Note Time!: Since people have asked, the "gay" in the boyfriend title refers to the fact that the vast majority of Get Backers stories with pairings in them are male x male, leading one to believe the entire cast is gay from the fandom. So there's your answer. No, I am not giving you a better one.

-End Note-

"It… it isn't what you think, Marci!" HEVN shouted back, feeling worry creep up into her throat. Akabane had turned his attention directly towards Marci. She'd seen his power, and HEVN had no idea how opposed Akabane was or wasn't to people outside of the underworld circuit seeing his abilities. True, in a fit of desperation she may have imagined Akabane killing her sister, but now that he was taking a dangerous step towards her sister, she realized how little she actually wanted that fantasy to come true.

HEVN reached out and gripped Akabane's arm tightly, not caring if it put herself in danger. "Akabane-san, no!" she cried.

Akabane looked down at her, eyes shadowed by the brim of his hat. Shoving her aside, he reached out to Marci.

"No! Keep away!" Marci screamed, her hands thrown up over her face protectively. "Don't come any closer or… or…" Marci wavered on her feet unevenly, and then collapsed onto her side in a heap of human.

There was a brief moment of silence, during which a slightly garbage-scented wind rustled through HEVN's hair. She'd seen Akabane put enemies to sleep before, back in Infinite Castle. She just hadn't expected that to be his reaction.

He was kneeling down in front of Marci, his coat spread around his ankles in a wide half-circle. Cautiously, he slid a gloved hand under Marci's sleeping form and hefted her up and over his shoulder. A few moments after Marci managed to regain consciousness, blinking as the street lights pained her eyes, she looked sideways at HEVN. "What… what happened? The last thing I remember, there were these thieves…"

"You fainted, Marci," HEVN explained, touching her sister's face gently. She was surprised to be able to feel a few almost premature wrinkles, considering how young her sister was. "Don't worry, they're gone now. Come on, mom and dad will be worried about us."

"Sister?" Marci asked as HEVN began walking towards the restaurant. She paused.

"Yes, Marci?"

"Can we… not tell mom and dad about those guys? It will only worry them."

HEVN shut her eyes and mouth contemplatively, humming a bit in a low voice before deciding. Opening her eyes, she sighed, "If that's what you want."

Marci nodded, her short hair springing about her face in thick, fashionable curls. "It is."

HEVN thought it was an odd request, but didn't particularly mind if her sister wanted to keep the near-attack a secret. Taking her sister from Akabane and draping Marci across her shoulders, HEVN assisted her sister back to the front door of the restaurant, Akabane following two steps behind them.

After the day had ended and darkness had settled over the streets of Tokyo, HEVN waved a pleasant good-bye to her sister and parents as the taxi pulled away from the lush hotel the group was staying at. Once she was certain they were too far away to be seen or heard, she let out a deep sigh of extreme relief.

"One day down, six days left to go," she moaned, her voice taking on the tone of a prisoner after a long day on the torture racks.

"I only agreed to help you tonight," Akabane disagreed, his face not reflecting any sort of anger. His voice, however, was more on edge than his usual flat tone.

"Remember, it's for Ginji-kun," HEVN encouraged, punching a fist in the air. Akabane's eye twitched slightly, a bit annoyed at the fact that HEVN had played the Ginji card every single time he'd had any sort of objection to her plans that entire day.

"Perhaps I've overestimated the value of Ginji's amusement," Akabane replied, knowing that wasn't true but still wanting to get some indication of his displeasure at having to play HEVN's game.

HEVN signed and leaned back against the rough interior of the battered taxi. "At least my family is staying at the hotel and won't ever see my apartment, seeing as how I told them my fiancé lives with me." She noticed the look Akabane was giving her and gave him a quick explanation. "It was shortly after my father said he was going to cut me out of the family for wanting to get a government job in Japan instead of returning to America that I told them that. If they were going to be mad at me, I really wanted to really make them mad."

"So you told them you were living with your boyfriend. How juvenile."

"I was nineteen at the time. I was juvenile."

"Understandable and excusable, then," Akabane shrugged. "Your cell phone is making a funny noise."

"Huh?" HEVN asked, suddenly realizing that not only was her cell phone making a funny noise, but it was vibrating like crazy in her bag. "Ah! I forgot that I put it on vibrate!" After what seemed like an eternity of digging through the masses of things in her purse that only women feel the need to constantly carry with them, she managed to find the elusive cellular phone and answer it. "Hello?"

"Sister? Bad news! The hotel lost my and Clifford's registration! We don't want to stay with mom and dad because… well… that would just be awkward to say the least. You don't mind if we sleep on your couch, do you? No? I knew you wouldn't; you're the greatest sister ever!" she cried, sounding overly happy. "We'll take a taxi over, see you shortly."

HEVN just stared at the dead phone, her hand shaking. Akabane, noticing, looked over at her and moved in closer to try to see if he could figure out what was going on. "Are you okay, Miss Mediator? You got that phone call and suddenly turned as white as a sheet."

HEVN's hand continued to shake. "How-how do you feel about sleepovers, Akabane-san?" she asked, sounding as if she were on the brink of tears.

Back outside the hotel, Marci hung up the phone and smiled to herself. The truth was, she'd never made a reservation for herself and Clifford in the first place. Clifford, standing with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, frowned at her. Her parents had long since retired to their own hotel room, oblivious to what their daughter was busily plotting below.

Marci smiled up at him, taking the cig from his lips and placing them between her own. He grunted. "Don't do that, you'll get lipstick on it."

"Shut up; I don't pay you to be disagreeable." She handed the cigarette back and turned on her heel, facing the leader of the 'gang' that had attacked herself and HEVN in the back alleyway. "As for you, that was simply miserable. Things couldn't have worked out better. I practically handed her to you on a silver platter, and you let her go."

The gang boss grunted angrily at her. "You didn't tell us she was under the protection of that Dr. Jackal bastard."

"This brings up another interesting point. Why would your sister hire a killer of such fame to protect her and pretend to be her fiancé unless she already suspected our reasons for wanting her out of the picture?"

Marci frowned and took the shared cigarette again. "We wouldn't have to eliminate my sister if father hadn't changed the will, and that is truly regrettable. However, if she gets part of the business and looks over the books…"

"She could find we cooked them, and we could have another Enron on our hands," Clifford answered, taking his cig back from Marci and taking another deep puff on it. "You don't want that; you lose your money. I don't want that; I lose my money and my job. The shareholders don't want that; their stocks will tank."

"That's why my dear beloved sister has to go, even if I have to go through Doctor Jekyll to get to her."

Clifford put an arm around Marci, smiling as he looked deeply into her cold eyes. "Face it; your jealousy is enough of a reason for you to want to eliminate your sister. The financial books are just icing on the cake of revenge."

"Cake of revenge? You sound like a corny soap-opera villain." Marci turned her attention back to the gang leader. "If I can't trust your men to be competent, I'm going to have to off my sister myself, which means that you don't get paid."

The leader gave her a frustrated look, grinding his teeth. "Allow us to try again. Now that we know who we're up against, we can formulate a specific defense against his abilities."

Marci smiled and patted the boss condescendingly on the shoulder, as she wasn't tall enough to reach his head. "I'll give you one more chance. You'd better not fail me."

Back at HEVN's apartment, HEVN was down on her knees, hands held together in a praying/pleading position, clinging to Akabane's coat. "Please, please! You have to stay at my place. I'll give you anything you want, anything!"

Akabane frowned, trying pull his coat our of HEVN's iron grip without tearing the lining. He'd never known anyone to cling so tenaciously before. "Anything, you say?" he smirked.

HEVN's face turned red. "Anything but… but… nothing hentai!"

"Interesting how your morals work," he commented, tugging on his coat. He considered cutting off a few of her fingers to free himself, but then realize that Ginji-kun would be Very Unhappy with him if he did so.

"If you help me, I'll… give you a pair of Ginji's underwear."

Akabane stopped trying to pry her fingers off, utterly blindsided by HEVN's sudden statement. "Excuse me?"

"He left a pair here when they used my machine to do their laundry. I'd been meaning to give them back, but I keep forgetting…"

"Can I take a moment to understand this, please? You're bribing me… with underwear? I think you may have gotten the wrong impression about me at some point in time." With a final yank, he managed to get his coat away from her. However, right at that moment, the dreaded knock at the door came.

"She's here!" HEVN cried, looking pleadingly back at Akabane. "Please, pleeeeeeeeease?"

Akabane looked straight at her and smiled wickedly. "I want to watch you telling Ginji-kun that you gave his personal underthing to me."

"Huh?" HEVN asked, face blank.

"That's the price of my cooperation. I think it will be most fun to see the expression on his face…"

The knock at the door became louder. HEVN made a fist, her veins once again throbbing visibly beneath her pretty skin. "Damn you, Dr. Jackal… You have a deal!" she cried, running to answer the door. Why does he like to hurt people so much, HEVN wondered as she undid the locks. He really is the monster everyone says he is…

Marci carried her bags in, Clifford following like the obedient dog he unfortunately shared a name with. "We get the couch?" Marci asked, looking at it.

"I'll unfold it into bed form, but it's still going to be a little bit cramped I'm afraid." In her head, HEVN was trying to work out how to get a suitcase of Akabane's possessions into her apartment without her sister seeing her do so. Akabane, for his part, had disappeared off into the bathroom and absolved himself of any implication in the moment. Just like a man to vanish when there's work to be done, HEVN snorted to herself. "Are you sure you don't want to try to find another hotel?"

"Of course not," Marci waved her off. "After all, I want to be close to my dear sister. Really close." If HEVN hadn't been distracted by maneuvering the futon, she might have noticed the tone of malicious intent in her sister's voice. As it was, she didn't, and thus remained clueless about her sister's future bad intentions.

HEVN shut the sliding door separating the living room from the bedroom. As quietly as possible, she whispered, "You're going to have to bring your suitcase in from the balcony. There's a fire escape you can use to get up and down, tap on it when you return. I'll run the shower until you get back so my sister won't get suspicious."

Akabane glanced out the window at the less-than-safe looking fire escape. "Let me get this straight. I'm helping you, and yet I have to climb in and out of windows and up unsafe fire escapes to do so?"

"Unless you want to wear the same clothes every day for the rest of the week, yes," HEVN answered, feeling a bit short-tempered by the arrogance of the question.

"I am perfectly comfortable with that," he grinned.

Caught off guard, HEVN blinked at him. "What will you do about pajamas?"

"I don't mind sleeping naked."

After another few moments of blinking, HEVN stomped over to her purse and shoved a wad of cash into his hand. "For your taxi ride! Now get!" she ordered, shoving him out onto the balcony.

He frowned and looked back over his shoulder at her. "Be nicer to me, or I might not return." With that, he vanished off into the blackness of a Shinjuku night, leaving HEVN alone to contemplate whether she actually wanted him to return or not.

She guessed the decision she came to was that she did, as she'd started running the shower to keep up illusions for her sister. The air outside had become thick with humidity since that afternoon. The smell of the cool air coming in through the window suggested to her that rain might come, possibly that night but not possibly until the next day. Silently, she hoped that if it would rain, Akabane would return before it did. The last thing she needed was him being wet on top of angry and unwilling to continue her ruse.

Akabane, meanwhile, had made good time to his own apartment and back because of the relative lack of traffic at that time in the morning. He rested in the back of the taxi, jarred out of his sleepy stupor only when a couple of illegal drifters squealed past their taxi at a stop light. The taxi driver swore in words that were inappropriate for the ears of a lady or a gentleman, cursing the joy riders and wishing their cars would burst into spontaneous flame. Akabane smiled, as the sounds of ill-will were pleasing to him.

The skies opened and the rain began to come down in absolute sheets the second he stepped out of the taxi in front of HEVN's apartment. Cursing his luck and taking it as a sign that even the heaven's themselves were against his agreement with HEVN, he dragged the perhaps overfull suitcase towards the fire escape.

Somehow, in the combination of the wetness and rain lashing his hair into his eyes like tiny whips, he missed a crooked step on the escape and his foot went down wrong. He felt a momentary shake as his ankle twisted at an angle it wasn't meant to go. He fell, reaching out blindly for the railing, but felt only the tips of his fingers brush against it as landed hard on his back and slid a good two stories down against the twisted metal structure.

It hurt. His back felt like it had been stabbed with a hot poker. Reaching up and drawing his hand around, he saw drops of brilliant red blood against the water pouring down his fingers. Hell. He'd torn his coat as well as his skin if he was bleeding.

"Where have you been?" HEVN snapped when he crawled through the patio door, dripping like a swamp monster from an old horror movie.

"You could be more grateful to me for coming back at all," he answered, not really snapping but sounding kind of like he meant to.

Akabane removed his hat and coat and hung them up, arranging a trash basket for them to drip into. It was only then that HEVN noticed a long but shallow cut running across his back. "You're hurt," she pointed out, biting down any concern she might have felt for him. After all, he was doing everything he could to be unpleasant to her, so why should she respond to him any differently? "Let me get the alcohol rubs."

"I can take care of it myself," Akabane disagreed, looking at the cut in the mirror. It was nothing for him, and would probably heal up relatively quickly.

"You can't possibly reach it," she argued, appearing out of her bathroom. "All I could find was the peroxide. Take off your shirt and hold still, this will sting a little."

"It's nothing compared to some experiences I've had."

"Don't be an ungrateful brat," HEVN said, rubbing peroxide on the cut and watching it bubble up. "That shirt is ruined."

"I can fix it."

"Oh, you sew?" HEVN smirked, rubbing the wound. "How domestic."

"When your power is fighting with blades, either you learn to sew or you buy yourself a new wardrobe frequently. Especially when you're just a beginner at it," Akabane shrugged.

"Stop moving, I'm going to bandage this."

"That really isn't necessary. It'll heal quickly enough."

"I don't want you to bleed on my sheets," HEVN answered, her mouth full of pins for holding the ace bandage she was wrapping around his chest in place. "You've got too much chest for my bandage."

"There's something very wrong when I've got too much chest for your bandages," he answered, knowing it was out of character for him but in such a bad mood that he didn't care.

HEVN froze, her first instinct being to rake a fist across his smug face. However, with all the stress she'd been under, hearing such a stupid, immature, out of place comment from someone as normally cool as Akabane… she burst into hysterical laughter. Of course, her voice sounded really strained, and it was obvious it was stress laughter, but it was laughter none-the-less. Honestly, she realized, it felt really good to laugh again.

"So, which side of the bed should I take?" Akabane asked, eyeing the mattress on the ground. It looked big enough for two people… if you had a really good imagination. "Or should I have brought a sleeping bag?"

HEVN blushed furiously. "No-now, we're two responsibly, mature adults. We can share a bed without stupid giggling or high-school sexual innuendo, I'm sure."

"If you're sure of it, then I am sure of it," Akabane answered calmly, disappearing into the bathroom to change into night clothes. HEVN looked down and realized her hands were bloodied from his wound. Disgusted, she rushed out into her small kitchen area to wash them.

By the time she returned to her bedroom, Akabane had emerged from the bathroom and was curled up on his side, seemingly already asleep. HEVN signed and shoved him slightly over, taking her own side of the bed. It was only then that she noticed an odd scent clinging to Akabane's scent. She hadn't noticed it before because of the rather heavy scent of menthol cigarettes overpowering it. It was an odd scent, almost a scent she associated with memories. It was heavy and sweet, like funerary flowers from a past era, and slightly dusty at the same time.

HEVN frowned. She'd smelled that scent before, but where? Searching her memory, she rolled onto her own side and drifted off into sleep.