth so hard Karin was already sending me glances! "WILL YOU ALL JUST SHUT THE HELL UP ALREADY?"

The silence lasted for about a second.

"Tch. Fine." And Kurosaki began flipping through the book again. Madarame looked mildly interested at what he still believed to be the recipe for 'instant death'.

"Here. Practical 5." Kurosaki stood the book up against a stand on the middle lab table. "Um… Let's see."

Matsumoto sighed. "So then, what now?"

"Are we gonna make something explode?" Ikkaku's eyes were gleaming as though he were studying a fresh Arrancar.

"No," came Kurosaki's curt reply before he scanned the text. "Right. Rangiku, there's a cupboard full of bottles on the wall behind you. Get me the bottle labeled 'Sodium'."

"Aye aye sir!" Matsumoto imitated Yachiru and bounced off to the cupboard, enthusiastically flinging the doors open and peeping around. "Um… Ichigo, the bottles aren't labeled."

"Huh? Of course they are. They have to be!"

"They're not. Only the shelves are."

"Then get the bottle from the spot that says 'Sodium'."

"Um… Sure." And Matsumoto took a bottle from the shelf and hopped over to the table again.

"Kay. Now get the… Copper and Zink."

Matsumoto skipped off to get those too.

"Make sure you remember which bottle's which Rangiku." Kurosaki instructed her.

"Hai!"

Abarai came to look over Kurosaki's shoulder. "Ichigo, are you sure that it's 'Sodium'?"

"Hm? Yeah, why?"

"Because, jackass, it says 'Sulphur' here."

"Huh?"

"See? You can't do anything right!"

"What'd you say?"

I growled under my breath. Those idiots could be so stupid! Beside me, I heard Karin snicker and I turned my head to face her. I almost instantly regretted it. The sun from outside was falling onto her black hair, making it shine and turning my stomach into a hard knot. Her grey eyes were lit and they seemed to…radiate.

There was something special about her. No, not the fact that she had reiatsu nor the fact that she'd instantly struck up a friendship with Matsumoto after that soccer game. Karin was just…different. She always seemed…happy to see me. In fact, if what Matsumoto said was true, she was going out of her way to see me. And that in itself was odd. Hardly anybody ever went out of their way to see me. It was like she wasn't intimidated by my icy nature at all. It was disconcerting and also somehow…nice.

Even now when she had turned 14 and was only one year away from entering senior school, she seemed to have gone out of her way for me. We were all currently posing as students at Kurosaki's senior school again. He was in his last year now though how he was going to pass it I didn't even want to know.

We all got held back after school to repeat this darned practical. Of course, that meant that I wouldn't be able to meet up with Karin. I'd called her after the senior school had finished on my Soul Pager, telling her that I couldn't make it to the soccer practice. When I'd explained that Abarai, Matsumoto, Ayasegawa, Madarame, Kurosaki, Kuchiki and I had been kept in to do this 'Chemistry' practical, she'd paused for a moment before hanging up. Five minutes later, Karin had burst through the doors of the Science Lab, her soccer ball tucked under her arm and wearing a huge grin. Damn. For a short girl, she sure was a fast runner. Then she'd announced that she'd just be waiting here until we were done so that she could drag me off to play soccer.

Kurosaki hadn't liked that. Not one little bit. Oh sure, he'd been aware of the fact that I knew his little sister and that we sometimes played soccer together over the past three years or just generally hung out, but her actual 'visit' was just a little too much for the substitute Shinigami to handle. Kuchiki had told him to put the Bunsen Burner down.

I glanced over at Karin again and had to wrench my eyes away. There was an odd warm feeling edging up my neck and I had a suspicion of what it was. But there was no way that I was going to blush. No way at all.

Karin sighed and stubbed the toes of her shoe against the floor. "I hope they hurry up and quit bickering. I wanna go and play soccer with you already."

I couldn't help my eyes darting to her again. She was leaning against the wall in a very casual way, her shoulders relaxed and her arms folder behind her back.

Friends. That was a term she had used the other day. I still didn't know how I should take that statement of hers. A friend? That was something I didn't have. Hinamori was a sister, and Matsumoto my subordinate. A trusted one and I wouldn't trade her for anything. But a friend? I didn't think I had one before. And Karin had called me her 'friend' because that was what she thought of me. She didn't know my…exact thoughts on her and I had lost count of how many times I'd hit my head against Inoue's walls.

It was like the Kurosaki boy could read my mind because right on cue he shot me a dirty look…again.

I noticed Matsumoto throwing me a sly glance and a smile every now and again but meticulously ignored it. She had been teasing me just this morning about all the time that I was spending with Karin and had dropped some hints about her featuring in my dreams –which she didn't, at least not to my knowledge– and some references to the dull thuds echoing through Inoue's house of my head meeting the wall again. And in the same breath she'd told me that I had actually shot up over the past few years; something that I was perfectly aware of. In fact, I now looked like a 15 year old. Albeit a short 15 year old but still… She had also told me that Kurosaki would get the wrong idea if I wasn't careful.

"Alright, Yumichika, measure out the amount of Magnesium that we need." Kurosaki seemed to be in control again so I pushed myself off the wall and walked over to the table, noticing Karin walking behind me and then leaning on the desk to see what was going on. She stood next to me and immediately Kurosaki shot me another venomous glare. I was starting to think that Matsumoto had a point. Good thing looks couldn't kill. For one, I'd be dead right now and for another, anybody whom I looked at on a daily basis would be long gone by now too.

As the dysfunctional group finally got everything sorted and things began to take shape, I noticed that the Kurosaki boy kept popping up between Karin and me if either of us so much as moved an inch. It was starting to get annoying and I was beginning to get steadily irritated with him. If Karin was though, she wasn't showing it.

Abarai was reading from the textbook on the other end of the long table. "Hitsugaya-taicho, would you hand me the Carbon?"

I looked over to a large group of bottles standing on the table-top and frowned. None of the bottles were labeled and they all looked almost exactly the same. I had memorized them but I was willing to bet my month's salary if Matsumoto had remembered them all like Kurosaki had told her to do. I picked up the right bottle and passed it down to Karin who was closer to Abarai. When she held out her hand to take the bottle from me, it only took the Kurosaki boy all of two seconds to materialize between us and snatch the bottle from my hand. My barely controlled temper was almost at boiling point and, ironically, the room was getting colder.

"What the hell's your problem Ichi-nii?"

That wasn't me and I was momentarily stunned as none other than Karin blew her lid at her older brother. Kurosaki placed the unlabeled bottle amongst the others, some with lids, some without.

"What're you talking about?"

I stared at his back incredulously. Kurosaki was treading on thin ice trying to play dumb with Karin. As predicted, her temper flared. "You know exactly what I'm talking about! Back off and quit being overprotective! It's ridiculous!"

"Ridiculous? I don't think so."

"I'm perfectly capable of passing a bottle!"

Madarame stepped forward to Kurosaki's side of the table. "That's right Ichigo. From what I hear she kicks some serious Hollow butt. A bottle of death ain't no big deal."

"Stay out of this Ikkaku! This isn't about Hollows!"

"Then what is it about, Ichi-nii?" Karin's voice was venomous and Kurosaki spluttered for a while before bursting out, "He would have touched your hand!"

There was a bit of a stunned silence in the room. Touched…her hand?

Matsumoto started giggling and Kurosaki turned to glare at her. She exploded into hysteria.

"What the hell's so funny Rangiku?" Kurosaki's voice was low.

I heard Ayasegawa snicker once as well and Abarai looked as though someone had stolen his cornflakes.

Madarame looked like he'd been hit from behind with a frying pan. "So?"

Kurosaki was becoming red in the face. "She's too young to have a boyfriend!"

I think my brain just imploded. Friends were one thing. But boyfriend? [beep beep, too high to compute].

"What are you going on about, Kurosaki?"

He rounded on me now. "Don't play dumb, Toushirou!"

I was itching to tell him to call me 'Hitsugaya-taicho' but someone beat me to the punch. In fact, Kurosaki went sprawling onto the floor beside the lab table with a terrifying Kuchiki towering over him. "Just shut up before you talk yourself into a corner!"

Kurosaki recovered incredibly fast. "What's your problem, Rukia?"

In response she slapped him across the face and yelled right back at him. "Keep your mouth closed for two seconds you moron!"

"But I'm right! Karin's too young for a boyfriend! Just cause Ikkaku's too stupid to see that-"

"Oi! I'm not stupid! Come over here and say that!"

"Fine then I will! Your pitiful baldness shan't stop me!"

"I'll beat you to a pulp!"

"You just try it!"

A hand smacked Madarame on the top of his shiny head and Matsumoto spoke in a patronizing tone. "Now Ikkaku, you need to stop acting so brash all the time."

"Brash? I'm not brash! And who do you think you're talking to?"

"If you don't behave I think I'll have to tell Yachiru exactly what happened here at the next Shinigami Women's Association Meeting."

I watched with slight interest as Madarame's confident face drained of all colour before turning slightly green and then to the colour of old porridge. Kurosaki snickered behind his hand and bloody nose. "Scared of a little girl."

Madarame went back to square one. "Listen here Kurosaki!"

"Yes cue-ball, what is it?"

"Stop with the nicknames already!"

Abarai tried to step between them but got hurled back as Kurosaki and Madarame got into a standing wrestling match. I sighed and took a step away from the wrestling pair, spotting Matsumoto moving over to my side as well to admire the fray better while Abarai remained on the one side, his arms crossed.

Madarame looked slightly demented. "Take this, dandelion!"

And he threw the Bunsen Burner across the room. At Kurosaki's head. While it was lit.

With a shriek and abnormally widened eyes, Kurosaki managed to duck as the Bunsen Burner sailed over his head – right into Abarai's face. Panicking and fumbling with the container for an instant, he managed to drop it.

Maybe it was a reflex or maybe just some sort of premonition. But just as the Burner fell towards the heavily laden lab table with the opened bottles and half-finished concoctions, I stepped between the deadly table and Karin.

The table followed the depiction on Kuchiki's notepad: It blew up. The force of the explosion hit me like a physical blow and I felt myself being flung across the room, my back briefly slamming into Karin – and Kurosaki was worried about hand contact – before my head hit the opposite wall and I fell to the floor, more than just a little dazed. My mind was black and I briefly thought that my eyes were closed. Maybe I was knocked out…

I was slowly getting feeling back into my body. My head felt like it had been disconnected from my shoulders; everything I couldn't see was spinning and my ears were ringing painfully. That blast had either been loud or I had hit the wall harder than I thought. I could actually feel my skin again. It was sort of tingling in places. And warm. Maybe I got burnt.

I managed to pry my eyes open again but everything was still too blurry and still spinning out of control. I tried to move but my palm came onto something soft and warm…

Oh shit.

My eyes flew open the rest of the way and stared. My skin wasn't burnt at all. I was lying on the floor…diagonally on top of Karin. And she was staring right back at me with those grey eyes of hers. I might have gone into shock or something or my mind could have spontaneously shut down. Either way, I wasn't moving. I was just staring.

In a small part of my mind, I heard a few people shifting with slow movements. But the majority of my brain and senses were focused entirely on Karin. Just Karin. Her grey eyes seemed to be getting larger, the gray closer. I was leaning in.

To do what, exactly?

I continued to move closer, conscious of my actions, not wanting to stop. Not being able to stop.

Kiss her.

I was close. I could feel her warm breath on my lips–

"Taicho! Help! They're suffocating me!"

That stopped me and I snapped out of the trance, staring at Karin for just a second longer before I rolled to my side and stood up swiftly. I was still struggling to understand. What the hell was that?

I heard Karin get to her feet behind me and move over to where desks and tables were piled up in a corner while I managed to locate my lieutenant amongst the wreckage of the Science Lab. Matsumoto's flailing arms were useless as she lay on her front, pinned down by three large desks. Her voice sounded muffled. "Taicho! Help me please! Where are you?"

I shoved two of the desks off of her and then yanked her out from underneath the third one quickly. Matsumoto proceeded to lie on her back, gasping like a beached orca. Abarai managed to scramble up from behind a desk as well, apparently still disorientated. His hair was smoldering slightly and he appeared a little tanned. I couldn't help thinking that he was lucky that he didn't have eyebrows in the first place.

Ayasegawa dusted himself off and ran a charred hand over his face. "My feathers! My beautiful feathers! They're carbonized!" He fussed over them for a minute before sighing exasperatedly. "Ridiculous, I am going to get a new gigai." And he left, leaping onto the window sill, sliding the window open and jumping from it.

Madarame was also emerging and I looked back at Karin who had by now managed to heave the desks away from the corner to reveal a slightly blackened Kurosaki and Kuchiki who had been similarly positioned as Karin and I had been earlier. Only unlike me, Kuchiki seemed in total control and promptly punched Kurosaki on the nose.

"Ichigo, you pervert!"

Kurosaki responded by calling her a bitch as Kuchiki scrambled to get off him and he almost pushed her off him. Kurosaki was dusting himself off when Matsumoto got her breath back. "Taicho! You're blushing!"

I am?

Kurosaki's head snapped round to me so fast that he might have contracted a whiplash. Karin was next on his glare-list but she still had her back turned to me so I couldn't see what her face looked like. Kurosaki on the other hand was looking slightly murderous with a gleam of madness in his eyes while his hand twitched towards a destroyed tools cabinet. "Karin, you-"

"Shut up Ichi-nii and put the scalpel back."

Well, she sounded steady and calm.

The silver dissecting device in Kurosaki's hand blinked ominously when several Soul Pagers went off at once. I pulled mine from my pocket. "Two minor Hollow. Not a big threat."

When I looked back up at Kurosaki, he seemed torn about whether to dismantle me or to butcher the Hollow. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Karin's minimal head movement towards Kuchiki.

An instant later, Kuchiki grabbed Kurosaki by his ear while he dangled along behind, screaming in agony. "What the hell are you doing, Rukia?"

"Idiot! We're going to kill the Hollow!"

And with no more protest from Kurosaki, she pulled him out the window with her; Kuchiki still in her gigai and Kurosaki in his real body. Matsumoto sighed and fluffed out her hair. "Looks like we did a fair amount of damage here…"

I glanced around the lab when she said that and I groaned internally. The human repair bill would be horrendous. Most of the desks were either overturned, chipped, reduced to kindling or charred beyond recognition while the walls and ceiling were blackened with soot and ash with other unidentifiable chemical concoctions dripping down onto the floor already strewn with debris and the remains of glass beakers, phials, containers, former desks and parts of the chalkboard.

Abarai sighed. "Well, guess we'd better report this then. Matsumoto, part of this is coming out of your sa-"

Matsumoto, however, was gone and Abarai was left gaping at air. "Matsumoto! Get back in here!" And he dashed off after my lieutenant, waving his fists.

Madarame looked after them as well before swinging his sword over his shoulder. "Whatever. I'm outta here."

And he vanished, leaving me alone with Karin in a demolished lab.

There was a beat of silence before Karin turned around to face me, her face slightly flushed and a lopsided grin hiding her nervousness. "Well then, I suppose we'd better leave too! I don't want a teacher walking in here a-and seeing me in this mess."

I noticed her slight stutter. She seemed to be breathing a little hard.

"And I'm not even a student here yet… Why are you staring at me?"

Karin's cheeks flushed a little more and I still found myself staring, despite her obvious statement that she'd noticed. When I didn't look away, her face turned even redder. Slowly I could feel my mind slipping into a similar trance to before. I began to notice less of the world around me, unconsciously detaching myself. Instead I only saw Karin, noticed how her grey eyes moved and her black hair teased her shoulders. She turned her head away. "Well then, w-we'd better leave now."

Karin was leaving. Going away. Turning her back in the awkwardness. I caught her wrist and she turned her head automatically to look at me, her grey eyes slightly off guard.

"Karin."

I saw Karin's eyes widen slightly as I stepped closer, still holding her wrist in my hand. I didn't quite know what I was doing, but I didn't quite mind either. I heard her breath hitch as I began to lean in again, giving her every chance to pull away. She didn't.

My mind blanked blissfully as hormones cut off my thought process. Karin's lips were soft and warm and sent electricity down my spine. I felt my other hand come up to her face and lightly brush her black hair behind her ear, leaving my hand behind her neck, keeping her lips against mine.

I began to pull away, slowly, wanting to prolong the new sensations that she was causing in my body. My eyes began to open as my lips left hers and I suddenly felt a hand close around the collar of my shirt and pull me back forward, my lips touching back against Karin's, making my eyes fly open the rest of the way. Karin's eyes were closed as she kissed me; the warm skin from her hand around my collar was brushing against my neck. My eyes closed again as I automatically responded, more of that electricity cutting my thoughts off. I knew that my one hand was still on the back of Karin's neck and that my other one, around her wrist, was slowly skimming up her arm to finally rest on her cheek. Karin's lips were so warm and I was beginning to enjoy this.

Then a lot.

My lungs were beginning to ache and I was running out of air but I wasn't ready to pull away. Just a little more. A few seconds more. I was starting to suffocate.

Karin had to breathe first and she broke away, gasping a little. The breath that blew into my face sent my recovering mind back into turmoil.

"It's right in there." Abarai's voice echoing down the hall tugged on the edge of my mind.

"What exactly is this 'big emergency' that I had to abandon my afternoon tea over?"

"Uuhh…"

The approaching footsteps that accompanied the voices were getting louder and, like being doused in ice water, I felt my mind snap back into place.

"In here? The Science Lab?"

"…hai."

A shadow fell over the patch of sunlight in the passage: Abarai and another, probably a teacher. My mind worked fast: A destroyed lab, Karin and me in it. Alone.

Twisting around and taking Karin's wrists again, I pulled her onto my back. An instant later her arms locked around my neck and I ran to the nearest window. The moment I jumped onto the windowsill, I hoisted Karin up onto my back and then pushed off, taking to the sky. I could feel Karin's stiffened muscles right against me but I shut that thought from my mind for the moment.

"What the – THE LAB!"

I heard Karin stifle a laugh beside my ear and I suppressed the shiver it caused as I touched down on the roof of the gym before pushing off and landing on the roof of another house outside the school grounds. And then Karin laughed.

"This is pretty cool, Toushirou! And you're still in your gigai!"

I allowed myself a small smirk, although she didn't see it. "I'm faster in Shinigami form though."

Karin was quiet for a while. "Even faster… Makes sense."

I pushed off from another house roof and decided that I liked feeling her warm weight on my back.

"I'll show you someday."

I could have sworn I felt Karin smile against my neck. "I'll take you up on that."

And if that wasn't enough to make me have to focus on where I was stepping, I felt a pair of familiar soft lips peck my cheek. My legs almost gave way as I landed on the next roof and I heard Karin laugh again.

"Toushirou, now that your 'Science Practical' is over, do you want to play soccer?"

I felt the corners of my mouth tug upwards slightly. "Why not?"

Yay! Finally published! I've had this one sitting on me for AGES! So thanks again KazeNoSakura!

Please review and tell me what you think!