Recently I've started adding cover art to my stories. Simple, easy pics I've altered to look awesome on a site called picmonkey. On the same site, I created a couple title pics. Personally I think it turned out pretty cool. As usual, please leave a review of your honest (kidding! No seriously) thoughts on the chapter, and if possible the cover art.

"Okay, it's super simple, Shizuo. Instead of a ball, it's a can. And instead of a bat, it's a stick—a metal stick that I call a bat, but a stick nonetheless. And all you have to do is hit it as hard as you can," I explained, holding up an empty can of beer and signaling the arc of descent over the edge of the roof of my building and the roof's nearest the apartment building.

"What's with the cans?" he asked me.

"Well, it's a button-up, but I didn't think it was that revealing," I said, looking down to the plain white shirt that I guess, for lack of better terms, displayed my womanly curves.

"No, the cans. The cans in the bag, where'd you get them all?" he asked me, looking pointedly, and a little flustered, at the two plastic bags filled with cans and bottles next to me.

"We go through a lot of sodas and alcohols at work and I thought it'd be more fun to use them for batting practice," I said happily, before holding up a six-pack of beer. "Not this though, this is for us."

"I don't drink. The taste is too bitter," he said, looking distastefully at the cans.

"And yet you smoke."

"We're not going through this again."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just stating a simple observation."

"Amai, just drop it, okay?

"Fine, but only since you asked so nicely," I said sarcastically, snapping a can off the plastic ring and lifting the tab, gulping down a few mouthfuls of the bitter liquid.

"Sorry."

"S'okay," I said nonchalantly, reaching down behind one of the bags and picking up a couple bottles of milk. "Don't worry, I got your other fix since I know you oh-so-well," I said cheekily watching him grab one out of my hand and unscrew the top, drinking well over half of it before speaking to me again.

"So how do I do this? Do you just throw it to me?" he asked, picking up the bat on the ground and giving it once over before looking down at me slightly confused.

"In the interest of not having glass enter my facial area, we're going to do this tee-ball style," I said, picking up an empty can of grape soda and setting it on top of a crate I had brought up earlier via the giant hole in my former ceiling—the same hole that me and Shizuo had climbed up through.

"T-what?"

"Just hit the can on the crate and watch it fly away," I said shortly, taking a few steps back and taking another drink of my bottle as Shizuo one handedly hit the can with the edge of the bat, only his head turning to watch the can fall off the edge of the roof top. He looked back at me, one raised eyebrow as if to say: "How is this fun?"

"Try both hands this time and more power," I said, biting my lip to keep from either laughing at his confusion, or crying at the fact that he could hit a deadbeat half way across the city with a stop sign, but couldn't put more power into his swing than my cat could.

He tried again, both hands on the bat this time and took a step closer to the newly placed can. Maybe it was the form, or the wrong hand placement that made him hit the can straight into the nearby apartment building window. I guess it was a good thing that building had been vacated for thirty years.

"Okay, I think it's pretty obvious that your parents never signed you up for Little League, so here's what we're going to do," I said, putting down the bottle of Jack and grabbing another can from the trash bag, setting it on top of the crate before moving to stand behind him. "I'll position you and walk you through it and then you'll do it on your own, 'kay?" I grabbed his belt and moved him back an inch, when I couldn't see over his shoulder—no surprise there—I ducked under his arm, standing with my back to his chest and his arms encircling me to hold the bat out before us.

"Okay, first off, if you're right handed, you hold the bat like so—right hand above left at the base of the bat." I grabbed his hands and switched them around, closer together and nearer the base of the bat. "Next, keep your feet planted at all times, your body can move, but keep your feet planted," I said, looking down at his shiny black shoes next to mine, kicking them a little to make sure they were well planted, earning a small growl from the man behind me, but paying no heed to it.

"Okay, now when you swing, you want to rotate your body with it." At this, I removed his hands from the bat, setting them on my waist so he could feel what I meant about rotation. His hands gripped my sides tightly, thumbs digging small circles into my lower back as I picked the bat up off of the ground. I gave a few mock swings letting him feel the muscles in my waist as I swung the bat. Although behind me I could feel something else.

"Okay, the last thing is all about power. Here, put your hands back on the bat, right over mine." He moved his hands from my waist, albeit a little hesitantly, and placed his larger ones over my smaller ones, following my movement and to let the bat touch the edge of his button-up.

I let the bat swing from shoulder to shoulder in a wide arc, out of my control, the can in front of me disappearing from its place atop the crate and soaring high and long in an arc over the nearest few residential buildings. "See? Easy as pie." I looked behind me to see him watch it fall away behind some decrepit building, a look I couldn't distinguish on his face, like a type of mild concentration mixed with concern and slight anguish. "What's the matter?" I asked him my hands dropping away from the bat while I turned in place to face him, still in the slight embrace his arms made before he let them drop to his side, the bat clutched in his hand.

"Why are we doing this, Amai?"

"'Cause I'm too lazy to drop these off at the recycling plant at this time of night," I answered, turning to look at him, leaning my hip against the crate before standing straight again when it tipped beneath my weight. He gave me a look which I took to say: that's only half the truth, now tell me why the hell you brought me up to the roof of this rat-infested building. I may have been paraphrasing. "Okay, so I thought after the day you've had, you deserved to let off some steam, and since I was banned from the batting cages, I thought this would be the next best thing."

"What was wrong with today?" he said, looking generally confused.

"Besides the fact that you threw three men twice your weight through an apartment wall simply because they said, "I don' gots the money. So get the hells outta my face"? Granted that's a pretty regular day for you, but the aftermath was unacceptable," I explained calmly, like a teacher explaining something relatively easy to a dumbass.

"You're not my mom. You can't tell me what to do," he said indignantly, slipping his free hand inside his pants pocket and pulling out the "slim stick of many names", putting it between his lips before delving back into his pocket for his lighter.

"No, but I am your girlfriend, which means I can do this," I said, plucking the cigarette from his lips and sticking my tongue out at him childishly when his brows furrowed in mild irritation and his eyes narrowed into a slight glare. "And since you're such a virgin I can do this."

Not to say the last three weeks of our relationship weren't fun, but they were…unprogressive. Not that I didn't mind it or didn't expect it from a guy like Shizuo who was too afraid of himself to let him do anything fun, it was just kind of…irritating. So when I stuck the cigarette in my bra underneath my white button down from work, he glared at me, jaw clenched, a feint vein in his forehead as he tried to keep his cool, and his hands clenched into fists. When he opened his mouth to speak however, a certain cross-dressing barista made his presence known via the hole in the roof top, causing the ticked blonde in front of me to lower his pissed-off attitude a notch.

"Is this a date night? Or can anyone join?" he asked, leaning his head against one hand in a lazy 'I-caught-you' gesture, a mild smile plastered on his face.

"It's more of a "letting off steam" party. So if you're pissed at anything, you're free to vent it out," I told him, grabbing Shizuo's clenched hand and bringing it up to show him the make-shift bat. In my mind I silently thanked him for getting me out of an argument neither of us were going to win.

"Sure, but I don't really have anything to vent," Taka-chan said, pulling himself the rest of the way out of the hole and onto the roof, dusting off his jeans before making his way over to us. As per usual, he smiled widely at Shizuo, and just because it ticked me off that he was being semi-flirtatious because of the whole 'cuddling' incident no more than a month ago, I said to him the last thing he wanted to hear, a big mistake on my part.

"Hey, Taka-chan, how are you and Naoki-san doing?"

"Gimme that bat," he said, smile disappearing from his face, instead being replaced by a fearsome scowl as he glared at the both of us. Shizuo, being used to giving and receiving looks of hatred and anger, merely handed over the bat, not even batting an eye in his direction as Taka-chan stalked past us, reaching into one of the plastic trash bags and withdrawing a glass bottle, slamming it down on the crate and rearing back the bat, letting it rush forward in a violent swing, shattering the bottle into small shards, the only thing left whole of the bottle being the bottom which sat unperturbed upon the crate.

"Umm…Taka-chan…is something wrong?" I asked him hesitantly while Shizuo walked away from the slightly disturbing scene, back to the edge of the building to sit back and drink the rest of his milk.

"No. Why would you assume that?" he asked me, his voice pressured and sharp as he dug out another empty bottle before smashing it to bits with the blunt edge of the bat. It was almost like he was envisioning the bottle as Naoki-san's head.

"'Cause the last time you did something violent was when you caught that guy cheating on you last year," I said vividly remembering the twenty-four hour time period he had been in a holding cell after sending the cheating bastard to traction.

"Che, please, Naoki doesn't have the backbone to even think about cheating on me," he said, smashing another bottle.

"Hey, Taka-chan, I'll be right back. I think I'm neglecting my boyfriend," I told him, looking back behind me to see Shizuo slip another cigarette from his pocket and light it up as he sat back against the small wall that made up the ledge.

"Bring me back a beer when you're done," he said flippantly, smashing another bottle, this time making short work of the process by throwing the bottle at the wall of the next building. I frowned, slightly pissed that my night was being commandeered by a man who wore a skirt five days out of the week. Saying nothing, I walked away from him and towards the man currently nursing a bottle of milk in between bouts of cigarette smoke. Wordlessly I sat beside him upwind of where the smoke was trailing away into the less-than-fresh air, watching Taka-chan swing the bat silently while I downed the rest of my beer.

"So…sorry the night kinda turned into…whatever this is," I said, looking down at the empty can in my hands, turning it over and over awkwardly in my hands.

"I have to go home anyway. Don't know why I came over in the first place," he said, snuffing out the cigarette when the wind started to carry the smoke towards me, making my eyes sting at the smoke's intrusion.

"I think it started when you offered to walk me home from the club, climaxed when I asked if you wanted to do something fun, and ended when Taka-chan stopped a fight before it started," I surmised, ticking the series of events off on my fingers.

"If I'm late, I'll just tell Tom it's your fault," he said, emptying the bottle of milk in one smooth movement before setting it down on the other side of him, his hands lying lazily on his outstretched legs as he turned his head slightly to look at me, the hint of a milk moustache edging his upper lip. My lips turned up at the corners in an amused smile at his childish look. Reaching a hand up, I wiped it away, simultaneously bringing him closer until my lips touched his. What started out slow and sweet turned wet and heavy when I awkwardly got into a kneeling position beside him. He didn't take much notice of it besides tilting his head up a bit because of my difference in height, and I used that to my advantage to bite his lip and slip my tongue inside his mouth. Using that as a distraction, I moved one leg over his lower body and wrapped my arms around his neck, straddling his waist and feeling the other thing in his pants wake up after the ten minute reprieve caused by Taka-chan. I felt his arms encircle my waist and draw me closer to his body while he played with my tongue, and I would have gone into seventh heaven had a jealous gay man not thrown an empty can at the back of my head, causing me to bite my tongue and pull back in surprise. Swiveling around slightly in my seat upon Shizuo, I glared furiously at the long haired man as he glared menacingly at me, hands on his hips in a gesture that reminded me of the times my father had caught me in the barn with a boy from school. The only difference being that if I pissed Taka-chan off, I'd be without a couch to sleep on and call temporarily my own.

"Hey! Less lip-locking, more walking! You!" he said, pointing a long painted fingernail at the man underneath me, "You have work to go to in the morning, and it's already one in the morning. And you, Princess Delinquent, if I'm not getting any, then you sure as hell aren't getting any neither! Now get off the cute blonde boy and stop getting his junk all excited for nothing!" Taka-chan yelled using his masculine voice, making the "cute blonde boy" squirm underneath me uncomfortably.

I said nothing, choosing to follow the man's instructions now since it was probable that Shizuo would have stopped me before anything serious happened…again.

"See ya tomorrow, Shizuo," I said half-heartedly as he brushed past me to the hole in the roof, squatting down to sit at the edge before dropping down to land on the ruined couch I had used as a step ladder, a small wave thrown in my direction before he disappeared all together.

"So…Taka-chan…what the hell?" I asked him after a few minutes just to make sure Shizuo was no longer underneath us and within hearing range.

"Don't "what the hell" me; I should "what the hell" you! What are you doing talking to my boyfriend about your non-existence sex life?! Because of you I haven't had sex in three weeks!" he yelled at me, brandishing the bat as if to make an exclamation point.

I grabbed the bat out of his hand and pointed it at him. "Don't blame me for your lack of sex! It was clearly Naoki-san's decision to put you on a leash and restrain you from going after his bits and pieces all the times," I told him angrily, upset that he was trying to put the blame on me.

"You have no idea what I am going through! No idea! And do you know why? No! Because you haven't had sex in nine months! So you two can't possibly know what I am going through!"

"Well, seeing as how I haven't had sex in nine months…" I said trailing off and making a face so he could see my clearly better point. I placed my free hand on my hip and watched as he crossed his arms across his chest and cocked his jaw, regarding me in a way that suggested he was thinking of how to counter it.

"From what I just witnessed, it seems like you're itching for it, too. Eh? Amai-chan?" Taka-chan said, grinning smugly when I glared in turn, upper lip curling back in hatred that it had been so obvious.

"Let's just say I've hit a place in my life where no one's hitting my places. And it's not like I haven't been trying. You, the world and Shizuo keep cock-blocking me," I said trying to explain my current situation.

"Shizuo? He's a hormonal, young adult male. He should be begging for it by now!" Taka-chan explained, incredulous, his anger deflating like a popped balloon and instead being inflated by this piece of juicy information.

"…It's not for lack of trying. I mean…we've done other—wait a minute! Why am I telling you? You keep freaking out over three weeks of cuddle-free shut eye without even the promise of seeing stars!"

"I'm the closest thing you have to a girlfriend. Now go on, tell me what happened between you two," he said, completely engrossed, sitting on top of the crate like a dog waiting for food.

"Oh…right," I said dejectedly, wishing more than ever that I could have the awkward conversations I used to have with Hikaru back in high school. "Then I'll save myself the long explanation and show you what happened a few days ago," I said, un-tucking my button-up and pulling it up to show him my left side, more specifically, my back.

"Oh my God. That was a few days ago?!" he asked me, reaching out to tentatively touch one of the four bluish circles positioned in a kind of crescent moon. "Why aren't they fading?"

"They are too. They used to be purple," I said indignantly, pulling my shirt back down to shield myself from the cold air, and also because a light went on in the un-abandoned building next to us and I didn't want some pervert seeing my bra. Which reminds me…

"It's not like he did it on purpose. You should have seen his face when I opened my big, fat mouth and said "ow". It was like he accidently stepped on a puppy: so friggin' mad at himself and ashamed to the point of yelling at me to go home. Kinda pissed me off since I was close to getting his shirt off," I explained, reaching one hand inside my shirt and drawing out the cigarette tucked inside my bra, flicking it away in mild disgust. It's not like my adversity to it mattered any more since they won.

"Trying to make up for it with that little display earlier?" he asked, giving me an amused smirk while he swiped a beer and cracked the tab, gulping down well over half the liquid inside like the man he was half the time…sometimes.

"…No. If I did that for that kind of reason, I wouldn't be any better than a horny teenager," I rebutted, snapping open another beer. "Now that I think about it, I shouldn't be drinking right now. My dad says the only reason people should drink is for celebration."

"When was your last drink?"

"About …three weeks ago tomorrow. Why?"

"Then congratulations on three weeks of sobriety!" he said excitedly, touching his beer to mine in a sort of mock toast.

"Admit it, you just don't want to drink alone," I said, drinking despite that I caught him.

"Hmph, yeah. So what was the reason you started dry humping Heiwajima-kun? Even though my favorite reason so far is that you were horny," he said, smiling away like a bastard when I glared at him over the rim of my can.

"I'd rather keep the reason of my…"affection" to myself. Nosy Bastard," I muttered to myself, taking a sip of beer before unceremoniously pouring the rest over the side of the building.

"What? Did something bad happen?" he asked me, laughing slightly before stopping all together, his constant smile falling away when he saw my withdrawn face. "Amai…what happened?" he asked softly, setting his half-empty beer can beside him on the ground and putting his hands on my shoulder, looking at me with mixed concern.

I bit my lip, neither hard nor soft, and thought back to last week when I had first received the news. For Taka-chan's sake, it was better if I didn't bring it up since it could go in one of two ways: flipping out and taking out all of my frustrations, or breaking down and letting him see my humane side. Ideally I'd rather flip my shit and throw things at walls again, but when I did that last week, I had to have Colm and Kichiro bail me out of a twenty-four lock-up. Deciding neither option was an option, I started out with something true and simple.

"You know Shizuo makes me happy, right? Taka-chan?" I said, looking at the brick wall of the abandoned building. He seemed to be confused, voicing this with a single word and prompting me to continue my odd train of thought. "I brought him up here because I thought he needed to blow some steam after the day he's had…but…that was just one of the reasons. A few days ago too I used his suckish day to my advantage 'cause I wanted to feel better. It's not fair to him, ya know? Using him for sex to make myself better…he's not the type of guy to go for it just to go for it."

"Amai, honey, I don't understand what you're talking about," Taka-chan said, visibly confused and probably wondering if I was losing my mind.

"When I got the news, I didn't cry or anything, I just started beating this guy up because he asked me what my fucking problem was. Lucky for me he was from one of those color gangs, or I might've been sued for assault. When my brothers came to the police station to bail me out of a twenty-four hour hold, I told them why I freaked out and it kind of made me jealous how well they handled it. Even Colm handled it better! He has such a weak personality, I thought for sure he'd burst out crying right there. For all I know he probably did that latter."

"Amai…it sounds like someone…" he didn't finish his sentence; he just tightened his grip on my shoulders when they started shaking of their own accord. I nodded, confirming something we both knew, even if he didn't know who it was.

"I'm leaving in a couple days to help with preparations. I don't know how long I'll be gone though, so feel free to take advantage of my absence," I said, removing his hands from my shoulders and bending down to retrieve the remaining three beers. I pushed them into his hands and gave him a wink, hoping he'd understand what I meant.

"Sure but, Amai? What about Heiwajima-kun? Does he know you're leaving?" he asked me as I brushed back him to the hole, crouching down to sit on the edge before turning my gaze back to him.

"Can you do me a favor and not tell Shizuo about all this? I've been dealing with a lot of pity at work since Miss Yuumi's daughter Kyoko found out and started being nice to me. I don't want to have to deal with that from my boyfriend, too. I'd rather have him be pissed as hell that I left without telling him," I told him before dropping out of sight, landing on my old, ruined couch awkwardly, cursing the day I ever bought it from the previous owners.

"What should I tell Heiwajima-kun if he comes here asking where you are?" came Taka-chan's voice from up above me. I looked up above me and saw Taka-chan's head peeking over the edge of the jagged hole.

"Just tell him that I'm going to see my mom one last time." It wasn't a lie, but it was still a little ways from the truth. I would be seeing my mom, but I just left out the fact that she would be a corpse when I see her.