AN

Hello everybody! It's good to be back. I'm sorry to say that this Chapter is shorter than the others, and not much really happens. However, Rukia and Ichigo's relationship does progress, and there will always be drama. To the reviewer who asked, I'm sorry to say that I won't be redoing the bathroom scene in Ichigo's point of view. It's a good idea, but I want to move this thing along. For those of you who think this is moving too fast, don't worry. Just because their kind of like friends now doesn't mean they won't have their problems in the future. I mean, they're not even on a first name basis yet. Also, for those who feel that Ichigo and Rukia are a little OOC, that's kind of the point. Here, I want them to show more emotion than their stoical counterparts in the real series.

Disclaimer-I own nothing.

Chapter Three

Ichigo managed to beat Rukia to the station house, but Sergeant Renji Abarai poked his head out of the locker room and motioned him inside the moment he arrived. About Ichigo's age and one of his closest friends on the force, Renji had been divorced for years and had two children. At the moment he was living with a pretty young woman on the outskirts of Karakura and trying to decide if he was ready to take the plunge again.

Renji was not alone in the locker room. Every man on the day shift was waiting for Ichigo, plus two guys from the night shift about to go home.

Some of them looked angry. Some of them looked shell-shocked. Marechiyo Omaeda, who was overweight and had trouble keeping his uniform buttoned, wore a pathetic frown. Ichigo remembered only too well Rukia's scathing comments the day before about Omaeda's appearance-delivered in front of the other men.

"You've gotta do something about Captain Curvaceous, Ichigo," was Renji's blunt greeting. "We've been talking it over, and we're just not going to last. It would be bad enough to take this kind of abuse from a man, even if we deserved it. But from a looker like that..."

"If I hadn't just gotten cut off from my family, I would quit right now," vowed Omaeda. "I'm a damn good cop, Ichigo. You know I've never shirked my duty, never run from a fight-"

"Well, there was that one time," Ikkaku, another guy from the force spoke up. "You remember don't you, tubby. You thought it would be funny to hide my sake. I distinctly remember you running like a bat out of hell when I found you."

"That's not the point!" Omaeda shouted in frustration. Turning back to Ichigo, he continued, "Anyway, I never protested when you or Jushiro asked me to put in overtime. But I'll be damned if I take fashion lessons from a female!"

Each one of the men had a specific complaint to air. Some of them objected to writing meticulous reports; some objected to being told to shine their shoes. All of them objected to having to put the word Captain in front of a woman's name. And all of them looked to Ichigo to make Rukia vanish so everything would be the way it used to be.

Ichigo himself was torn. Up until this morning, he'd been quite certain that Rukia Kuchiki was the enemy, a vicious-hearted woman who had no redeeming human features despite her tantalizing beauty. But during their latest sparring session, he'd glimpsed something in Rukia he hadn't seen before. A reason for her toughness... and a powerful longing for respect.

She wasn't at all the cold fish he'd first expected. There was a genuine person inside that protective shell... an intelligent woman with hopes and fears and maybe even a sense of humor. Rukia was determined to do her duty, but that didn't mean she enjoyed being disliked. Ichigo was quite certain that his own resentment had truly wounded her.

After promising not to stab her in the back, he now felt a curious obligation to defend her from this communal onslaught. "Look, guys," he said carefully, "We've got a difficult situation here. At the moment, this woman is the boss. Jushiro can't help us anymore. I think our best bet is to try to play the game her way, at least until we get the lay of the land."

"Why doesn't somebody lay her instead?" Ikkaku joked.

"Well, hell, Ichigo's got the best shot at it. He's sleeping right next door to her," Renji said.

Ichigo didn't bother asking how the men knew about their living situation. Instead, he battled with a sudden memory of the morning's tango in the bathroom... Rukia in her robe, he in his towel. He was rarely uneasy with women, but this morning he'd felt positively disconnected...and, to his absolute fury, he'd also felt aroused. He didn't know what she'd been wearing underneath her robe and that magnificent black mane, but he knew it wasn't a uniform. And he also knew, though he hated like hell to admit it, that he'd spent entirely too much time imagining what she would look like bare naked. His imagination was speaking to him now.

"I don't know if Ichigo could stand sleeping with that porcupine. Talk about whips and chains! Can you imagine-"

"My point," Ichigo said firmly, uncomfortable with the tone the men's jokes were taking, "Is that the oath I swore when I became a police officer means I have to obey her... at least when I'm on duty."

Renji shook his head. "You can't mean that you're just going to roll over and play dead, Ichigo! You can't mean you're just giving up."

Ichigo's lips tightened as he thought about the job that was rightfully his. But Rukia's rank required his public respect, and to his surprise, her honesty this morning commanded his personal respect as well.

Swallowing his own apprehensions, he insisted, "As long as she's the Captain, she's the Captain. No matter how bitter this pill is to swallow, in the line of duty we've got to give her the same allegiance we would give any other cop."

Marechiyo Omaeda said, "Hell, Ichigo, I'd like to strangle that broad, but that doesn't mean I'd ever forget she's a fellow cop when the chips are down."

"Neither would I," agreed Renji. "Neither would any of us. But I can't see her rushing to an officer-in-need-of-assistance call if she'd scheduled the afternoon to dictate some damned memo."

Izuru Kira said, "It's just not fair."

Tetsuzaimon Iba said, "Dammit, we can't count on her out there! I don't want to get shot just because she does something stupid."

Ichigo wondered, as the men shuffled out of the room grumbling, if Rukia's worst-case scenario might someday come to pass. What if she gave an order in a crisis and they all looked to Ichigo instead? Professional prudence would dictate that he relay his Captain's commands no matter what his own judgment told him. But his career wouldn't be worth a damn to him if he ignored his own conscience and one of these fellows ended up dead.

Ichigo looked uncomfortable, but not surprised, when Rukia asked him to give her a tour of the town later that morning. Their odd encounter in the bathroom seemed to have cleared the air. She decided to ignore his whimsical farewell-bunnyhead, indeed-and he seemed willing to give the illusion of respect during their encounters at the station house. There was a difference in the other men this morning also. They didn't look quite so sullen and shocked as they had the day before.

Rukia usually drove the first time she got in a car with a man, just to set him thinking of her in an equal light. This time, however, she decided that she needed to listen and observe. It was Ichigo's town and Ichigo's beat. She sat on the passenger side of the cruiser as he effortlessly took the wheel and filled her in on all the subtle things that a police officer needs to know about a new town. She couldn't remember everything, but she made mental notes and a few written ones, too.

As he drove, Ichigo recounted the highlights of Karakura's history, including some tall tales of an old Mexican burial ground. When he told her a funny story about a local man who'd been pantsed by bullies and later found his clothes in the town-square fountain, Rukia was inspired to regale him with the highlights of her own disastrous first day as a rookie. They shared a hearty laugh together, and a little more ice was broken.

"This is the poorer side of town," Ichigo informed her as they cruised to the south after riding for half an hour. "Not that any part of Karakura is really slummy. We're not rich, we're not poor. We're just heartland."

"Oh yeah, I remember Rangiku said something like that last night," she told him. "Rangiku was bringing me up to speed on a lot of things."

"Rangiku!" He laughed. "You'd be surprised how many tips we get from her. Not that anybody confesses to her, you understand, but she's a shrewd observer with some experience in these things."

"What kind of experience?"

Ichigo shrugged. "The story's a bit cloudy, but I understand that she used to be a gangster's moll."

"You're kidding! And she lives under our roof?"

"Captain, give her a break. It was a long time ago. Besides, Rangiku's a good person at heart. She's just... distinctive. I'd rather have a woman like that than one who's colorless."

Rukia wondered if he was talking about her. She did her best to appear colorless on the job-she didn't dare come across as sexy, especially with men under her command-but that didn't mean she wanted a hunk like Ichigo Kurosaki to think of her as as a dishrag. Her potent response to him this morning didn't change the fact that their professional situation precluded even the most subtle of flirtations.

Before Ichigo could figure out her thoughts, Rukia asked, "So when Rangiku comes across some evidence, does she report it to the station."

He rolled his eyes. "Of course not. This is Karakura. She deliberately drops some seemingly harmless remark at dinner that no one can ever trace to her. I put two and two together and go check things out. Sometimes it doesn't add up to anything, but sometimes I make an arrest based on her tips."

Rukia watched him closely. "Is that the way you carried out investigations under Jushiro Ukitake."

Now his eyes narrowed suspiciously. "That's only one part of the picture, Captain. I use every tool. There's doing it by the book, and there's doing it by the seat of your pants. Sometimes you need both approaches."

Rukia nodded in agreement, deciding to let it go. It was best not to pry anymore lest she upset him. After all, this was sort of the most fun she'd had since she got in town. Well, not including the incident in the bathroom...

Ichigo pointed to a cozy-looking diner near the town square. "This belongs to Isane Kotetsu. It's where Karakkura cops eat on their breaks and hang out when they're off duty."

"In that case, it would probably be a good place to stop for lunch," said Rukia, who was getting hungry. She also wanted to see her men in a different atmosphere than the station house. She knew it wouldn't be possible for her to be accepted as "one of the guys", but she still might gain some valuable insights about her officers and their town.

"Is that an order, Captain?" Ichigo didn't sound angry this time, just unsure.

"It's an invitation, Lieutenant. My treat. Good heavens, I never had to explain it when I said the same thing to my partner."

She'd intended the words as a cheerful pleasantry, but for some reason Ichigo's tone was jarringly cool as he muttered, "I guess now's as good a time as any," and parked the car.

Rukia was sorry to see that he was scowling again, just when she'd hoped they were making genuine progress. It was an old story, but sometimes it really wore her down. How many times in her career had she run up against professional hostility from men? How many times had they opposed her openly or sabotaged her career behind her back? Her file was bulging with undocumented petty complaints by misogynist fellow cops. She didn't know why she'd ever hoped she could expect better from Ichigo Kurosaki.

"Sometimes I think you forget that I'm a police officer, too, Kurosaki," she said bitterly. "I'm really not so different from the rest of you."

"Captain, you convinced me you were a cop the first night we met," Ichigo snapped. "You didn't even have to show me your badge. You just dumped me on my ass." He studied her gravely. "Has it ever occurred to you that you might be working overtime trying to prove yourself?"

"Wouldn't you?" Rukia asked defensively. "I've taken over a substation where not one man likes me or trusts me. Every damn one of them would like to see me hightailing it out of town so you could take my place. I have nightmares about waking up with you standing over my bed with a knife!" She hadn't meant to confess that, not to Ichigo, not to anyone. But the words were out, and now all she could say was, "I'm in an armed camp, alone against the enemy. In my position, don't you think you'd be guarding your flank, too?"

His square jaw jutted out as he faced her. "Permission to speak freely, Captain?"

Warily Rukia answered, "Of course."

"You're right that the men don't trust you. They think you're mean as hell. But you're missing the whole picture of the Karakura substation if you think you're surrounded by the enemy. You haven't yet managed to destroy the camaraderie that makes being a cop in Karakura something special, and you're still an officer, still one of us. We're sworn to protect the public, and by god, we're sworn to protect each other, too. The men may joke about you in the locker room and curse each time they hold one of your stupid memos in their hands, but if you ever have to draw your weapon in the line of duty, Captain, there's not a man on the force who wouldn't lay down his life for you." Before she could respond, he finished, "What hurts us all is that we don't think you'd do the same for any one of us."

Rukia wasn't sure how to answer that. She was touched and wounded, honored and crushed. Clumsily she said, "I'm good with a gun, Kurosaki. If I thought I could save a fellow officer's life, I'd use it without reservation."

"That's what Momo Hinamori claimed," he hissed. "Brave as ever! Smart as a whip. She was teamed up with Uryu Ishida when I made Sergeant. She froze during a robbery and some bastard shot him right through the heart!"

Ichigo made no efert to cloak his grief, and Rukia knew he couldn't have done so, anyway. She knew what it felt like to loose a partner. Kaien Shiba had once come perilously close to death. The bullet scar on her left shoulder was a permanent reminder of how she'd saved his life.

"Oh, Kuroosaki, I know how that hurts!" Rukia sympathetically confessed. "When my partner was shot, I-"

"You froze on him, too?"

Rukia pulled back, angry and hurt all over again. "Isn't it remotely possible that I did my part? My God, officers go down all the time when they're teamed with men! Nobody jumps at the chance to cast blame in those cases!"

"Maybe you did your part and maybe you didn't," Ichigo growled. "Maybe your partner was too busy worrying about you to cover his own back. All I know is that Uryu Ishida was my partner, dammit, and I know that if I'd been beside him, he'd still be alive!"

"Then blame yourself for leaving him behind when you got promoted, Kurosaki! Don't blame me and don't blame every female cop!"

He jerked back as if she'd hit him. "You don't think I feel guilty for moving on and leaving him? You don't think I feel the weight of it bearing down on me at night like a tombstone on my chest?"

The anguish that filled his eyes made Rukia ashamed that she'd added to his pain. In hindsight she realized that Kurosaki wasn't trying to attack her. He was only wrestling with his own despair.

"Kurosaki, I'm sorry." Instinctively she gripped his arm. "I had no right to say that. This is a terrible buisness. People die in any war. Your partner's death was tragic, but it's not your fault!"

Through his regulation jacket, Rukia could feel the masculine strength of his corded biceps. His tense breathing seemed to match her own, heightening her keen awareness of his powerful warmth. She didn't want to be touched by his humanity, his maleness, the vulnerable corners of his heart. It was so much easier to see him as the enemy. So much easier to keep a hostile distance.

Ichigo turned away from her sharply, breaking her hold on his arm. While Rukia swallowed her hurt, he stared out the window for a long, quiet moment, then confessed, "Captain, I've got a lot of reasons to resent you. Deep in my heart, I know that most of them don't have a lot to do with you as a person. I'm sorry I've been so damn hard to work with."

To her surprise, Rukia said, "I'm sorry, too."

He managed a thin smile. His dimples barely winked. "When I said most of them didn't have a lot to do with you, I didn't mean I like the way you're running the station. You can be a tigress. I just meant that... if I'm going to hate you, I ought to hate you for the right reasons. All this other baggage-my promotion, Uryu's death-well, that's not playing fair."

Rukia had to admire Ichigo's ethics. Even when he was angry, he seemed like a man she could trust. He'd come a long way in the past two days, and she didn't want to push him. Still, she had to ask, "I don't suppose you could consider not hating me at all? The men will take their cue from you. I'd rather not spend the next few years on the outside looking in."

Ichigo studied her for a long, thoughtful moment. "You've spent most of your career that way, haven't you, Captain?" he perceptively observed. "On the outside looking in."

Reluctantly she nodded. It was too obvious to deny. "I'm a woman doing a man's job in a man's world, Kurosaki. I'm always staring at somebody's back."

She paused a moment, then went on to say, "I am who I am, Lieutenant. I can't be anybody else."

"No," he quietly agreed, his brown eyes finally showing a glimmer of warmth. "I guess you can't. And frankly... I don't think you should have to be. I'm sorry if I made you feel that... well, that the real Rukia Kuchiki wasn't welcome here."

Rukia had no idea how to reply to that, but fortunately, she didn't have to say anything. Ichigo abruptly ended their heart-to-heart talk by opening his door and hopping out of the car. He didn't open Rukia's door for her-some policemen actually had tried to-but he did keep the diner door from slamming in her face as she followed him inside.

Blocked by his impressive height and broad shoulders, Rukia couldn't see around Ichigo to get a good look at the place, but she could certainly smell the pepperoni and hear the cheery repartee. The instant he set foot inside, half a dozen people raised a hand or called out, "Hey Ichigo!" while Ichigo himself gave the group one of those dazzling grins that froze Rukia every time it was cast in her direction.

One grizzled old man called out, "I hear that new spitfire is blistering your backside, boy! How can we help you get rid of her?"

The fellow next to him joshed, "Oh, Ichigo don't need no help. Just you wait. He'll have that filly on the run in no time. Everybody knows that Captain's chair is Ichigo's rightful place."

"We all know that's the truth," said a tall woman behind the counter in a pink uniform. Her nametag said Isane, and the tone of her voice announced quite clearly that she was proud to own the place. She snapped a dish towel at Ichigo, smacking him sharply on his badge as she grinned at him.

Ichigo stepped aside so Rukia could see everybody in the restaurant better, and so everybody could see her. Isane swallowed a small gasp as she read the name on Rukia's badge, and gave an embarrassed grin.

"Isane, this is Captain Rukia Kuchiki," Ichigo declared with more dignity than Rukia thought she could have managed in the same situation. And then, as the room went from jovially cheerful to starklly silent, he said, "I imagine if you serve the Captain one of your sushi rolls, you'll have a friend for life."

Under the circumstances, it was a gift... far more than Rukia had ever expected from Ichigo Kurosaki. "Nice to meet you, Isane," she said cordially.

"Nice to meet you, uh, Captain."

Rukia was about to feign an enthusiastic remark about sushi-even though she hated it-when Ichigo started ushering her toward a booth in the back. As he sat down, her eyes met his with open gratitude, and he looked back with a curious blend of pleasure and discomfort.

Suddenly she felt ashamed of how crusty she'd been with him ever since she'd arrived in Karakura. He was a man, and her promotion had certainly stripped him of his pride in front of his friends. How many men would have treated her with warmth under the circumstances?

Yet abruptly, to Rukia's astonishment, Ichigo smiled. It didn't seem like an accident this time; it didn't seem artificial or strained. He looked like a man who was happy to stop for lunch with a friend or a colleague. Who was maybe even proud to be seen with a beautiful woman. Who might be pleased to know that the woman in question secretly thought he was the sexiest man she'd ever seen.

Unable to stop herself, Rukia found herself grinning back, thrilled to see those brown eyes sparkle, thrilled to share even the briefest moment of camaraderie with Ichigo. Her happiness grew as she heard him say to Isane with deceptive nonchalance, "The Captain says it's her treat today, so you better start running her a tab."

Rukia swallowed hard as she realized that Ichigo had just handed Isane Kotetsu-and everybody else within earshot-his personal letter of recommendation. He could have let this crowd assume that he was stuck with her today because he couldn't refuse to eat lunch with his Captain. Instead he'd found a way to say, "I'll vouch for Rukia Kuchiki." It was nickels and dimes, but it was a start.

AN

If your wondering, I don't hate Momo Hinamori. But for that part it was either her or Orihime, and I had already used her. When she's not being psycho over Aizen, I actually like Momo very much. Well, there's not much else to say. Review pretty please with extra sprinkles on top, and just PM me like you have been doing if you have any further questions or comments.