if you can't beat em - part 2

[metisket]

Hana really is white collar at heart. Given the choice between paperwork and being shot at and imprisoned, she doesn’t even have to stop to consider. That said, there are times when the desk job closely resembles hell, and this is one of them.

She knows there’s a reason they don’t owe anyone money. A nice, clean, legal reason, which she read about somewhere. Once. In a class, possibly. Studying for a test, possibly. It’s definitely in Japan Companies Law, Article…something.

There are a lot of articles in there.

This whole situation is stupid, not least because Sawada can never, ever find out about it, because he would freak, and there’s no need. They acquired this company-legally!-three years ago, and the old company’s creditors cannot now, for the first time ever, announce that they want the money. They can’t, it’s illegal. Sawada would totally give them the money anyway, though, because he is that kind of sucker. Which is why Hana has to find the legal justification for her forthcoming nasty letter before Sawada finds out about any of this.

Working for a bleeding heart sucks. Working for a bleeding heart crime boss is surreal and it sucks.

She just needs to find the right reference, why is it so damn hard? …Maybe because it’s midnight and she’s been staring at paperwork for twelve hours straight. When was the last time she ate? Noon? Hell.

Can’t be helped. She has to find this.

“Hana, stop staring at those papers like that, it’s scary. Hana? Hana. Hana.”

“Article 23!”

“Hana, please-”

Hana dives for the bookshelf, because she knows. That’s what it is, Article 23, Section…3, maybe? Two years! Liability is extinguished after two years!

“Hana, put that book down right now.”

“Huh? Kyoko?” How long has she been standing there? “I found it!”

“Yes, I know. Article 23. Do it tomorrow. Do you know what time it is?”

“But if Sawada finds out, he’ll flip. I need to finish this, just this one thing, I’ll send it first thing in the morning-”

“I know you and your just one thing. If I let you go, you’ll be here all night. Here.” Kyoko leans over and writes Article 23 on an unrelated draft letter in her ridiculously girly handwriting. “Now you won’t forget. Go to bed.”

“I can’t just go to bed! This has to be done, I’m already backlogged for tomorrow, if I don’t do this now I’ll be behind-even more behind-”

“I didn’t want to have to resort to this,” Kyoko interrupts, arms folded, foot tapping. “Remember that you drove me to it. Brother?”

Ryouhei looms up from between darkened stacks of files. Kyoko points accusingly at Hana, and Ryouhei grabs her around the waist and slings her over his shoulder.

Hana punches him in the kidney because she is intimately aware of how much that hurts. He grunts but doesn’t otherwise react. Goddamn caveman. Or maybe that was a given, seeing as he did just walk in here and heave her bodily around, what the hell, what the hell.

“I’ll tie you up if I have to,” Kyoko says calmly, turning the lights out, locking the office door behind them, and pocketing the key. As if Shouichi hadn’t spent hours teaching them how to pick locks. “But I’d prefer it if you’d cooperate.”

“Put me down, you giant, hulking-wait, this isn’t even your idea-Kyoko, you jerk, I have things to do, this has to be finished. I hope you know that when Sawada bankrupts us and gets us killed, it’ll be your fault.” Hana is aware that she’s babbling, hysterical, and on the verge of tears. The knowledge helps nothing. “Not mine! Not my fault!”

“You need to eat something; I can tell your blood sugar is low. Brother, take her to the kitchen first, then bed.”

“Will do.”

Hana loves how they talk about her like she isn’t mentally competent. She punches Ryouhei in the kidney again. Harder. It’s predictably unsatisfying. He hauls her to the kitchen anyway, and Kyoko prances off, presumably heading to her bed and her giggling girlfriend. Hana’s resentment is profound. She’d like to take it out on Ryouhei, but can’t, because none of this is actually his fault. Kyoko tends to treat him like order-obeying furniture, and he’s never learned to say no to her. Hana is the last person on earth who can judge him for that.

She limits herself to scowling at him savagely when he sets her down on a kitchen chair. He ignores the scowl, busily wandering around and putting together a meal in his peculiar, can’t-call-it-cooking fashion. Ryouhei dishes are always an odd combination of randomly reheated leftovers, heavy on meat, no dessert. Damn athletes, anyway.

Further to which, Hana has no hope of escaping now; Ryouhei is faster, stronger, and bigger than she is. Her only remaining option is to sit in sullen silence and comfort herself with the fact that men die sooner because testosterone is poison.

“Dinner!” Ryouhei cries happily, presenting her with a training-meal-fit-for-three.

It is really hard to stay mad at him when he hasn’t deliberately done anything wrong and is beaming at her like a stunned puppy. “Ryouhei, this is-”

“Eat!”

She does, but she’s determined not to enjoy it. To that end, she spends the entire meal lecturing on the legal ins and outs of her current liability woes. Ryouhei is not spared a single detail. Hana repeats the shorter demand letters verbatim, which is a sad commentary on how many times she’s read them. She paraphrases long sections of the law. She flails with rage and nearly flings vegetables across the room.

Ryouhei just watches her with bright, attentive eyes, nodding in the right places. Well, nearly the right places. Hana doesn’t quite trust it-he looks way too happy for someone actually understanding corporate law.

“Well?” she demands when she’s finished.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about to the extreme!” Ryouhei announces almost proudly. It makes Hana want to beat her head against a wall. “But if you want to train hard, you have to rest up. You’ll never get stronger if you don’t rest!”

“It’s confusing when you make sense,” Hana moans, cradling her head in both hands.

“You should definitely stop thinking about it. Finish your dinner, and I’ll take you to bed!”

Hana snickers, tipping her face up and propping her chin in her hand, the better to gaze at her boyfriend’s silly face. This is as close as Ryouhei gets to innuendo. “I thought I was supposed to be resting.”

“Physical exercise is a good break from mental exercise!”

Hana’s not sure how Ryouhei would know. “Is it?”

“To the extreme!”

He’s grinning at her hopefully. She grins back, still on edge, still liable to start laughing or crying with no warning. Endorphins will probably do her good. “Yeah, okay,” she says. “I guess I can’t argue with such flawless reasoning.”

Ryouhei gleefully punches the air. Hana laughs outright and leans her head against his shoulder. He’s so absurdly muscle-bound that it feels kind of like leaning against a warm rock, but for some reason she finds that comforting.

It’s not so much that Ryouhei puts up with her bullshit as that he honestly doesn’t notice it. He labors under the misapprehension that Hana’s nice, and nothing she can do or say convinces him otherwise. He’s a sure thing. She didn’t even know men like that existed.

She breathes in the scent of Ryouhei and nitroglycerin; he must have been training with Gokudera today. It’s soothing-both smells are soothing, actually, which should probably worry her. Still, the smell of explosives brings home the fact that even though Hana’s having a work crisis-perspective!-no one is going to die of it. That gives her major points over Gokudera (and Sawada). She’s doing pretty well in general, come to that. She has Ryouhei. She has Ryouhei’s evil little sister, who’s always on Hana’s side even when Hana’s not on her own side. She works for insane, brilliant people who always keep things interesting. Sometimes too interesting, but hey.

Most of the time, she loves her stupid life. She should keep that in mind.

* * *

Hibari made her do pull-ups. Well, attempt to do pull-ups, at any rate. Repeatedly and over days, until she had blisters across her palms. Until one of those blisters ripped off, causing her to cry, at which point she was permitted to stop. Doubtless it was only because she was getting blood all over the bar, and that offended Hibari’s sensibilities.

She’s currently collapsed in a hallway, staring at the coin-sized, shallow hole in her throbbing palm. At least it’s stopped bleeding. Now it’s oozing instead, presumably trying to cover up all that delicate stuff that’s usually protected by skin-nerve endings and whatnot. Hana watches the ooze and daydreams of stabbing Hibari while he’s sleeping. Of course, even in her daydreams, he wakes up and kills her before she has a chance.

It’s her left hand, and she is left-handed. She needs that hand for typing and filing and signing things. For her real job. She hates Hibari with the fire of a thousand suns. The pain, seemingly in response to the thought, abruptly stabs its way up her arm, and she doubles over and gasps and thinks, Poison, maybe he won’t see poison coming.

“Hana-chan!” cries Haru, popping around the corner into the hallway and proving that there is always a lower place. “Oh, you look awful.”

“I feel awful,” Hana agrees as dryly as she can manage under the circumstances. “I don’t believe in false advertising.”

“Hmm.” Haru holds a hand out and makes a little beckoning gesture with her fingers. Hana tentatively offers up her damaged hand, though she has a bad feeling.

Haru slaps the shit out of Hana’s palm and there is blinding, agonizing pain. Sparks bloom across her vision. It actually, for a moment, hurts too much to scream.

“What the hell was that!?” Hana shrieks as soon as she can find the breath.

“Hahi? It kills the nerve endings. Now it’ll hurt less!”

“You’re making that up.”

“I’m not! Come on, if I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t have brought you this nice, cream disinfectant thing I got from Bianchi-san.”

Hana scowls suspiciously, protectively cradling her abused hand, which certainly feels like it still has living (screaming) nerve endings. “How did you know I’d need that?”

“Hibari-san told me.”

…Hibari told her. Right.

Questions: why would he bother? Is he capable of such a thing as being nice? Probably not. Is he trying to make Hana grateful to him? That seems unlikely. Does he know that Hana and Haru don’t much care for each other? Also unlikely. But whatever his reasons, the facts are the facts: first he made Hana bleed and cry, and now he’s inflicting Haru upon her.

Whatever. Someday she’ll poison his tea, and then his motivations won’t matter.

Haru is doctoring her hand quite gently, which is making Hana feel petty and small, physical abuse notwithstanding. “Hey,” she says reluctantly, “next time you have one of these, I’ll definitely slap the hell out of it for you.”

Haru laughs. “Kyoko-chan usually does mine.”

Wow. “That’s messed up.”

Haru giggles in response. Oh, the giggles. But fortunately, it’s not important for Haru to appeal to Hana. That is not the point of Haru. “You’re really good for Kyoko, you know?”

Haru’s hands pause over a bandage, expression turning uncharacteristically serious. “Well,” she says quietly, “I try to be. But I think…mostly Kyoko-chan is good for Haru.”

Hana is a bad, low, no-good human being. Make yourself like her! she orders herself for the hundredth time. It can’t be that hard!

“…Um,” murmurs a hesitant, vanishingly soft voice from right beside them. They both jump.

Chrome, of course. Woman moves like a ghost.

“Chrome-chan!” Haru cries, voice slipping from uncertainty into cheer with something like relief. “Are you looking for Hibari-san? He wandered off. You know how he does.”

“Oh.” Chrome fidgets, but doesn’t leave. She must have something to say, but is evidently afraid to say it. She’s such a sad object, it’s hard to remember that she’s a spy and assassin by trade. Which may be part of her evil plan. “Are you…okay?”

“Hana-chan just has a rip. She didn’t believe me when I told her you were supposed to smack them.”

“You didn’t tell me anything,” Hana mutters resentfully.

Haru ignores her. “What do you do for rips, Chrome-chan?”

“Oh. I used to pack mine with dirt.” A moment of considering silence. “It’s worse when calluses rip, I think.”

Haru and Hana stare. “Um…Chrome-chan?” Haru asks tentatively. “When you packed them with dirt…didn’t they get infected?”

Chrome shrugs. “Sometimes. But they would stop hurting.”

“Until they got infected.”

“At least it was a different kind of pain.”

It’s times like these when Hana remembers that Chrome can conjure up images that drive normal people into screaming insanity, and the inspiration for that had to come from somewhere. She is also reminded why she doesn’t seek Chrome out, as a general rule.

“Um, right. So what do you do for rips now?” Haru asks, because Haru and Kyoko are brave and crazy and they adore Chrome.

“Bianchi-san…” Chrome trails off. It’s really irritating when she does that. Still, Hana supposes they get the drift. Bianchi must have forbidden Chrome from packing her injuries with dirt, and when Bianchi forbids you from doing something, by God, you stop doing it.

Hana would like to be Bianchi when she grows up. Technically she already is grown up, but since she’s nowhere near as scary awesome as Bianchi, she pretends it isn’t so.

* * *

Illegal occupancy is usually Gokudera’s problem, and Hana’s not sure why she has to deal with it this time. Gokudera’s the expert. And he cares, which is more than can be said for Hana. Besides, her assigned muscle is Hibari, of all people. That’s nothing short of cruel. Has she annoyed Sawada in some way? Is this a punishment? A test?

“Pay attention,” Hibari murmurs, “or you’ll die. If you die, Sawada Tsunayoshi will make a nuisance of himself.”

Hana is touched by his concern.

The plan, apparently, is to persuade the squatters living in this vacant but Vongola-owned warehouse in Chiba to go away, and then to call Shouichi and Spanner so they can install a better security system. It ought to be an easy job.

It’s going to be a terrible job. Hana knows this, not because she’s chatted with squatters before, but because she knows how Sawada thinks. He has a ranking system for who gets sent on which type of job, with Haru and Lambo at the top (meetings with people who are almost friendly) and Mukuro and the Varia at the bottom (assassinations, quiet and loud, respectively).

Hibari is the last stop before the bottom, which means Sawada is predicting disaster. Though, in that case, the choice to send Hana along is…odd. The Iron Fist of the Vongola, she is not. Even Kyoko would make more sense-at least Kyoko’s good at calming people down.

If this turns out to be a test, Hana’s poisoning Sawada’s tea right after she poisons Hibari’s.

“Open it,” Hibari orders impatiently, standing at the warehouse’s side door. Maybe Sawada sent Hana along to open doors because carrying keys is beneath Hibari’s dignity. She opens the door anyway, feeling quite literally like a tool. (Slow-acting, painful, nasty poison.)

The squatters have a lookout waiting in the small office behind the door. Well, squatters may not be the most accurate description. Judging from the lookout, the alleged squatters are probably angry and armed, and Hana’s guessing this whole squatting thing was a ploy to lure the Vongola into showing up undermanned.

It might have worked, too, except that Sawada saw right through them and sent Hibari, who’s basically a one-man army.

Sensing this, the lookout takes the coward’s choice. Instead of attacking Hibari, he lunges for Hana, drags her close, and produces a knife. He is actually trying to use her as a hostage. Clearly he doesn’t know Hibari at all, but he’s about to learn.

Hibari ignores the entire hostage situation, sauntering unfazed toward the door to the warehouse proper.

The lookout panics. He shouts and threatens to kill Hana. Why he persists in believing this will interest Hibari, Hana does not know, but if they let him get any louder, the people on the other side of the door might hear. Someone needs to shut him up, and it seems Hibari can’t be bothered. Hana rolls her eyes, and, almost experimentally, knees the lookout in the nuts.

Apparently he didn’t see that coming; he does nothing to avoid or block it. Instead, he makes a whuffing noise, doubles over, and drops the knife like a moron. That means his head is in easy range, so Hana claps her cupped hands violently over his ears. He falls down, moaning. Hana nudges him onto his back and wrestles with herself a bit over whether she wants to go any further, because it’s inhumane, and, well, gross. On the other hand, she definitely doesn’t want this joker picking up any more weapons any time soon. On that thought, she grits her teeth and stomps on his collarbone, which breaks with a sickening crack. (Good call, wearing boots instead of heels.) He lets out a noise that would’ve been a scream if he weren’t so addled and breathless. Lucky he didn’t scream-it would’ve rendered the whole exercise pointless.

So that was…upsettingly easy. “What a wuss,” Hana says in some surprise over the moaning and whimpering.

“He didn’t expect a woman to fight,” says Hibari, voice thick with disgust. He must’ve paused to watch the show. “I told you, they’re herbivores.”

Hana looks down at the moaning lookout, then back at Hibari. She is actually experiencing a moment of gratitude toward Hibari Kyouya. It’s creepy, unnatural, and wrong.

Then she remembers that, if he’d felt like it, Hibari could’ve knocked the man down with one swipe of a tonfa and spared her the whole mess. “No. I don’t care. I don’t-you still owe me a kidney, Hibari!”

He ignores her, already turning and slipping through the door. The crashing and screaming starts shortly thereafter. No gunshots, but that’s not a huge surprise. As Hana well knows, bullets are often prohibitively expensive in Japan-Haru has lectured her on the subject at least five times.

Guns wouldn’t have saved the fake squatters from Hibari anyway; it’s just as well they didn’t waste the money.

So in the end, there’s no reason for Hana to be here. None at all. Though she does finally understand why she was sent-because of Sawada’s horrible optimism. If Sawada had been wrong, if these people really had been squatters, Hana would’ve had the unenviable task of trying to keep Hibari from killing them anyway. It makes a ruthless kind of sense.

There are a very limited number of people willing to work with Hibari. Of that number, Kusakabe never argues with him, Dino’s in Italy, Yamamoto’s on some top-secret something with Gokudera, Chrome and Adelheid would both have actively joined in on the killing, Mukuro doesn’t bear thinking about, and Kyoko gave up on preventing Hibari from doing things years ago and now just aims for damage control. Which leaves Hana. Thanks for nothing, Sawada.

Hana grabs the moaning guy’s knife (abundance of caution), walks to a window for better reception, and calls Shouichi.

“Hibari’s cleaning up now,” she informs him. “So are you guys actually going to secure the building this time, or were you planning to make do with ofuda and prayerful good wishes again?”

Shouichi has no sense of humor. Hopefully he’ll never work out that this makes tormenting him the easiest thing in the world.

* * *

Planned-for excitement is bad enough, but unexpected excitement in the middle of the downtown is just plain stupid.

It had been a good day, so of course Hana should have been prepared for disaster-these things have a way of balancing out. She and Haru had managed to do something absolutely evil and yet hopefully untraceable to the Motisi clan-the clan of out-of-control extortion issues. They’d engineered a perfect moment to have Kyoko introduce the right people to the wrong people.

Explosions, arrests, and burnt buildings ensued. The arrest of Giovanni Motisi, among others, which is something the police have allegedly been aiming for for almost thirty years. It’s beautiful.

The thing about Kyoko in Italy is that she’s pretty and polite and foreign, and all of those things combine to make most mafia men believe she’s a naïve pushover who might sleep with them. Wrong on all counts. So, so wrong. (They use Yamamoto on mafia women to much the same effect.)

Haru and Hana reassured each other that they hadn’t actually used Kyoko as a honey trap, and anyway, she’d volunteered. Once comforted on that score, they entertained themselves with the thought of the innocently adorable smile Kyoko must have worn. Hana was every bit as guilty of giggling as Haru. In fact, even Gokudera giggled when they told him about it.

That was this morning. Unfortunately, it is now afternoon.

Hana pauses in the park on her way to the new mall. There’s some festival or other going on, and they have all kinds of food stands set up. She’s checking out the lunch options and being quietly amused by the knowledge that there’s a high-tech base under her feet when she bumps into Mayumi. Normally, this would be a cause for cheer; she loves Mayumi. Unfortunately, she bumps into Mayumi just in time to spot Gokudera and Sawada running across the park with faces like grim death, faces that say, Duck and cover-we fucked up.

Hana cuts Mayumi off mid-hello, grabs her, shoves her under the nearest condiment table, and bundles in beside her, strongly wishing condiment tables were sturdier.

“Your timing is very bad,” she informs Mayumi, crushing her face into the dirt more firmly than strictly necessary. First she was feeling gratitude toward Hibari, now sympathy for him. This job is making her batshit, is what. “Very bad, unspeakably bad, why are you here?”

Mayumi mumbles something into the dirt, and Hana eases up on the head crushing a little. Mayumi displays her gratitude by spitting mud at Hana. “What the hell is going on?” she hisses in a rage.

That’s when Gokudera starts blowing stuff up. Mayumi yelps and tries to use Hana’s body as a shield.

“He’s on our side,” Hana shouts. Something explodes nearby, spraying them with fine debris. Mayumi pulls back enough to give Hana a look expressive of her lack of confidence in Hana’s allies. Hana sighs agreement, tugs off her jacket and throws it over their heads. That should help with the small stuff. They’ll still die if anything big hits them, though.

Hana loves her coworkers.

An indeterminate amount of time and number of explosions later, a hand tugs the jacket from their heads, and Hana squints up to see Gokudera scowling down at them. The rest of the park seems to have cleared out. Imagine that.

No hint of sirens, though. Why are there no sirens? Why are there never any sirens? Is this one of those creepy mafia things everyone is better off not knowing?

“This is Takahara Mayumi,” Hana tells Gokudera in a pleasant, introductory tone. “We went to school with her, remember?”

“Maybe. Do you remember that word omertà that I taught you?” Gokudera demands.

“What was that!?” Hana shouts. “I couldn’t hear you over the ringing in my ears caused by those explosions in a public park.”

“Oh my God, it’s Gokudera Hayato,” Mayumi whispers. “This is hell, isn’t it. I’ve lived a bad life, and now I’m being punished.”

“This is no time to be hysterical,” Hana informs her, sitting up and patting at her hair, suspecting it’s dusted white with random park debris. “But if you want to throw rocks at him, I won’t stop you.”

“No one throw rocks, please,” says an amused voice that’s positively dripping with charisma cooties. Hana scowls and Gokudera smiles.

“Shut up, Sawada,” Hana forces herself to say. “You’re responsible for half the cost of cleaning this jacket.”

“Oh, is that…Takahara-san?” Sawada asks in alarm when he notices Mayumi. He would remember her name. The name of a girl he hasn’t seen since they were teenagers. “Are you alright? Um, how did you…well, I’m sorry you got mixed up in this. Would you like someone to take you home?”

“Loser Tsuna,” Mayumi says, turning to Hana with wide eyes. “You were so right.”

“Told you,” Hana agrees. “Freaky, isn’t it?”

Sawada tips his head to the side curiously, but doesn’t ask for clarification. He looks all cute and delicate and sweet, but Hana knows he just burned down half the park while Gokudera blew up the other half, and, unlike Gokudera, he didn’t even break a sweat. He’s scary as hell, that’s what he is, and no amount of cuteness can make up for it.

“Hana, should I accept a ride?” Mayumi asks, justifiably bewildered, maybe a little stunned from random explosions.

“Probably,” Hana allows. If Sawada thinks she might be in danger…he’s likely not wrong. “Actually, yes. Definitely. Who’s driving, guys?”

“Kusakabe-san,” Sawada says.

“Oh, good.” Kusakabe is a great driver. If it had been Yamamoto, Gokudera, any Varia at all, or even Ryouhei, not to be disloyal, well. Hana would have walked. “In that case, I want a ride, too.”

“Kurokawa…how did you end up here?”

“It was pure bad luck,” she admits. “Please consider what it means when people can get caught up in your chaos out of bad luck. Wait, don’t try to think, I’ll just tell you: lawsuits, that’s what it means.”

“Hana,” Mayumi murmurs with quiet menace. “We’re going to have coffee and a nice, long talk soon, okay?”

Hana sighs.

“Omertà,” Gokudera says again, and Hana stands up and kicks him in the shin.

* * *

The next bit of unplanned excitement is, unfortunately, all Hana’s fault. Well, not all her fault-but it can’t be denied that if she had a little more self-control, she wouldn’t have goaded that Inagawa-kai guy into punching her in the face on purpose. It was just that he was a jerk and she’d wanted to prove how very like a monkey in a suit he was, and yeah, okay, it was a bad idea from the start.

Although technically she walked away the winner: he hit her but didn’t manage to knock her down, and even his own men gave him funny looks-can’t even deck a girl, what a loser.

What they don’t know about Hibari’s training regimen won’t hurt the Vongola.

Still, a bad idea. Predictably, Ryouhei didn’t take well to his girlfriend getting punched in the face. (Hana had tried to talk Sawada into sending someone else as muscle, but once Sawada’s got an idea in his head, you can’t thwack it out with a crowbar. Hana’s seen people try.) So Hana got punched and Ryouhei attacked the room at large. When Ryouhei’s fighting, it’s wisest to stay out of the way, so for the most part, Hana did.

She did break a chair over the head of the suited monkey, though. That was satisfying.

Ultimately, the whole mess led to this: Hana standing on a familiar doorstep with her bloody, battered boyfriend leaning heavily against her, total mortification in the offing. They didn’t even get the construction contracts they were aiming for. Gokudera may make her cry over this one, and he won’t be wrong.

And God, this is going to be an awkward visit.

Ryouhei’s legs give out, Hana staggers under his weight, and she decides she can deal with awkwardness better than she can deal with hauling Ryouhei all the way back to base. She pushes the doorbell with her elbow and prays there won’t be too many questions.

“God save us,” gasps the woman who opens the door.

“Mom!” Hana cries. “Um, sorry I haven’t visited for a while? But we were in the neighborhood, and, ah ha ha!-” God, she sounds like Yamamoto and Haru combined and on speed, this is so, so bad “-you wanted to meet my boyfriend, right? Here he is!”

Ryouhei’s managed to get his legs more or less under him again, and he waves cheerfully at Hana’s mother, or as cheerfully as a guy that messed up can manage. “It’s a pleasure to meet you! Thank you for the extreme honor of allowing me to date your daughter!”

Mom appears to be approaching a state of permanent shock. Not helpful. “Can we come in?” Hana asks desperately.

Hana’s father, attracted by the noise, drifts into the entryway, stops in alarm, and studies the scene. Hana waits in dread.

Dad beams and claps Ryouhei firmly on the shoulder. “Nice to meet you, son,” he says, chucking, while Ryouhei tries not to whimper in pain. “Finally, eh? Come in, come in-we can’t leave family hanging on the doorstep!”

“But-” Mom starts, bewildered.

“But nothing! Our future son-in-law!”

Great. Mom wants to call the cops, and Dad’s already married them in his mind. It’s not worse than Hana was expecting, but it is weirder.

They settle themselves carefully in the living room. Mom goes to make tea, Dad goes to fetch the first aid kid, and Hana studies Ryouhei, trying to work out what delighted Dad so much.

Hana has a massive bruise on her face, which is something parents don’t generally take well to. On the other hand, Ryouhei is a catastrophe. Bruises, blood, powder burns-though Hana really hopes Dad didn’t recognize them as powder burns. Ryouhei’s knuckles are the hardest-hit, of course. They always are. Split, bleeding. He’s a mess.

What does this picture say to a father? Lightly damaged daughter, destroyed boyfriend. Destroyed boyfriend with really battered knuckles…

Hana ducks her head and smiles. Okay. So it probably looks like someone hit her, and Ryouhei took on the whole world in retaliation. Which is…approximately what happened. No wonder Dad approves.

“Better report in,” Ryouhei says, woozily swaying in place. The problem with sun flames is that it’s apparently hard to use them on yourself when you’re completely wiped out. So they’re useless when they’re most needed. It figures.

Ryouhei’s just going to have to get by on standard first aid, though, because Aoba’s not in the country, and Hana refuses to call Lussuria. It’s one thing for a man to hit on her boyfriend, but it’s another thing entirely for a self-proclaimed necrophiliac to hit on her boyfriend. She’s just never going to warm up to the guy.

“I’ll call,” Hana says, scooting closer to Ryouhei so he can lean against her. “You’d probably pass out halfway through, and Gokudera would have a panic attack.”

“I’m fine!” Ryouhei insists.

“You lie,” Hana replies. “You lie constantly; it’s a sickness with you. And what’s more, you lie badly.”

“That’s not true to the extreme!”

“You just told me you were fine…and then you tried to wipe blood out of your eye and couldn’t reach. If you admit you’re not fine, I’ll wipe the blood out of your eye for you.”

And the stubborn stare-off commences. Hana suspects they’ll be the death of each other one day.

“…I’m extremely tired,” Ryouhei admits grudgingly.

This doesn’t quite meet the terms, but Hana caves. He’s just too pathetic. “Well, don’t fall asleep; you’d probably die.” She wipes the blood away from his eye, leans up and kisses him gently on an undamaged part of his forehead, then resumes her duties as a prop and pulls out her phone.

It’s a sad fact, but these days, she has Gokudera on speed-dial herself.

“Where are you?” Gokudera shrieks into her ear.

“At my parents’ place. We’re fine. Sort of. Also, ow.”

“Sort of-we’ll be there in five. Don’t move. Don’t say anything to anyone.” And click. That is one paranoid man. One paranoid man who evidently knows where Hana’s parents live.

Of course he does.

“Gokudera knows where my parents live,” she informs Ryouhei.

“It’s his job,” he replies, squinting stubbornly against blood that Hana refuses to wipe away on principle.

Hana’s parents take this moment to make their presence known, though, and Hana’s mom wipes the blood away instead, before suspiciously checking Hana over. Once Mom’s satisfied that Hana will live, she has Dad pass her first aid stuff while she cleans Ryouhei up and bandages him and does all those good, wifey things that Hana is never, ever going to learn to do. Frankly, she has no idea what Ryouhei sees in her. Of course, Ryouhei is insane and she has never once understood him, so she’s not too worried.

“Gokudera?” Mom asks mildly. Because she’s a sneaky eavesdropping menace.

“Gokudera,” Hana repeats thoughtfully. “He’s sort of our boss. But at the same time, sort of our collective mother, or maybe stalker boyfriend.”

“Sawada’s our boss,” Ryouhei corrects in the appalled tone of someone who’s overheard people insisting the sun rises in the west.

“Yes, dear,” Hana agrees, rolling her eyes. “That’s another way to say it. Sawada’s our boss, and Gokudera is his stalker boyfriend.”

“But Gokudera’s Yamamoto’s-”

“Don’t be so narrow-minded.”

Mom doesn’t look very reassured. Dad, on the other hand, appears to be having the time of his life. “I had no idea,” he murmurs, “that you worked with so many interesting people, Hana. Why didn’t you call this…Sawada, then? If he’s your boss.”

“Sawada?” Hana shivers at the thought. “No way. Now is not the time to call Sawada.”

Ryouhei is silently shaking his head in horrified agreement. Hana grabs his chin and holds him still, trying to see if that cut on his cheekbone is deep enough to need stitches.

“…Why not?” asks Dad.

“Because he’d freak, that’s why.” She releases Ryouhei. No stitches, probably. That’s good, for what it’s worth. “If he sees one of us bleeding, he goes berserk, and we don’t need any smoking craters in the downtown right now. God, Sawada, I swear. In this line of work, he has no business losing it every time we get a little bashed up.”

Hana is talking too much. Ryouhei is staring at her because she’s talking too much. This is why she’s tried to avoid her parents for the last few years-her dad has this horrible effect on her. The babble effect. It’s the way he looks so interested, the jerk.

“Hmm. Tell me again, what exactly is it you do?”

“Consulting,” she answers promptly. “Some days I am the entire in-house legal department for a consulting firm.”

“Consulting,” her father repeats, delighted. Shouldn’t he be worried? Wouldn’t that be the fatherly thing, here?

His delight only increases when he escorts in an angry, hysterical, chain smoking Gokudera. Gokudera, who takes one look at Ryouhei and Hana, says, “Oh, fuck,” and marches directly back out the door.

Dad beams at the entire situation. He’s a bad person. At least Hana doesn’t have to wonder where she gets it from.

Mom, on the other hand, looks scandalized, traumatized, all the proper parent emotions, but she doesn’t say anything. Unlike Hana and her father, Mom only says about half of what she’s thinking, and it’s the nice half.

Gokudera returns with Yamamoto, who cheerfully introduces himself and Gokudera around the room before kneeling and hoisting Ryouhei to his feet. “Thanks for taking care of him!” Yamamoto says brightly.

“It’s no trouble looking out for my future son-in-law,” Dad replies, rivaling Yamamoto’s brightness and patting Ryouhei firmly on his bruised cheek. Ryouhei winces, grins, says, “Thank you, sir!”

Hana doesn’t understand men.

Gokudera, meanwhile, is gazing critically around the room, and eventually settles on Hana’s mom as the most competent person available. “Kurokawa-san,” he says with disorienting politeness. “How bad is this idiot? Broken bones, concussion, what?”

Hana’s mother, though horrified at being addressed by an obvious maniac, makes an effort to rally. “Well…well, I’m not a doctor, but, um. Nothing seems broken. He may have a mild concussion; our Hana’s been keeping him awake. He should get properly checked…?”

Gokudera bows and even thanks Mom, which is the creepiest thing he’s ever done. Brain-breaking mission accomplished, the guys haul Hana’s possibly-concussed boyfriend out the door as she watches in combined worry and irritation.

Dad’s hand lands on her shoulder and she flinches. She really doesn’t want to hear what he has to say.

“I remember when you weren’t going to get married,” he murmurs gleefully. “‘Marriage is a restrictive institution,’ you said.”

“I’m not married; marriage is a restrictive institution,” Hana snaps.

“Mm. You’re as good as married, Hana.”

Actually, she’s managed to snag all the good things about marriage without putting up with any of the bad things. She’s better than married. It’s not something she wants to point out to her married father, though. “I’m still not having kids.”

Dad has the gall to smirk. “Yes, dear.”

“I am not having kids.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Kurokawa, are we getting him to the hospital, or do you plan to stand there bullshitting until his brain bleeds out?” Gokudera demands.

“His brain is not bleeding out,” she mutters. Still, she kisses her snickering father on the cheek, hugs her long-suffering mother, and dutifully climbs into the car. She doesn’t want to be blamed for Gokudera’s inevitable aneurysm.

* * *

“So you work when you’re worried?” Gokudera asks some hours later, waltzing into her office like he owns the place, which he most assuredly does not. (Technically, Sawada owns it.)

“So you’re a stalker? Oh wait, I knew that-how is he?”

“You could’ve stuck around and found out for yourself.”

She could have, but it seemed irrational. She knows he’s fine. Anyway, Kyoko was sure to stick around, and Hana has a lot of work piling up. She only meant to do one quick job today, and it turned into an entire ruined afternoon plus bloodshed. She’s busy. Besides, that hospital smell gives her an instant panic attack. “Okay, fine, you win. I do work when I’m worried. Also when I’m unhappy, uncertain, or angry. Like you, I am a workaholic. We share a disease; I feel closer already. Do I pass? Can you tell me if my boyfriend’s alive now?”

Gokudera slings himself into her purely decorative client chair and starts pulling books off her shelves. Hana doesn’t have any brothers, but she’s pretty sure she knows what it would feel like if she did. “He’s fine. Your mom was right-a concussion, but not too bad. You’ll have to wake him up once an hour all night, though. Have fun.”

Hana signs a letter to distract herself from doing anything ridiculous, such as expressing emotion in front of Gokudera.

“And you seriously lucked out with the Inagawa-kai,” he goes on. “Turns out Okumura-the guy who punched you-was getting to be trouble for the oyabun anyway. Now that he’s made an ass of himself in front of his men, he’s not as much of a threat. The oyabun is pleased. So good job, you got us the contracts.”

Hana breathes out slowly. Better lucky than good, apparently. “It was all part of my master plan.”

“Yeah right. Look, if I have to deal with my rage issues, you have to deal with yours. Pull something stupid like that again, and I go to the Tenth. He’ll make you take a class.”

Does this mean Sawada’s made Gokudera take anger management classes? Hana hopes so, because if he has, that is her beautiful thought for life. “…Fair enough.”

“Your parents are surprisingly likable,” Gokudera informs her after a minute or two of silence which he spends checking indexes for God knows what. “They know what you do for a living?”

“Don’t be stupid; it doesn’t suit you.”

“I think you could tell them.”

“Yes, because you’re a poster child for happy family relationships.”

“Fuck you, I mean it. What? You’ve got an exciting job with international travel and a good income and a…well, a stupid boyfriend, but they seemed to like him. Isn’t that what normal parents want?”

“Plus violence and systematic lawbreaking,” she points out.

“Whatever, you’re not into that side of it much. You’re fine.”

“You’re right,” Hana agrees, feeling distinctly crazy. “I am a Namimori success story. I’m a star.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gokudera mutters, now browsing tort law. “Get a grip.”

He proceeds to do a good impression of not paying any attention to her. On the other hand, he doesn’t go anywhere. He’s letting her work, but not leaving her alone.

Just what a brother would feel like.

Hana bites her lip and turns back to her letters and firmly instructs herself not to encourage Gokudera by smiling or alarm him by crying.

* * *

“Today,” Kyoko moans, wandering into Hana’s bedroom and pitching face-first onto her bed. Hana peers at this strange spectacle from the safety of her desk. “Today was not a success. Contracts notwithstanding. Brother’s fine, by the way. He’s staying overnight in the base hospital, though-he didn’t want you to have to wake him up all night.”

Hana resents the fact that Ryouhei knows what a lousy nurse she is. “I could have handled that much.”

“You know my brother,” Kyoko says, turning her head to the side and staring at Hana with one bloodshot, exhausted eye, hair strewn across her face. Hana hasn’t seen her this badly put together in years. “Always has to do everything himself. Refuses help.” She huffs dismissively and buries her face back in Hana’s pillow. “Your bruise…” she mumbles into said pillow.

“It’s fine.” They’ve both had worse from Hibari, God knows.

No further comment for some time. Maybe Kyoko is planning to fall asleep on Hana’s bed, thus forcing Hana to sleep on the floor, and thereby exacting revenge for the way Hana fled the hospital like a coward.

“So why are you here instead of with your brother?” Hana asks, figuring if she’s going to draw fire over the cowardly abandonment, she wants it here and now instead of at some unpredictable future moment.

Kyoko stomps on her expectations, of course. It’s what Hana gets for daring to expect anything. “You need more watching than Brother right now,” Kyoko explains, muffled. “You get so guilty sometimes. It’s silly.”

Hana’s known Kyoko for over half their lives; she should not still be having this what the fuck? reaction to her so often. “Yeah, right. Silly. I mean, I only ran out on my injured boyfriend-why would I feel bad about that?”

Kyoko turns her head to the side again, the better to allow Hana to see her disappointed face. “You didn’t run out on him. You left him with doctors. You couldn’t do anything for his head, and you’re…well, you’re kind of a menace in a hospital room.”

So no one wanted her around anyway. Nice.

“You shouldn’t even have a boyfriend who’s always getting beaten up,” Kyoko rambles on in an increasingly tiny, sad voice. “As it is, you have a job that sometimes gets you beaten up, and that’s…you never would have. If it weren’t for me, you’d have a normal life, but I dragged you into this, and now-well. I’m sorry, Hana.”

Allowing herself to look that upset is the Kyoko equivalent of kneeling on the floor, tearing her hair, and sobbing for forgiveness. It’s terrifying. “Speaking of silly guilt,” Hana says brusquely, “stop that right now, you’re freaking me out. I knew what I was getting into, thanks. You made Gokudera give me a lecture, for which I may never forgive you-and Gokudera may never forgive you, either-but no one can say I wasn’t warned.”

“But you-”

“Plus,” Hana says loudly before Kyoko can come out with anything else upsetting, “I am never bored.”

Kyoko giggles despite herself. “There’s that,” she agrees. “Our lives are definitely way too interesting.”

* * *

“Ha! I knew it to the extreme!”

Hana’s head jerks up from where it was resting (unbruised side down) on the intellectual property notes she’s been going over for Spanner’s benefit, and she stares wildly around the room. All the lights are still on, but that hasn’t kept Kyoko from falling asleep on Hana’s bed, face buried in the pillow in a way that you’d think would lead to suffocation. And then there’s Ryouhei, who is for some reason standing in the doorway, wearing nothing but hospital pants, bandages, and an insane grin.

It may seem like an odd trip, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. Much of Hana’s life has a certain hallucinogenic feel to it. “Ryouhei. Weren’t you staying in the hospital?”

Ryouhei nods vigorously, which probably isn’t good for him. “You needed sleep! But then I remembered, you definitely wouldn’t sleep-you never sleep when you worry. So you need company! Plus, if you’re awake anyway, it’s extremely easy to wake me up every hour.”

He beams, pleased with this logic. Hana carefully refrains from hitting him; he is concussed. “Uh…huh. So you broke out of the hospital, and now you’re planning to sleep…where, exactly? Your sister’s crashed out on my bed: observe.”

She points to Kyoko, who’s slept through all of this. No surprise there: years of living with Ryouhei have left Kyoko with the ability to sleep through anything short of explosions. Haru came to check on her earlier and rejected Hana’s idea of waking and moving her as ridiculous.

“Brought a futon,” Ryouhei explains, reaching back into the hallway and, indeed, grabbing a futon, dragging it into the room, and arranging it on the floor immediately behind Hana’s chair. He carefully extracts a pillow from Hana’s bed without disturbing Kyoko and flings himself down with a carelessness that would doubtless meet with medical disapproval.

Hana sighs and rummages up some spare blankets, offers them to Ryouhei, and gets a puzzled frown in return. She rolls her eyes and pitches the blankets at his head.

“I know I’m a failure of a girlfriend, but I’m not actually so bad that I’d let you freeze all night on my floor without blankets.”

“What failure?” he asks, pawing blankets away from his face.

“You can’t seriously tell me you weren’t bothered by the way I ran away and hid when you were with doctors. Obviously I should have been there.”

Ryouhei looks deeply confused. Not that this is an uncommon look for him. “Why?”

“Be-because, because I’m your girlfriend, because I should-I’m supposed to be-”

He’s sitting up now, as if to better communicate the force of his bafflement. “You’re not a doctor to the extreme!”

“Well, no, but-”

“You hate doctors!”

“Yeah, I have a phobia, but that’s-”

“I hate doctors!”

“And that’s exactly why-”

“If I have to be with doctors, I don’t want you with doctors, too. Pointless to the extreme!”

“I’m useless when you’re hurt,” Hana snaps, determined to get in at least one complete sentence.

“Hana. You dragged me all the way to your parents’ place.”

It’s not often that Ryouhei settles down and turns serious. That’s probably why he’s so devastating on the rare occasions when he bothers.

And he has a point. She did drag him to her parents’ place. In fact, she waited to run away and freak out until he was in the hands of medical professionals and she was sure he’d be fine.

Oh.

“Come here,” he says, lying down again and throwing an arm out toward her. “Better for your back than hunching over a desk like that!”

“What if I fall asleep down there and don’t wake you up in an hour and then when I finally wake up in the morning you’re dead?”

“If you’re thinking like that, you’ll be extremely awake all night! Come on.”

She sighs, grabs her watch, slides out of the chair, and stretches out beside Ryouhei. He wraps an arm around her contentedly and falls asleep in-she times it-ninety-three seconds.

Hana is lying on a borrowed futon on the floor of her own bedroom on top of the blankets so she’ll stay uncomfortable and cold and awake, the better to wake up her concussed lover every hour. Oh, and said lover’s sister is sleeping on her bed, hence the whole borrowed futon situation. It’s like they’re going for some kind of award in domestic surrealism.

As if to confirm a point, Ryouhei starts snoring. Hana giggles quietly, possibly a little hysterically. Clearly, there is something very, very wrong with her.

Despite everything, she really does love her stupid life.

Part 1