Notes:
+ i'm hideously sick today so have a fic! ヽ(;▽;)ノ
+ prompted by an anon on tumblr: "Would love to see Hinami exhibiting strength, in a way that surprises Ayato x)"
+ content warnings for: blood, violence
+ this is the clean version for FFN. if you want the full, search for me (same username) on archive of our own or tumblr. :)
Recently whenever he comes home, Hinami's nose wrinkles, and finally, after a particularly long day, he snaps at her.
"Quit already! I'm going to take a bath, alright?"
Hinami starts.
"It's — it's not that — it's just —" Her eyes close as she takes another breath. "You've been hunting the same people again?"
"Person. A Dove. I keep losing him. Which I'm getting really fucking sick of, by the way."
"I want to come along," she says, the next day, at HQ, during his meeting with Eto. Both Eto and Ayato look at her, eyes wide.
"Where did you come from?" Ayato asks. And, "You're just mentioning this now?"
"Hinami-chan," Eto says slowly, with a faint smile, "I don't think that's the best —"
"I can," she says, firmly. "You know Kaneki-san, right?"
At the sound of the name, Ayato flinches. But Hinami continues on, only looking at Eto. "I was with him, I was with him when he was getting stronger, when he had those missions. Something like this is nothing compared to those."
"Nothing?" Ayato scoffs.
"I want to," Hinami says, ignoring him. "Let me."
"Hmm," Eto says. She turns to Ayato. "What do you think?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Ayato demands. "She should come if she wants."
Eto's brows lift. "Really."
Ayato shrugs. "As long as she knows that if she's not strong enough, she's going to die."
Eto puckered her lips. "So cold, Ayato-kun! Well, there you have it, Hinami-chan. Go if you want, but please take care."
"I will. Thank you very much," she says. She bows deeply, then turns and dashes after Ayato to catch up.
:::
He gives Hinami a loose description of the target, and is pleasantly surprised when it turns out that she moves well enough that she doesn't slow him down at all. She lags behind a bit at first, but soon keeps pace, eyes scanning, or else closing as she takes a deep breath.
"That way," she says, pointing at a wharf, and he stares at her.
"Really?" The bastard's been hard to track down; he hadn't expected to find him so easily today. His pulse picks up.
"Yeah. I have a good sense of smell. But — Ayato-kun!" she shouts as he races off. "Ayato-kun! Wait!"
He ignores her. Touka was always going on about how careful he should be when he was hunting, and he isn't about to sit for that sort of prattling now.
There — just as Hinami said. The Dove, the murderer, inspecting some shipping crates. Ayato doesn't hesitate. His kagune flare, and he sinks splinters into the Dove's left side, from calf to shoulder. The Dove yells in agony and reaches for his suitcase, fumbling with clasps already slippery with blood.
This is it. Finally. Ayato lands, grinning, preparing another volley — and is whacked across the back of his head. He screams in shock and pain as he crashes against a shipping crate, but recovers, leaping to his feet. There's another Dove here.
"Got you," says the new Dove. He's already got a quincke out, something that looks awfully like a koukaku.
Ayato spits blood, scowls. He can handle this. For you, Aneki, he thinks, and charges, with a spray of kagune pins. The Dove doesn't bother dodging, just takes it with a cringe and sweeps the quincke around, catching and constricting his leg with spikes that wrap around his flesh, digging their spikes in deep. Ayato gasps in pain as he is lifted and whipped against the pier. The moment he frees himself he is crushed down again, this time by the other Dove's quincke. Ayato's kagune spit and flare monstrously, and to his shock he realizes he just barely has enough cells left to escape.
Fuck, he thinks, blearily, how did this happen, how did this happen so quickly, the salt water is choppy and lapping over the wood, dark with his blood, sharp with salt, his pulse cools and then chills. This can't possibly be the way it ends. It can't possibly end like this, after everything, after all that'a happened, after all…
A distant shout shakes him out of the encroaching dark. "H-hey!"
"No," Ayato gasps, but it's too late. The Doves have turned, to Hinami, who is standing, shoulders bunched, out in the open. In a swoop, her koukaku kagune unfurl, voluminous, shielding, and she yells but holds firm against the hammer of the first Dove's kagune. She steps forward, forward, shrouded, impervious.
The Doves hesitate. Ayato cries out as the whip tightens around his body.
"Don't come closer," one warns, "or I'll kill it."
Hinami stops. She doesn't move. The Doves relax, and that's when her rinkaku kagune emerge and run them both straight through.
The Doves fall. Without missing a beat, both her rinkaku kagune snap back, and without looking Hinami jams their clenched points into the shadows of another shipping crate nearby — eliciting a moan there, a stagger, a fresh burst of blood from yet another Dove waiting in the wings. The third Dove's quincke clatters to the ground.
Hinami's kagune wither, and she breaks into a run, wraps her arms around Ayato, yanks him bleeding to his feet.
"Ayato-kun," she cries, "Ayato-kun, please hang in there, please, please," and even after he's up, even after an eternity of running, even when he feels darkness and cold claim him, he hears her sobbing.
:::
They don't make it far. It surprises her that they make it as far as they do, honestly, especially given the rain, which has started to fall and makes the ground so slippery that Ayato trips up more than once. It's adrenaline, she guesses, that gives her the strength to half-carry him to the nearest shelter she can find: one of the empty boats tied up to the wharf. She steels herself, and stabs through a window with her kagune so she can reach in, unlock the door, and push them both inside.
The boat's interior is like a studio apartment. It's warm and furnished — thank goodness, thank goodness. Hinami maneuvers Ayato, fully unconscious now, to a futon bed; then kneels over him. She knows what Touka and Kaneki did, to save themselves in their fight against Tsukiyama — and even though Kaneki is half-human, it should work the same way here, right?
"Ayato-kun," she says urgently, "Ayato-kun, wake up."
When he doesn't, she raps her hand against his cheek — hesitantly at first, then hard. His eyes snap open, roll around. She presses her wrist to his mumbling mouth.
"Bite it," she tells him, "hurry," and when he doesn't, dread rolls over her, dense and sickening. She raises her wrist to her own mouth, and before fear can stop her, she bites down, hard. Tears spring into her eyes at the pain; she whimpers, through a flow of blood. But this time, when she presses her wrist to Ayato's mouth, his nostrils flare, and his mouth works, drinking her heavily in.
"That's it," she whispers, "good — good, Ayato-kun, keep going," and even though it hurts, there's a weirdly pleasant quality to it too, of his tongue laving her skin, of his hands gripping her.
When her wound heals up, Ayato slumps back, and this time she lets him. His breath is deep now, and even, and it looks like he's stopped bleeding. She wants to cry again, this time from relief, but she doesn't. This isn't the time, this isn't the time.
Swallowing her terror, she departs the boat, head swiveling wildly to scent and hear anything she can. At the scene of the battle, all three Doves and their suitcases and any traces of blood are totally gone.
I didn't kill them, she thinks with wild relief.
They're alive, she thinks with horror.
Hinami sneaks back, as carefully as possible, making sure she isn't followed. The rain is getting dense and splatters through the broken window of the boat, so she stuffs towels into the hole to keep the water and the wind out. She's soaked through; she strips off her soaked clothing and spreads it out on the curtain rod. After some hesitation, she does the same for Ayato, removing his bloody clothing piece by piece while he groans sleepily. She dries him off and dresses them both in big shirts and sweatpants she finds in a dresser.
Afterward, she lies on the bed with him, burying them both beneath all the blankets and towels she can find. Lying there, everything — the keen of the storm shoving the pier and the boat, their rough breath, her still-drumming pulse — feels frighteningly loud. But soon the exhaustion gets to her, or maybe it's the rocking of the boat, or maybe Ayato's calm heat beside her. Either way, she falls asleep.
:::
Her sleep is fitful, riddled with screaming faces, and the bed is empty when she wakes up.
Hinami panics — straightens so fast her back releases a cracking noise — there's someone standing up, someone in the boat's kitchen — her vision reels, blackens. The person turns towards her.
"It's me," Ayato says.
"O-oh," Hinami says breathlessly. She rubs her eyes, which are stinging with fatigue. She slumps back onto the blankets.
Silence.
He clears his throat. "Do you want some water?"
Silence.
"Sure," she decides. Ayato walks to the bed and sits down on the edges of it, then hands her a plastic bottle of water, the contents of which is refreshingly cool in her throat. When she's done drinking, he takes another couple gulps himself, then sets the bottle down on the floor.
"How are you feeling?" she asks.
"Good."
She frowns at him. He's still quite pale, and his voice is hoarse. He rolls his eyes.
"Well, I'm better, anyway."
Hinami nibbles her lip. "We should get going," she mutters.
He doesn't answer. She looks up at him, and sees that he's giving her a strange look.
"They might come searching for us here at any time," she explains, and he nods.
"Yeah."
"Can you make it?"
"Yeah."
She's sure it can't be easy for him to travel right now, but if he says he can do it, she trusts him. Hinami changes back into her previous clothes, but it's too late for any of his; they are too blood-stained, and she refuses to let him take them back, despite his mutter that there's no way the CCG has anyone with as good a sense of smell as her. His clothing, and any bloody items in the room, are dumped into the roaring waves at the end of the pier. Hinami leads the way home, listening hard through the rain and through her exhaustion, stomach churning with anxiety that doesn't fade until they finally make it back to the apartment.
"We're home," she cries with relief.
"Welcome home," Ayato says quietly. Hinami looks at him with surprise, and delight, and then hugs him, right there in the entryway, burying her head in his chest. She only means to do it briefly, but to her surprise, Ayato's arms wrap around her as well, one after the other, loose, then firm. His mouth presses down against her brow.
"Did you know?" he murmurs.
Ayato has never acted this gently. It takes her a while to process what he's said.
"Uh…uh, know what?"
"That there were three Doves. You knew, didn't you? You could smell all of them on me."
"Yeah," Hinami replies. "I could."
Silence.
"You could have told me," he grumbles.
"I did! Or I tried! I came with you because I wanted to be completely sure. But you didn't listen." She frees herself from his grip. "You're too obsessed with revenge."
She walks back to her couch. He follows. Hovers. She senses that he's trying to tell her something, and she even has a good guess of what it is — but instead of saying it, he murmurs, "You could have let me die."
"No," she says, and is startled to hear irritation in her voice. "I couldn't do that. I wouldn't."
He sits on the couch. His hand rises, and falls onto the blankets. It inches towards her leg, and then rests there, fingers curving around her calf. He feels the heat of his palm, the slight tremble of it, even through the sweatpants she's still wearing, stolen from the boat.
"You should rest," she tells him. He looks down. His other hand rests, on her other leg, this time just above her knee. Despite herself, despite her exhaustion, her pulse picks up. He says something, too quietly for her to hear.
"What?" she says, and his face turns redder.
"I said, I want to — to do something for you," he says, more loudly, and Hinami swallows. Her throat is dry. Somehow, her heart races even faster.
"Okay," she says, and she watches, trying to keep her eyes open, trying to make room as he pushes himself underneath the blankets with her. The couch is too small for them to fit in any other position but very close together, her back to his chest, her head just underneath his. His arms cross over her belly and it is so comfortable, so comfortable.
"You're welcome," Hinami mumbles, and drifts off.
This time, there are no nightmares.
