So I was watching the 125th episode of Bleach the other day, and during the part where they tease you with flashes of the next episode and characters chattering about whatever, Rangiku was talking about renting a movie for her and Orihime to watch. Then she threw out how she would be sure to pick up some of those cartoons her Taichou likes as well. Hitsugaya's response is strangled with embarrassment. So he watches anime? Awesome. But then I told my roommate and she posited the possibility of Hitsugaya liking hentai, which is far more embarrassing than just being kid-sized and liking cartoons.

And then this plot bunny popped up and attacked me. I am ashamed of myself, but only slightly. Because, not gonna lie, the idea of this happening makes me laugh really really hard.

Not completely inappropriate, but not really all that appropriate either. It's a gray area.

Nor is it mine.

Rangiku felt pretty good about herself. She'd decided she was going to actually get some work done today and, low and behold, she had. Admittedly, she'd only gotten through a third of her workload, but hey, that was a third more than usual! Hitsugaya-taichou was going to be so pleased. He was no doubt working hard on his own tasks for the day, and would be thrilled to have less of her stuff to mess with. And since the tenth division offices were en route to the bar she frequented, it only made sense that she should pop in and share the good news personally.

"Taichoooooooou!" She sang out, bursting in with a flourish, "Guess how much less I have for you to do today!"

There was a brief moment of surprise all around, followed by an extreme embarrassment emanating principally from Hitsugaya's side of the room. Rangiku blinked a few times and smiled brightly.

"Well geez, Taichou, you should've locked the door! Silly, silly. Anyway, I'll get you my paperwork later. My almost halfway finished paperwork!" And with that, she was gone.

Hitsugaya could only sit there, hard-on still in hand, as the realization that his vice-captain had just caught him jerking off sunk in.

After all the paperwork had been finished, Hitsugaya headed back to the barracks with just a little less drag in his step than there should have been. But the way he figured it, both he and Matsumoto were adults… well, almost adults anyway. Regardless, he was a captain and she was a vice-captain and both those positions required some semblance of propriety; yes, he had broken that propriety wide open when he decided it was a good idea to beat off in the office without taking the proper precautions (see: the unused lock on the door), but he was a growing boy, damn it. Sometimes hormones made things happen that were unfortunate, but unavoidable; so sue him for taking immediate action in dealing with a problem that suddenly came up.

Still, he allowed himself to feel a little better about the situation. A small part of him admonished loudly that he shouldn't, that the worst was yet to come, but he ignored it.

That is, until the worst came right up behind him and squealed, "Taichou!"

Hitsugaya jumped, mercifully choking on the girlish scream that would have demolished what was left of his credibility as a captain. He turned to see the one person he had been hoping to avoid. Was it too much to ask for at least the rest of the day away from…

"Matsumoto. What—" Hitsugaya realized he didn't know what he wanted to ask. He wasn't sure if he was even allowed to ask anything in his position, that of being the extremely inappropriate captain to the… well, likewise inappropriate vice-captain. Huh.

Rangiku chuckled quietly. Her captain seemed to be in the clutches of some inner conundrum. How unintentionally adorable could you get? Still, she had a mission. There was a reason why only men of fortitude were allowed to be around her for long periods of time; she knew that underneath that rush of puberty, her captain was more than capable of surviving tough times. So it would do him a dishonor if she did anything but her worst.

"You must be starving, Taichou. You were shut up in the office all day again! Why don't we get you some dinner." She grasped him gently by the arm and led him into the bar she had just left. The boy barely registered that they were moving, and looked blankly at the menu she thrust at him once they were seated.

"I already know what I want, so take your time." Rangiku toned her smile down a few notches, wary at all times of her captain breaking through his stupor and catching on. Once he caught on to any of her jokes, they lost all purpose. As long as she was allowed her fair share of fun, they could call it even.

Uncomfortable sexual situations were just the best for holding over someone's head!

The waiter in charge of their section wandered over, sending a questioning glance Rangiku's way. After all, she had just left.

"I decided to come back to you, Akio-kun. My captain, who became a man today, is hungry."

The question sharpened a bit in Akio's eyes, but he didn't say anything. He just watched as the not-quite-tall-enough-to-clear-the-range-of-diminutive captain's brows furrowed over his icy eyes. This would normally have frightened Akio, Rangiku-san having regaled him many times over with tales of her captain's prowess on the battlefield, but the coldness of the boy's eyes was tempered nicely by the blush starting to color his cheeks.

"Matsumoto, I realize that I forgot to apologize for earlier. I'm sorry. I was out of line. But I would still appreciate it if you would stay professional about this matter in public. By which I mean to say I would appreciate it if you wouldn't mention it or refer to it in any way in public."

"What is there to apologize for, Taichou?" Rangiku was all innocence. "Akio-kun, is it so wrong to be happy about my dear Taichou growing up?" She pouted like a champ.

Akio eloquently remarked, "Um."

Rangiku turned her merry eyes back on her captain, who was already simmering nicely. "I think it's a beautiful thing when boys discover masturbation! Am I right?" Here she glanced at Akio again, who was sagely looking everywhere but at the table he was waiting on. "And it's almost a rite of passage, you know? All men think about is sex, really, so it only makes sense that you can't become a man until you've made friends with your penis."

Hitsugaya, gradually growing paler as his vice-captain chattered, went completely white on the word 'penis'. Then he remembered the waiter was still there, and a raging blush took over every visible bit of skin.

He managed to get out a gritted and almost threatening, "Matsumoto", but his vice-captain had skipped to the door to greet someone. So Hitsugaya sat there, wondering what level of injury he could sustain while blushing this hard that would allow him to bleed out.

The waiter cleared his throat lightly, said, "I'll just get you the special", and disappeared. Hitsugaya silently blessed him.

Then his vice-captain reappeared, dragging an intensely uneasy vice-captain of seventh division with her.

"I have to go now, actually, but I thought maybe Iba here could give you some pointers about your new hobby, so I called him up and here he is! I caught him in the exact same position you were in ages ago, so you already have something you can relate about! Play nice, boys." A wave, a smile, an empty space where a terrible vice-captain once stood. Hitsugaya stared at the table.

Iba dropped heavily into his seat. Coughed a few times, looked around, then leaned forward and muttered quickly, "She'll tease you for a while, but don't let it get to you. She did the exact same thing to me, and when it starts bein' obvious that you don't care, she'll leave you alone."

"She's been my vice-captain for years, idiot. I know how she operates." The tenth division captain could feel the blood in his face returning to the rest of his body, and felt confident enough to look Iba in the face. Iba grunted at him, looking a bit sheepish.

"Thought I should let you know, just in case you were too caught up or somethin'. And come on, just about every guy around has been caught with his pants down one time or another. Nobody's gonna give you more than the usual amount of shit about it, because they've all been through it themselves."

"Except for women." Hitsugaya pointed out.

"Yeah, well, the sooner you learn that women will take just about every opportunity they can to embarrass a man, the better off you'll be."

"Guess I should have picked up on that already."

Iba shifted in his chair. "Maybe. But it's a man's job to not pay attention to stuff like that. Can't be blamed for bein' true to your nature, eh, Hitsugaya-taichou?"

Hitsugaya privately felt that he ought to be better than regular men, should know better, but it was comforting to belong.

"Anyway, I, uh, brought some magazines along for you. Rangiku mentioned that she didn't think you really had any material lying around to use, and we both figured you'd be way too embarrassed to actually buy stuff like this, so I went through my stash and… uh, Hitsugaya-taichou?"

Hitsugaya was already halfway home, attempting to flash-step fast enough to forget all that had happened to him today.

A week or so after the nicknames started losing their thrill (Creamy-chan being Rangiku's personal favorite), Hitsugaya wondered if it was still too early to hope for peace. The teasing had mostly died off with the nicknames, which was nice but suspicious. Rangiku usually kept stuff less embarrassing than this in the air for weeks, rubbing his face in it as often as she could. Thus he was smart enough to suspect that she had more up her sleeve. And he was right. But he also had more important things to worry about than an annoying vice-captain who couldn't keep well enough to herself, so in due time he forgot.

One morning, he entered his office still in the middle of a discussion with Hisagi and Kira about some of the Gotei-13's newer policies, when Kira noticed a bag sitting on the desk. He had just mentioned its presence when Rangiku swept into the room.

"Taichou, Taichou, Taichou," she trilled, "I was just at the drugstore and found some things you might need. I'm pretty sure I got the right kinds, but just tell me if I didn't get you enough and I'll go pick up some extra."

Hitsugaya felt a shiver run up his spine as he approached the bag in question, but when he looked inside, all he saw was lotion, all different sorts and scents.

"Are you sure you didn't mix up my bag with one of yours?" He asked, pulling out a bottle emblazoned with flowers and examining it with raised brows.

"So that's where that went!" Rangiku plucked it out of his hand and peered into the bag, pulling out a few of the more girly containers. "I just knew that cashier mixed our stuff together, and after I warned her about it too. Hmph."

Hitsugaya looked into the bag, then back at his vice-captain in confusion. "Um, you can just take the whole bag. It looks like there's more of your stuff in here than mine, so it would probably be easier if you just took out whatever you got for me."

The expression on her face screamed blamelessness. "But Taichou, all the other stuff in that bag is for you."

Hitsugaya's brows almost scrunched in confusion, until he realized what was going on. The hot shame built back up slowly.

Hisagi, who'd moved around him to look into the bag himself, seemed as confused as Hitsugaya would have been had he not known better. "Wow. You must really hate having dry skin." He scratched the back of his head. "I gotta say, though, I didn't really have you pegged as the cucumber melon-wearing type. No offense or anything, Taichou."

Rangiku pouted a little. "Oh, foo. Do you reckon I should have just gotten him lube?"

Hitsugaya had become accustomed enough to the jokes to feel more annoyed than embarrassed. Hisagi just stared at her, comprehension dawning slowly on his face.

Because of course they'd heard about the incident. How could anyone in all of Soul Society avoid hearing about it, with Rangiku's big, stupid mouth?

Hisagi cleared his throat and stepped away from the bag, grimacing with sympathy for Hitsugaya-taichou. Kira just stood there, eyes trained carefully on the floor, highly resembling a morose tomato with a blonde wig on.

"I just thought that for a beginner, lube might be a bit intense, a bit too scary, so I went for lotion. Oh, but maybe I can go back and get a small tube for you to try, Taichou. I don't know. What do you guys think?"

While she attempted to torture her comrades, Hitsugaya up-ended the bag on the desk. At least twenty bottles of lotion came rolling out, topped off by a giant box of tissues. His jaw clenched.

"Oh, and I thought those might be nice too. Extra soft." She winked and stage-whispered, "Less chafing."

The two other men in the room both shuddered a little. Iba had been telling the truth; they were able to feel their fellow man's pain. But they couldn't truly feel his pain, since they hadn't had someone like Rangiku-san going after them. She just wouldn't let it drop. Poor Hitsugaya-taichou already had his captain's duties to handle; now, in addition to that already grueling workload, his vice-captain, a person whose job centered on supporting his or her captain, was ragging on him nonstop for doing something that everyone did.

But at the moment, that fellow man, that comrade in embarrassment, was focusing his entire being on not strangling his vice-captain. Suffice to say, he didn't quite catch the compassionate vibes the other two guys were sending him.

No time for pity. This was war.

War, however, was put on hold because Hitsugaya simply had too much to do, being a captain and all (definitely not because of his lack of ideas for adequate retaliation). He was ever vigilant for signs of relapse, but after the lotion incident, Rangiku seemed to take the hint that she was going too far.

Two weeks had passed. There had been no names, no mentions of anything that could be remotely construed as an innuendo or a double entendre. There was light at the end of the tunnel.

He was even back at his recently discovered activity, a good sign. In the weeks previous, the first sign of any action in his nether regions brought Rangiku's mocking grin to mind, which was such an effective boner-kill Hitsugaya was convinced that enough exposure to it could render one impotent.

And so he was able to go about his business as a captain (and a man) with confidence again, a fact much rejoiced by the other captains, who, truth be told, had been starting to worry. It wouldn't do to have another captain leaving the ranks, especially for so stupid a reason.

Hitsugaya listened intently to Byakuya-taichou's account of an arrancar encounter. Some of the captains had decided to meet and attempt to figure out what Aizen's new plan-within-a-plan was. They courtyard they were sitting in was sunny, the day mild, but their discussion dimmed the atmosphere significantly. As near as any of them could tell, the only arrancars appearing anywhere these days were mere scouts, but for creatures who were supposed to be observing and reporting on their findings, they were doing a lot of damage. Did Aizen just not care about the possible souls he was losing? Or was this yet another misdirection on his part?

If the matter got any more serious, there was a big possibility that another group would have to be stationed in the living world on an almost permanent basis, which would cause even more hassle in Soul Society. Three captains missing and so much chaos to show for it; could another captain even be spared?

"Taaaaaaaaaaichooooooou!"

Hitsugaya and his fellow captains all looked up, recognizing that particular jolly timbre as that of Matsumoto Rangiku. The woman was nowhere to be seen, though.

Hitsugaya called back, "Matsumoto, where are you?"

"Over the wall. Anyway, I was about to go do a load of laundry and I was wondering if you needed any socks washed."

Kuchiki-taichou's head swung around, slight puzzlement settling on his otherwise solemn face. Kyouraku-taichou grinned lazily from his prone position on the ground, shaking his head a few times. Ukitake-taichou had his typical sweet smile on, but he was mentally begging Hitsugaya to keep it together for the sake of their meeting. Otherwise they'd never get anything done.

But Renji, who had been leaning against the wall waiting for his captain, failed mightily in containing his amusement. One glare from Hitsugaya and he almost got it under control, but the tiniest look, a passing glance even, at his own captain's confusion and he was gone. Hitsugaya wondered if it was possible to freeze organic matter with such force that it caught fire.

"So yeah, Taichou, if you've got any, uh…" Muffled giggles. "…any, uh, socks- snrk…" Were there other people over there? "…ahem. Um, to, to add to the- psh… the… the LOAD HA HA HA…"

She'd done it now. This meeting had been serious business, but now Byakuya was looking questions at him (as if he didn't know what this was about, how could he not, he was a guy, wasn't he?) and Shunsui was biting his lip rather hard and Jyuushirou was massaging his temples and goddamn Renji was over there pissing himself laughing.

Hitsugaya took three deep, cleansing breaths. He got slowly to his feet, bowed, apologized to the other three captains, excused himself, then tackled Renji's punk-ass.

In response to the candy-cane wrestling match now taking place, Ukitake sighed and declared that the captains should reconvene in an hour or two, when everyone had cooled off a bit. Concise nods from two, a muffled assent from another (whose head was currently being squashed in Renji's armpit), and the thirteenth division captain excused himself, feeling the need to add a little something something to his tea.

OMAKE

The meeting finally completed, Hitsugaya headed back to his office. He had the worst headache.

A hand landed on his shoulder, and he turned to see Ukitake's gently smiling face. Not what he wanted to see right now. He turned away, willing himself to control those killing urges.

"Don't worry about it, Shirou-chan. Everyone goes through these changes. It's a part of life!" Here he squeezed Hitsugaya's shoulder for emphasis.

Hitsugaya stood there, staring straight ahead, smoldering. The headache combined with the anger combined with so much pent-up frustration at his horrible vice-captain culminated in him whirling around and slugging Ukitake square in the face.

Except it wasn't Ukitake. The too-kind captain had gone, and the person lying on the ground bleeding was some nameless peon, the papers they'd been carrying scattered all around.

But Hitsugaya decided that he didn't care. Really, he'd just wanted to punch someone, not necessarily Ukitake, so this worked out fine.

And maybe, just maybe, word about his temper would spread so that those new pups fresh from the academy would stop snickering every time they saw him. He was a captain, after all.