A/N: Someone mentioned an Akabane-plush in their review, so I felt obligated to TRY to post a link to the site where I have pictures of my Akabane plush and the 12-inch Akabane doll. Put shandyevians. deviantart. com into your browser (no www) and remove the spaces.

Insert space break here.

Marci hung up the phone, manicured finger curling so tightly around the small international cellular that the tips began to turn white. "Why… is… my… sister… still… alive?" she asked between flamed pants.

Clifford put his cigarette out and observed Marci's hate-filled eyes. "You know, dear, I believe we've been going about getting rid of your sister all wrong."

Marci looked up, thin lips pouted outward. "What do you mean by that?" she sneered at the calm-faced young man.

Clifford studied the smoke rings coming off the ashtray. "Even if we kill your sister, it's likely that our dabbles in the family funds will be discovered some time in the future. So, wouldn't it make sense to dispose of your sister in a way that implicates her for the thefts?"

"I like the way you think," Marci said after a moment of contemplation, sliding onto Clifford's lap and slipping a finger between the buttons of his business shirt. "Tell me, pussycat, how we're going to do just that."

He smiled in response, pressing a finger to her lips. "Ssssh, sssh. If I told you the plan, you might get nervous about it and do something that would tip your sister off. Let me handle this. I'm used to death, after all."

"Right. I'll call the gang and let them know that they are no longer of use to us," she said, manicured fingers pressing down on the buttons of her cellular.

Akabane, unable to sleep, sat curled up in a corner with his head on his knees. He envied Hevn, who had practically collapsed into sleep the minute she'd heard safely from her sister. "Wake me up when my sister calls up from the lobby," she yawned, and then was out like a light bulb. Feeling more than a little bit irritated at being the one who had to sit up and wait for the phone call (well, you said you weren't tired, had been Hevn's logic behind it) he spent his time doodling little pictures in the dust on the floor under the dresser.

A small phone began ringing, drawing him out of whatever he might have been thinking to himself. It was coming from his jacket. Padding quietly and barefoot across the wooden floor, he dug his phone out of his jacket and flipped it open. Funny, he could still hear the ringing and it wasn't his phone… wait a second, there was a second phone in his jacket.

He pulled a small, ugly blue phone out of the other pocket of his jacket. He'd taken it from the body of their former driver while Hevn had laid unconscious in the dirt, fully intending that it might eventually lead him back to the person who had ordered the attempts on their lives in the first place. If it was ringing, all the better from him.

So, he answered it. "Hello?"

"Hello? Can I speak to Tsuki?" a woman's voice asked. Akabane frowned, narrowing his eyes slightly. He knew that voice, and it made feelings of wanting to kill run down his back… but where? Where did he know that voice from?

"Speaking," he shortly answered.

"Tsuki? Can you please inform your boss that his services are no longer needed? We've hired someone else to remove the thorn from our sides."

"The thorn?" he asked, hoping that his simple question would prompt the woman on the other end of the line to tell him whether he or Hevn was truly their target.

"Yes. We'll take care of it ourselves," the woman answered, and then the phone line went dead. Akabane looked down at it, then pulled up the call log and traced down the number shown in the most recently received call log. It was better than nothing at all to go on. He stepped back over Hevn, borrowing her little Dell laptop to search the internet for a reverse phone number look up. It was a good idea, but unfortunately, it got him no where. The phone number was either unlisted or a cellular, and Akabane was willing to guess it was a cellular, which wouldn't show up in his searches.

Calling them back immediately would only make them suspicious, and possibly cut off the only link he had to finding them in the end, so he shut down the phone and placed it back in his pocket. Lacking a way to recharge it, he only had until its batteries died to use it to trace the person who had ordered the attempted assassinations.

He needed a cigarette. Judging from the fact that Hevn herself didn't seem to smoke, he politely took his addiction out onto the balcony. At least he wasn't as bad as Ban-chan. That man always seemed to have one hanging off of his lips. I miss them, he thought bitterly to himself. He'd agreed to help Hevn because he'd thought it would bring him closer to fighting the two of them, but he hadn't seen even a blade of hair of either of them the whole time.

Marci, walking beneath the balcony with Clifford, paused and looked up. A smirk crossed her painted mouth. "He's not bad looking without his shirt," she commented.

Clifford, looking up, frowned when he saw what Marci was looking at. "If you like that skinny, half-starved anorexic look, ugh."

"Jealous, Clifford?" she asked, continuing to smirk as she looked over at him. "I'd like to wrap my legs around that pretty little thing, if only long enough to break my sister's heart."

"Why don't you?" Clifford asked. "It's not like we really love one another, and removing him from the equation would make your sister all the easier to get rid of."

Marci took her own cigarette back from Clifford. "We'll see how the mood moves me, sweetie."

Yawning, Hevn buzzed her sister into the apartment building. She was a bit annoyed, as her sister had shouted at her for letting the phone ring so long before answering. Damn it, she'd asked Akabane to wake her if she didn't hear the phone. Where the heck was he? She wandered back into her bedroom in time to see him shutting the balcony door and pick up the glass of water he'd been sipping listlessly at earlier. She was going to yell at him for wandering off, then decided it was in her best interests not to. "I'm going to bed again," she said shortly, crawling under the covers.

"What about your sister?" he asked. He stank, so she figured he'd probably just been out smoking.

"She's back," Hevn yawned, pulling the sheets up over her head. "Could you shower before you go to sleep? You smell."

His first instinct was to say no, because he was tired of being ordered about by her like she was queen on a throne when he was really doing her a favor. Unconsciously, he slammed the glass down in frustration, causing it to shatter against the desk. Small shards of broken glass cut against his skin, drawing drops of red blood from thin scratches.

He lifted his hand and studied the cuts. Damn, now he'd have to take a shower to avoid getting an infection in the cuts. Sucking on the wounds in painful irritation, he left the glistening bits of glass on the desk where he'd broken it and wandered into the bathroom. The brilliant overhead lights hurt his eyes, tempting him to reach up and unscrew half the bulbs. Honestly, no one needed a bathroom that bright, even if she did have to apply makeup in the morning.

The water was bitterly cold, but Akabane didn't care. He liked the cold. It woke him up, making him shiver. He found his hands trailing up to his face for what seemed like the millionth time that night. Sure, he'd been hit far harder than that in battle… but Hevn's slap hurt. It wasn't like any battle wound he'd experienced in fighting before. No one had struck him like that in… years. He couldn't believe he was having a hard time processing something as small as being slapped in the face by a single, unarmed woman when he'd never had any trouble dealing with suffering dozens of multiple stab wounds simultaneously, or having his arms yanked out of their sockets, or any of the other battle wounds he'd survived.

Marci stepped into the room, and noticing the shower was running but her sister's blonde hair was flowing out of the bed. Her smile tight but broad-lipped, she slipped out of her pajamas and wrapped a single terrycloth towel around her waist. The towel barely covered everything it should, which is exactly how she wanted it. Time to seduce my sister's boyfriend, she smiled to herself.

Fate, however, happened to have a very odd sense of humor when it came to dealings with Akabane and Hevn. Hevn happened to awaken right as Marci was gripping the bathroom door knob. "Marci?" Hevn grunted. "Can I use the bathroom before you start to shower?" she asked. "Or is Clifford already in there?"

Marci blinked, trying to feign innocence. "Of course not, sister. I was just warming up the water. Go right inside." Marci smiled to herself, thinking that this should tell me if that man really is Hevn's fiancé or not. If I hear a scream of surprise, they're not.

Hevn yawned, stretching as she entered the bathroom. She really did have to go. Akabane, meanwhile, didn't hear the door opening because he was lost in washing his cuts and listening to the pounding sound of the water against his back.

About to open the lid, Hevn happened to glance up. What was that mark on the shower curtain? She squinted, letting her tired eyes focus, and was horrified to discover the mark on the curtain was a bloody handprint.

"Oh my god… Akabane-san!" she screamed, pulling back the curtain and fully expecting to find a bloody corpse in her shower.

Instead, there was the moment of recognition when she realized Akabane was not only unharmed, but fully alive, and staring back at her. The moment of recognition when she realized that she'd interrupted him in the middle of a shower… totally naked… came later.

"I'msorryIsawthebloodandthoughtyouwerehuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurt!" she cried, yanking the curtain shut again and running out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

Akabane, when he got over the initial shock of the surprise, didn't react like he would be expected to. Instead, he smiled, then laughed in a voice barely louder than a whisper. The look on Hevn's face as her blood had drained out, leaving her as white as a ghost, was worth any "humiliation" he might be expected to feel at her having seen him naked.

He didn't have body issues after all, unashamed of the scars that crossed his chest and legs. He'd been told it was strange for him not to mind others seeing his marks, as most of the people he knew went to great lengths to hide the marks of the frailty of their flesh, even paying exorbitant sums of money to have the color drained out of their scar tissue so it would be less obvious. Why did they insist it was so wrong of him to be proud of the signatures of things that hadn't killed him, but had only made him stronger?

Hevn, meanwhile, was pacing about and practically hyperventilating. Could this day possibly get any worse? There was no way in heck he was going to continue playing her little game if she first hit him, then walked in on him in the shower and yanked the curtain open seemingly without a thought.

He had to bite his lip to avoid laughing when he finally left the bathroom, wrapped in his summer yukata again. He wanted to be the first one to bring the subject up, but he was afraid he'd start laughing and ruin the illusion of his normally cold, indifferent exterior. Showing emotions outwardly... well, it really wasn't his thing, if she hadn't noticed.

Hevn, still awake, refused to look him in the face. "I'm sorry, I saw the bloody handprint and I thought you were hurt."

The humor in the situation seemed to drain out with her statement. "You were seriously afraid that I might have been hurt?" he asked, confused. Why would she be concerned about him, as little as she seemed to like him?

"Of course I was! I saw blood and thought that the guys who were after us had gotten to you. I mean… if you saw blood on the shower curtain, wouldn't you be worried?"

"I'm used to seeing blood," was the only answer he gave her, a very unsatisfying one.

Hevn rolled onto her chest as best she could with her massive breasts, folding her arms beneath her head. "Just… just get into bed, okay?"

"No."

She started, then lifted her head back up. "What did you say?"

"I said no. I'm tired of you ordering me around when I'm doing you a favor."

Hevn smirked, trying to hide the small bits of panic that were slipping into her mind. Was this it? Was he going to walk out on her? "Where do you think you're going to sleep, then? Marci and Clifford have the couch, and the bathtub is still wet from your shower…"

"I'll sleep on the balcony if I have to," he replied, stubbornly and indignantly dragging a pair of sheets out onto the balcony and preparing a mock sleeping bag with them.

Hevn signed after him, shaking her head. "You're going to freeze out there."

"I don't mind," he shrugged, wrapping himself in the sheets and seemingly going to sleep.

Hevn could do nothing but stare at his back for what seemed like an eternity after that. He was so… so damned stubborn! Being angry at him for being stubborn helped her not think about the fact that even she knew she was unfairly bossing him around. Perhaps giving him some space would keep him from snapping and slaughtering her in a bloody mess, and that was a good thing.

Sometime around four in the morning, the forgotten need to use the potty resurfaced, causing Hevn to yawn and wobble into the bathroom. She sighed when she emerged, eyes squinting as she tried to adjust from going to the brilliant lights of the living room to the darkness of her bedroom. She could just make out Akabane's black and tan form lying spread on the balcony. "He's going to freeze," she muttered, dragging another blanket out of the closet and dragging it over to drape over his shivering body.

About a half hour later, Akabane himself finally gave up and dragged himself back into the apartment, having realized that he couldn't stay asleep if he kept waking up to rub his goose bumps away. This doesn't mean the fact that Hevn had placed another blanket on him was lost to him. However, it really did nothing more than confuse him, as she seemed to alter between ordering him around like a naughty puppy that had been caught piddling on the carpet, and showing genuine concern for his health and warm affection.

It would make his life a hundred or more percent easier if she'd just hurry up and decide if she liked him or not. Even if it turned out she hated him, his earlier comments about his own feelings about him didn't change. She didn't treat him like a bastard, or shrivel up like something foul had just entered the room when she saw him, or make snide comments about what a monster he was when behind his back but still within his earshot. Until that week she'd been nothing but professional towards him, and he'd always respected that about her.

Hevn shivered when a practically frozen body snuggled into the warmed sheets beside her. "You're cold," she groaned, her voice raspy from being half awake.

"I know," he answered, not moving from his spot.

Her first inclination was to say that she told him to come inside, or to order him out of the bed, but she let the comment die in her head. She didn't want to push him any further than she already had, as she wasn't quite sure how deep the nerve that marked his breaking point lay, and she'd gone into him pretty far.

Then, without warning, he said something that threw her completely for a loop. "Hevn-san, when all is said and done even if you do like ordering me around, you're still a very attractive woman, and usually relatively good-natured. Why don't you have a real boyfriend?"

For some reason, even in her sleepy condition, she answered him honestly. "When your previous fiancé gets shot, then turns out to be a spy from another country sabotaging the work you and he put your hearts into, you don't open up again to another man." She rolled over so she was facing his back, as his face was turned away from her. "So, what's your story? Where's your significant other?" she asked.

He didn't answer, causing Hevn to frown and let out an irritated low growl. "I answered your question, why can't you answer one of mine?" she asked angrily. His breathing remained steady and even as though he were asleep, but she knew he really wasn't. Finally sighing with resignation, she surrendered and fell back into her sheets to sleep.

The next morning, Hevn planed out the day's activities. Akabane had a job that night, so she'd have to take care of her parents and sister without his presence. That was fine with Hevn, after all, it wasn't like she'd ever needed him around before. She could entertain her family just fine without him.

That still left the daytime to drag him around. Akabane woke up sometime around ten, and not having to leave for his job until six, staggered out into the kitchen half-undressed, grabbed a bowl of cereal, and slithered back into the bedroom giving only vague grunts of recognition to anyone who tried to talk to him.

"He's not a morning person," Hevn, who had been up for an hour at that point, apologized to her still pajama-clad sister.

"It's okay, neither were you back in high school."

Hevn furrowed her brow, a vein appearing in her head. "How would you know? You went to high school in America; I went here in Japan."

"Auntie would often mention how she couldn't wake you for anything."

"Auntie exaggerated," Hevn snapped, knowing full well that she'd nearly or actually overslept many a morning as a teenager. Heck, the only thing that kept her from doing it on her science job was the fact that the man she was infatuated had been there every morning bright and early for her to sneak a look at over the top of the boiling Mr. Coffee machine.

Akabane, meanwhile, was asleep with his face in an empty cereal bowl. He was even less of a morning person, it seemed, than Hevn was.

After practically having to drag Akabane back out of bed by his ankles and rousing him to get dressed, Hevn decided that perhaps it was in their best interests to visit the water-park Marci had wanted to go to. After all, her parents were spending the day meeting with business contacts and later taking advantage of only two tickets to Kabuki, so that left the four "young ones," as her father would say, to amuse themselves.

Maybe the cold water will wake all of us up, Hevn hoped as she noticed there were dark circles even under Clifford's eyes. Wonder what kept him up all night.

The fact that Akabane didn't own a swimsuit had been fixed by the fact that Clifford had an extra pair of boxers, as Akabane had flat-out refused to be seen in public in a green Speedo. If Hevn remembered right, his actual words were "I'd rather go naked." The comment had reminded her of the previous night's incident, and she'd looked away so he wouldn't see her cheeks turning red.

"It still doesn't fit me right," Akabane noted, tugging on the drawstring band as the pants threatened to slide down around his wide hips.

"It's not natural to be that thin. Ugh, I can his your ribs," Clifford snapped back when Marci translated what Akabane had said.

"What did he say?" Akabane asked Hevn.

"He said you're unnaturally thin."

"For an American, perhaps. All that fast food… tsk, tsk, tsk."

"What did he say?" Clifford asked, peering viciously at Akabane.

"I'm not repeating it so you can play telephone insult. Come on, we're here to play in the water, so let's play in the water," Hevn said, placing her towel on a lounge chair. After a moment, she suddenly snapped around and pointed a finger at Akabane's face. "Wait a second, since when did you wear glasses?"

"You just noticed? I've had them on since this morning. I can't wear contacts in the water park, can I? I'd lose them," he answered shortly. He seemed touchy about the subject of wearing glasses, so she let the subject drop as she watched him fold them up and set them on the table the group had claimed. She wanted to say she hadn't noticed them because they'd been in the bowl of cereal he'd been sleeping in.

Clifford volunteered to take first shift babysitting the towels, so Hevn dragged a reluctant Akabane and a brooding Marci up and down the park water slides. Marci splashed around like a… well, no pun intended, but like a fish out of water. Hevn noticed a few people staring and wondered if she should buy her sister a pair of water wings. Why had she wanted to go to the park if she couldn't swim? That's the kind of foresight her sister had, Hevn thought with a sigh.

Hevn grabbed Akabane by the wrist, but this time only after checking it for disgusting things that might be there first. After making sure it was sticky drippings free, she dragged him towards one of the taller drops. "Come on, they let you ride this one in pairs. Ride down with me; it'll be fun."

Akabane started reading a warning sign at the base of the slide. "I'm not sure this is a good idea, Hevn-san…" he muttered even as she refused to listen to him, hauling him to the ladder. He happened to notice a teenage girl pointing at his tattoo and giggling, but didn't acknowledge the girl's laughter. It wasn't like it was a naked lady or anything, for God's sake. The only comment he'd ever gotten on his tattoo that he'd ever really liked was a small child asking her mother why he could draw on himself with marker and she couldn't.

Hevn dragged Akabane to the top of the ladder, despite the fact that he more or less made her pull him all the way up. "You're acting like I'm torturing you by forcing you to have fun."

"What makes you think I'm having any fun?" He'd wanted to finish reading that sign, but she'd pulled him too far away to focus on it. After all, it had said something about dangerous air currents and loose articles of clothing... but, it was too late to cry over spilt milk or unread signs as the case may be, and he couldn't see it from where they were. Not being able to see much further than five feet without assistance stank in a big way.

"Stop whining and get behind me," she ordered. "You'll have fun whether you like it or not."

"Stop ordering me around and I might," he answered calmly, not snapping but somehow speaking with a sharp-edged tongue. In fact, if one hadn't heard the actual words, they would have taken his tone of voice as pleasantly bitter.

"Are you ready? It's a scary, long drop."

"Seeing as how I essentially can't see most of it from here without my glasses, I'm fine with it." It was true, where Hevn was looking at a terrifying multiple meter drop, Akabane saw essentially a blur that might have been vaguely blue and white plastic with water running through it, if he squinted hard enough and applied his knowledge of what the surroundings around him were likely to be.

"Ready?" she asked.

"I am always ready for any challenge."

"Then let's take the plunge, shall we?" she asked, then realizing the marital implications of her statement, hastily added "no pun intended, of course," and pushed the two of them off together.

Hevn hit the water with a loud, happy scream. "Didn't that feel good?" she asked, laughing at Akabane.

He came up from under the water a few seconds later, looking straight at Hevn with a contemplative look on his face. "Hevn-san…" he began.

She turned around and began paddling back towards the side. "I'm going to get Marci to go on that with me. Did you feel the wind rustling through-"

She froze. His large, rough hands were around her chest, pressed tightly against the swell of her breasts. She felt his masculine, thin fingers brush her skin, drawing her back close to his chest in an embrace. She felt the warmth of his body in the cold water and heard the sound of his heart thudding in his chest. Her own heart rate increased ten percent in an instant, causing her to gasp. "A… Akabane-san… this is… sudden… you've never… been affectionate… like this… before…" she whispered.

"I'm not being affectionate," he whispered in a hot hiss into her ear. "Your top fell off on the ride."

To be continued… (odd spot again, but I like it!)