A/N: This is my entry for RukiLex's Valentine's Day contest, from the excellent "So You Want to Write Bleach Fics" forum.

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach. Obviously.

All He Ever Wants Out Of Life

It was a dull gray day in February, but it didn't matter how the weather was when one was stuck inside the Shinigami Academy, taking notes from Yamamoto Genryusai about Kido Theory, which had to be one of the most boring topics imaginable, at least according to Kyoraku Shunsui. Finally, he dropped his brush down, shook his shaggy brown haired head and sighed, "I can't stand it anymore, Sensei! There's something I have to say!"

Yamamoto twitched his wrinkled eye and growled, "What is it, Shunsui-kun?"

"Tsk, he was just getting to the good part, too!" Shunsui's lone classmate and best friend in the entrire universe, Ukitake Jushiro, joked, his hazel eyes glinting with mirth. This only made Yamamoto's eye twitch a bit more.

"I...I hate these uniforms. They're, well, blue. And uniform. They don't let us show our individuality, Sensei!" Shunsui complained.

Yamamoto's bushy gray eyebrow hitched up, his umber eyes glinted dangerously. Even the scar across his balding head seemed to simmer red. "Perhaps you'd like it better if I made all the students wear a pink haori, Kyoraku?" he rumbled. The white haired Jushiro collapsed in laughter next to Shunsui, making him drop his brush too.

Later that week, Shunsui and Jushiro had a half-day, so they went into town in the morning. Jushiro had wandered into a book store, and Shunsui yawned and told his friend to meet him somewhere else in an hour. After the book store, Jushiro passed another shop, with all kinds of things with a theme of Valentine's Day, but that's not what precisely caught Jushiro's eye.

He dashed into the store, picked this prize off the rack, and held it up to himself. "It's perfect!" Jushiro gasped in glee, making several of the other customers gape. A sales clerk appeared and Jushiro told him, "I'll take this, thank you! And wrapped, if you please!"

"Er, your girlfriend must be quite tall," the sales clerk commented as he packed the item.

"Oh, yeah, he's a whole inch taller than me!" Jushiro smiled.

Later, when he caught up with Shunsui, Jushiro gave him the package.

"Oh, you got me a Valentine's gift!" Shunsui said with a crooked smile.

"Open it!" Jushiro demanded.

Shunsui's azure eyes gleamed when they laid upon the contents. "Ju-kun! It's perfect! Hey, I didn't get you anything!"

"How about lunch then? I'm starving!" Jushiro suggested.

After they returned from town, their plan went into action. They had another private lesson scheduled with Yamamoto, and Shunsui was eager to show off his "Valentine's" gift. Jushiro was to go in first. However, they hit a snag in the plan when Jushiro reached Yamamoto's office and saw that his sensei already had a visitor...Kuchiki Arisu, the spinsterish captain of Squad Six!

"I see one of your students has arrived for his lesson," she noted in a mock sweet tone. "I heard that your sensei is giving you a test for Valentine's Day!" She adjusted her glasses and her blue-gray eyes shimmered with thinly veiled disdain behind them. Her deep brown hair was held back with a female version of the kenseikan, as if anyone would forget what family she was from.

"Heheh," Jushiro laughed weakly, suddenly dreading Shunsui's grand entrance into the office wearing...

"Well, look at what I found here! I'll tell you, it takes a pair of brass balls to wear something like this in public! Even I wouldn't do it!" Shunsui was hustled into the room, wearing the blaringly loud pink haori he'd gotten him before, by none other than the Kenpachi of Squad Eleven! Golden haired and more thickly muscled than some male captains, her intense green eyes were filled with amusement.

"My goodness," Arisu gasped, acting scandalized. "It looks like something a cheap whore would wear!"

"Sure, that's all you ever want out of life is pink, right Kyoraku?" Kenpachi boomed, clapping Shunsui hard on the shoulder.

It took Yamamoto a few seconds to recover from this scene. Jushiro was suddenly afraid that Ryujin Jakka, Yamamoto's terrible zanpakuto, was about to make an appearance, judging from the look on Sensei's face. Then, he said, "It was thought that students should be allowed to wear civilian clothing, to express their individuality. I'd heard complaints from some that the uniforms were so blue and uniform." Shunsui gulped audibly. "Now, if you would kindly excuse me, I need to resume educating these two to death..." Yamamoto said with a rare smile, the kind that a killer uses when sharpening his knife.

"Fine, see ya later, Taicho!" Kenpachi called, already leaving with her zanpakuto slung over her shoulder.

"Indeed. I'll report all we discussed to the Captain Commander," Arisu said with a nod. Then, she drifted past Shunsui and snickered a bit.

Jushiro and Shunsui gulped as their sensei, the captain of Squad Thirteen, rounded on them. "What did you mean when you said you were going to 'educate us to death?'" Shunsui asked

"I'm going to make your fingers bleed from all the writing you're going to do, and then, your bones are going to break from all the training, and finally, your brains will explode from all the memorization you'll have to do!" Yamamoto told them. "And get that idiotic thing off right now, Kyoraku!"

"Aw, Yama-jii," Shunsui said with a pout, shrugging it off.

"We all know it's about the pink. That's all you want out of life..." Jushiro reassured him.

"Now you're quoting that coarse woman! Be silent!"

"But Yama-jii, I'm just wearing it because Jushiro got it for me for Valentine's Day!" Shunsui persisted.

"Oh, yeah? Well, you thought it was perfect!" Jushiro growled. He would have loved to add that Sensei had no right to complain since this was really all his idea, but he feared doing so would end his life rather abruptly, so he kept silent.

"Well, it would really be perfect if it had flowers on it too," Shunsui grinned.

"Where did I go wrong with you two?" Yamamoto sighed.