Lay me down in a field of flame and heather.

Written to the prompt "kicking asses; taking names". The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for August 5, 2009.

That they are in the same area doing the same job is not a coincidence: Hibari Kyouya may not like having people hanging around his heels while he is fighting, but Rokudo Mukuro has never been one to let the things that he cares about out of his sight for too long. Hibari Kyouya interests him (the Vongola Family's mercurial Cloud Guardian is his favorite toy, has been since the day they met), so he makes it his business to be wherever the Skylark happens to be, no matter what, and without exceptions.

Suffice to say, Mukuro's presence did not please Hibari at all, and he acted accordingly: by attempting to bite Mukuro to death on the spot.

One might think that a distracted Cloud Guardian meant a slight increase in the probability of his original targets making it out alive. Contrary to popular belief, it only meant that the members of the family that he had originally been planning on taking out died faster, because they were getting in between him and the pleasure of rearranging Mukuro's face.

"Oya, oya~ aren't you tired?"

"Silence, herbivore."

So it was that after the fact, well after spending half a day chasing each other down through the corridors of a mansion that isn't even theirs and using dead bodies as their stepping stones, Hibari and Mukuro were up against the wall and tangled together, with Hibari's tonfa up under Mukuro's neck and Mukuro's trident locked up against Hibari's back to keep the fighter in place. There was an almost loving amount of precision applied in this latest attempt of theirs to endear themselves to one another by trying to maim each other, an almost romantic sentiment to the way the air between them was hot with their intermingled breath, to how they simply could not look away from each other for even a single second.

"Checkmate, Kyouya," Mukuro purred, mismatched eyes narrowing in amusement. "If I move, you'll kill me. If you move, I'll kill you. Whatever shall we do, I wonder…"

"You talk too much."

"Then what will you have me do?"

And Hibari answers him, by dropping his tonfa, by fisting his hands up in Mukuro's collar and drawing him forward, to better bite at his lips.

There's nothing quite like the taste of blood in one's mouth to put everything back into perspective, nothing quite like the smell of the other man (sweat, iron, gunpowder, sandalwood) to stir up an acute and very animalistic sense of need within one's loins.

Mukuro lets Hibari violate his mouth for a moment longer before taking the other and spinning them both about, reversing their positions, slamming Hibari's body against the wood and bulletproof glass. The way the Cloud Guardian growls at him does not intimidate him – it only reminds him of their last time, of shattered gray eyes in the half-light of a crescent moon and the way his name sounds like when it's being moaned into his ear.

Gloved hand skipping down the length of Hibari's spine, all the way down to his ass. The other tenses up, much the same way he does right before he sends a kick or a punch in someone else's direction. Mukuro catches that arm before it can take his jaw out, twists it behind his beloved's back.

Not even a wince, not even a shudder: just pure, unadulterated rage, singularly focused in the look Hibari sends him from over his shoulder.

Impressive, almost, and most definitely amusing.

"So shall we do it here," Mukuro lightly asks, "or would you rather do it on the floor?"