Nope, these guys still aren't mine.

I always liked the idea of Ginji and Himiko... she seemed like she needed a little innocence in her life. So... here's my rationalization for a kinda off-the-wall pairing.

Himiko Hearts Ginji

"Damn." An incessantly beeping cell phone, deliberately set to begin beeping at seven thirty, and therefore innocent of any real offense, hurtled over a blue and green bedspread and into the bedroom wall. The electricity had gone off again – not an uncommon occurrence in the Amano household, what with the pair of electricity-generating freaks who inhabited it. But it always reset the clocks, and the cell alarm was the standard back-up. Unfortunately, it was Monday morning, and no one had remembered to change the time after the weekend. The bedroom alarm clock was usually set to 6:00. It seemed that the Amanos were going to be late getting around this morning.

It wasn't terrible –Kaminari had to be at school by eight thirty, but she never took long to get ready. Her hair, like her father's, always did exactly as she wanted it to, without recourse to gels, sprays, or heat. She rarely chose to wear make-up, and barring any lost shoes or homework (she wasn't especially organized), she shouldn't have any trouble making to school on time.

But her mother always, always got up to make her breakfast and check her backpack, to remind her that she had soccer practice or that Katsu Fuyuki and Riye Midou had a recital that evening and not to make plans, and to generally make sure she had her stuff together. And her father always, always walked just out of sight behind her, all the way to school, to make sure she got there okay. And that was great; they were good parents and proud of it, and, given their nonexistent childhoods, enjoyed babying their precious little girl. Except when they woke up too late to enjoy each other first.

He didn't mind so much. He was willing any time, any place, anywhere, but as flattering as that was, Himiko was definitely a morning-sex person. And watching the gray morning light slide over her husband's finely chiseled physique as he breathed – still asleep despite the cell, damn him – made her suddenly resent parenthood.

"Ginji." She nudged him, but he didn't respond.

"Ginji." Himiko frowned. Jerk.

She pulled the sheets a little further down, revealing a pair of black-and-red boxers. He'd actually been a briefs guy, much to Himiko's surprise, but as a concession to her early morning cravings had switched to something easier to strip out of while still half-asleep. Time to pull out the big guns.

Himiki straddled his thighs and slipped her hands onto his abdomen, just under the waistband of his boxers. Frowning with concentration, she felt carefully for her target. This was easy to mess up, and if she didn't get it just right, he would retaliate. He had to be incapacitated the moment he woke up.

There.

Holding his hips between her thumbs and index fingers, she positioned her thumbs on the soft tissue that lay just beside the really pointy part of his pelvic bone.

And squeezed.

Ginji's frantic, hysterical laughter woke Mina (Kaminari's nickname), which was more or less what Himiko had intended. She did not, however, expect her daughter to rush into their bedroom or to take her father's side in the ensuing battle, and certainly didn't expect to be cruelly restrained by her husband and mercilessly tickled by her sixteen-year-old.

Flailing and screaming and probably terrifying the old couple next door, she reminded herself to incinerate Ban with Flame Poison the next time she saw him. The bastard had told Ginji all of her ticklish spots years ago.

Well, mostly all. Over the years, Ginji had found a few Ban hadn't known about. One even she herself hadn't known about. But he'd wait until Mina was safely at school to exact full retribution for his rude awakening.

After a truce had been called – by Mina, who had turned coat and teamed with her mother – Himiko got breakfast ready. It was huge, as always. Maybe it had something to do with their electrical powers, but Ginji and Mina both had fantastic appetites and, gallingly, the incredible metabolisms to match.

Ginji cleared the dishes away, and he would wash them too, when he returned from Mina's school. Well. After he'd punished her for tickling him, he would take care of the dishes. It was one of the many things that made their relationship work: Himiko just didn't do housework. She cooked, mostly because she didn't trust Ginji not to forget that the stove was on, and she picked up after herself, but the majority of the real cleaning fell to Ginji. And though no one likes chores, he cleaned house the same way he did everything else – with a smile.

Ban teased her frequently about her housewife. Other, less understanding individuals teased her about her 'other child.'

Maybe there was an element of legitimacy to the implied role-reversal. Himiko considered herself the dominant personality in their marriage, at least, most of the time; she was certainly the responsible one. But, then, she liked it that way. Ginji liked it that way. He'd had his fill of responsibility in his youth and didn't resent her decisiveness at all. She'd raised herself to be an independent woman; for a long time, she hadn't believed she would ever marry. She dealt with their finances, she usually wound up being the one to discipline Mina, and when they disagreed, he usually capitulated before she did.

But then, there were those other times. Ginji didn't vie with her for control very often. He picked his battles, and they were few and far between. But when he chose to oppose her, he almost always won.

Those times when he told her to run, and she obeyed without questioning. Those times he held his ground over a foolish, if goodhearted decision, because he thought it was the right thing to do, and be damned to her pragmatism. Those times she woke in the night, face wet with tears, haunted by half-remembered dreams and half-dreamt memories, and he pulled her into his arms and locked her into place against him, when she would have run away to be alone with her demons.

It was easy to dismiss Ginji as simple, or childlike. But having experienced as many of 'those times' as Himiko had, she knew better. The simple way he split up good and evil, the childlike wonder he regarded the silliest things with, they were endearing, but to someone as jaded as she was, there was more to it than that.

Ban's little girl, Riye, had said it best. The Get Backers had been off on some wild adventure or other, and Natsumi and Himiko had decided to take their six-year-old daughters to the zoo. Natsumi had left for a moment to visit the ladies room, and Himiko was watching the girls. Smiling at Mina's fascination with the electric eels in the aquarium, she'd been suddenly distracted by a very serious Riye at her side.

"Himiko-san? You and Ginji-san won't ever move away, will you?" The girls' friend Chiyoe had moved to Okinawa a week before, so the question wasn't entirely unexpected.

"I really doubt it, Riye-chan. Your dad and Ginji are pretty stuck together, you know."

"Good. I don't want Kam-chan to go away." A little hand had reached for hers at that point; Himiko'd taken it, careful to keep her own daughter in sight.

"Is that so?" Himiko had smiled.

"Daddy says we're cursed." Himiko remembered freezing in place, wondering why on earth Ban couldn't have waited until Riye were a little older to tell her such things. "I know he wouldn't lie to me, but…" Her little face had screwed up in concentration. Himiko had dropped to her knees, and though one eye remained on Mina, most of her attention had been drawn to Riye.

"But?"

"But when Kam-chan is around, I just can't believe him," she'd answered finally. "I don't think that anyone who knows Kam-chan can be cursed. Maybe she just makes you forget about it. I think it's more than that, though."

And just like that, Himiko had finally understood Ban's attachment to Ginji, understood her own strange attraction to her husband, understood why people as powerful as the former gods of Infinite Castle had followed him.

Curses didn't matter to Ginji. Past sins and crimes didn't faze him. You could put up all the barriers you liked; he breezed through them like wind though a chain link fence. No matter what weighed you down, a curse, a violent past, unforgivable crimes, terrible memories, your own defense mechanisms – Ginji disregarded them all, and made you feel as though you could disregard them as well. From the moment he met someone, he treated them as the person they could have been, if only they didn't carry the burdens of their past… and made them want to strive to be the person he believed in.

To hell with Raitei; Ginji Amano was godlike in himself, to inspire people to such heights.

Even if she couldn't have explained it before Riye's insightful little comments about Mina, Himiko had intuitively known herself to be a better person when she was with Ginji. And maybe that was part of what she'd fallen in love with.

It didn't hurt that he had the body of a god, either.

Himiko smiled to herself, watching through the window as Ginji approached their door. Had she been lost in reverie for such a long time?

She watched the sun glint off his hair, watched the big hand that turned the key in the lock, watched the ripple in his biceps when he pushed the door open.

The dishes were going to have to wait.