A/N: This story's name is actually "My Gay Boyfriend" after the rather amusing song. However, it was pointed out to me that "gay" when used in reference to sexuality isn't considered by some people to be a G-rated word. So to be on the safe side with 's policies, I've only called this "My Boyfriend" on the main page, but those who actually read author's notes will now know its real name. Oh, and since I'm making a note, I should probably mention that I don't own Get Backers, but I can lay intellectual property claim to the ideas contained in this story. No stealy!

I'm having trouble figuring out HEVN's timeline for this. In the manga, she's 21. However, in the anime, she was a scientist working on a project of great national importance. Now, last time I checked, you had to have been through at least some college to be a government scientist. Unless she was an undergraduate research assistant, or unless I don't understand Japan's school systems/gov research industries. Which I don't, and which I only get links to "Wolfwood is in the Yakuza" when I try to google it. I hate election year politics. Anyway, if anyone knows how to rectify the fact that she's the world's youngest government scientist... good for you, because I don't!

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HEVN pushed the "get messages" button on her cell phone, yawning with a slight sense of boredom. No one had called her to arrange a job in three days, and she was running a bit low on cash. Please, please let this be a job with a large payout, she thought to herself.

"Hey, dear," a man's voice said. Nuts, it was only her parents. "Your mother got a great deal on a travel package to Japan. It's been a long time, hasn't it? Since we moved back to America and you stayed in Japan with your aunt to finish high school, and then you got that great job at the research firm. We're so proud of you, darling. That's why we're really looking forward to visiting you, seeing where you work, meeting your fiancé..."

By this time, HEVN's face was turning all kinds of shades of colors. Her parents had sworn never to fly again after the terrorist events in America, so she hadn't thought she'd ever be seeing them face to face again. Thus, in her videos and emails to them, she hadn't thought anything of fudging the truth about her life to them. After all, how could she explain that she'd quit her well-paying job with retirement benefits to crawl around the streets of Shinjuku? Especially since her new job was finding jobs for people her parents wouldn't normally touch with a forty-foot pole.

Of course, that was not pointing out that her fiancé was currently in another country after having sold the technology she'd been helping develop to an enemy country. She hadn't exactly mentioned that to her parents, either.

There were only two options that the young, yellow-eyed blonde could see. The first option was to come clean to her parents about the fact that she'd lied to them about her job and her fiancé. The second was to produce a fiancé and a workplace, but that seemed too hard. No, best to come clean to her parents...

Until she listened to the second message on her cell phone. "Oh, HEVN-dear, sweet HEVN. You're still using that silly government code name? I'm coming to visit with the parents, and I'm brining my fiancé. Dad says he doesn't want to wait until he's dead to divide up the family fortune, so we'll work that out between us and our fiancés when we come to visit. You do have one, don't you? Because if you don't, I doubt dad will give you one red cent. You know how he feels about unmarried women and feminists... So you'd better not have been lying to us, dear HEVN-san," her sister's voice chirped over the phone. How someone could be so evil and so happy at the same time, she didn't... wait, she knew Akabane-san.

Her sister was right, though. Her rather chauvinist father wouldn't leave her a single penny if thought there wasn't a man ready to receive it, and not even her mom could convince him otherwise. She had to produce at least a fiancé, if not a job. Well, that shouldn't be a problem. She knew tons of eligible, handsome young men. Best of all most of them were dead broke. Finding someone willing to be her fiancé for hire shouldn't be hard at all!

HEVN went over what she'd told her parents about her fiancé in her emails. Handsome, but not anything that would cause you to do a double take. Dark hair, dark eyes. Dignified, elegant, and amazingly intelligent. Rich, as far as scientists go. Fantastic conversationalist, willing to wait until marriage before going all the way.

Well, okay, so none of the men she knew exactly fit that profile, but she could pay them to pretend they did. The only catch was that she had to get someone with poise. If her father thought she was hooking up with what he deemed to be a "commoner," rude, or just plain unworthy of his precious daughter she still wouldn't see any of the inheritance.

Ban knows how to play the violin and appreciates fine art, HEVN thought to herself as she pushed open the door to the Honky Tonk. That, and he's desperate for money. I'll be able to buy his services as a false fiancé on the cheap...

"UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRP!" Ban belched loud and clear. "Beat that, Ginji."

Ginji took as deep of breath as he could manage. "BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURP!"

Natsumi giggled and applauded, thinking the boy's belching contest was cute. She turned her head to HEVN, standing with a greenish look on her face in the doorway. "Welcome, HEVN-san! Want to watch Ban and Ginji burp the English alphabet?"

In HEVN's mind, she was sitting at dinner with her father, mother, sister, and sister's fiancé. Her head was down in her food as Ban stood up in his chair, belching out the Star Spangled Banner in honor of his American guests. All her relatives faces were combinations of red, green, and white, and her father was crossing her name off the will as fast as possible. Her vision ended with her father realizing that Ban had eaten so quickly he'd thrown food all over them, then had stolen his wallet on the way out.

"No... thank you... I just came by... too say hello," she said, quickly turning around and fleeing from the Honky Tonk as though the hounds of hell were on her high heels.

"What was that all about?" Ginji asked.

"Dunno," Ban shrugged. "BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRP!"

"Oh, I can beat that! BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPP!"

Okay, so Ban doesn't have the tact I need. Kazuki, however, is very graceful and elegant. He's the very definition of graceful and elegant, just with the way he walks and the way he talks. A real gentleman's gentleman. If she could get him to hide his hair under a hat so her father wouldn't write him off as too girly, he'd be perfect.

Kazuki let her into the apartment he'd shared with Jubei ever since Jubei became blind. "Oh, HEVN-san, come in."

"Thank you, Kazuki-kun. Say, do you like the theater and expensive dinners?"

"Oh, I love them! Jubei does too."

"Well... I... was kind of... thinking of... dinner for just the two of us."

Kazuki shook his head. "Jubei is really depressed about not being as funny as Emishi, so I can't leave him alone right now. I'd be more than willing to pay for his meal, though, if you wanted both of us to come along."

In HEVN's mind, she was introducing Kazuki to her father. "This is my fiancé, and this is his... blind friend Jubei."

Jubei suddenly lept forward. "Do you like jokes? I will tell you one! Why did the chicken cross the road?"

"Err," her father said.

"Because it was stapled to the turkey!"

Everyone just stared. "Don't- don't you mean, the turkey was stapled to the chicken?" her sister asked timidly.

Jubei's face went blank. "You're right, I have failed the joke. I will commit ritual suicide as apologies!!!!"

"Jubei, no!" Kazuki cried. Jubei knocked his hat off in the flailing about trying to stop the suicide, revealing those long, beautiful locks.

"Gasp! My daughter's fiancé is a femme man? You're off the will!" her father cried in her imagination sequence.

HEVN returned slowly to reality. "I... I'll let you know when I know the date!" she cried, scooping up her purse and fleeing as quickly from the apartment as possible. Well, cross Kazuki off the list, since Jubei apparently came as part of the package deal.

She decided to try Shido. She was sure Madoka would understand that she was just borrowing him, not trying to steal his heart. Madoka was a sweet enough girl. As she walked towards the mansion, however, she began to remember the story of how Shido attempted to go to Madoka's recital... and was several hours late. Not minutes, hours.

In her mind, HEVN sat nervously at the table, stirring her drink. "You... do have a fiancé, right?" her sister was sneering.

"Yes, he's just always late!" HEVN cried in protest.

"How unprofessional," snorted her father.

"I bet she lied to us and doesn't really have one," her sister smirked.

"You're right," HEVN's mental father agreed. "She's off the will for lying to me!"

HEVN paused in front of the gates to Madoka's mansion. Nope, she wasn't going to even try asking Shido.

"Hello! HEVN-san it was, wasn't it?" Emishi asked, surprising her. She looked him up and down, opened her mouth- and then closed it. No to that, as well.

"Just taking a walk!" HEVN cried, jogging away from Emishi as fast as she could in high heels. She wasn't even going to go there.

Distress had settled of HEVN's heart. She was running quickly out of eligible bachelors. Heck, she'd even take a married guy if she could. Just someone with enough class to impress her father long enough to get her on the will...

"Maybe I could ask Paul," she muttered to herself. "I mean, maybe dad won't notice how old he is. Maybe dad will be impressed that I'm dating and older man. Maybe..."

The loud blast of a truck horn honking suddenly threw HEVN back into reality. She'd wandered off the sidewalk and right into the path of a semi truck! Realizing there wasn't enough time to run out of the way, HEVN screamed and threw her hands up in front of her face in a weak defensive gesture.

The truck managed to swerve around her so closely that she felt one of the rear-view mirrors brush past the hair on the top of her head. Shaking, HEVN collapsed into a bundle of jelly. She wasn't sure if she could count that as the first bit of good luck she'd had all day, or as just one more bad luck incident dropping on her head. After all, it had missed her... barely.

"Miss Mediator?" a familiar, cold voice asked. "My, standing in the middle of the road isn't like you. You are fortunate Mr. No Brakes has such good control of his vehicle."

HEVN, still shaking, looked up to see Akabane's cruel purple eyes looking down at her from the passenger window of the truck. Somehow, despite being so close to death she could kiss it, the part of her brain still searching for a fiancé was working just fine. In her head, she was introducing Akabane to her parents.

Midway through dinner, he declared he was bored and killed her entire family. HEVN watched with a feeling of sick glee as her evil sister's head rolled across the floor, mouth still open and hanging in the middle of yet another critism or comment about how much better she was than HEVN.

HEVN saw herself sobbing to the police about how she'd hired a man off the street to pretend to be her fiancé, she hadn't know he was a serial killer, honest! HEVN saw herself on all the TV stations, crying for her dear, departed family and swearing vengeance on the killer.

HEVN saw herself receiving the entire family fortune, being rid of the greatest source of evil in her life, and slipping a rather large reward to Akabane as a result. As you can tell, HEVN is not really sad that her family moved to America and left her in Japan, planning never to see her again. They don't really get along.

Okay, so perhaps the part of her brain thinking about needing a fiancé had been badly damaged by the near-death experience, but it didn't bother to inform the rest of her brain about it. In fact, it had the rest of her rather convinced it had just come up with the greatest idea ever.

"You're perfect!" she cried, the sheer power of happiness propelling her off the ground and up to the window, where she wrapped her arms around an incredibly surprised Akabane-san's face.

"I'm... confused," Akabane responded dryly, pushing HEVN off his face. "Perfect for what?"

"Are you on a job right now?"

Akabane shook his head slowly. "Just returning from one- gack!" Mr. No Brakes watched in horrified amusement as HEVN dragged Akabane out of the truck and away by his tie. That girl either had guts to do that to Jackal, or she was insane beyond help. Frankly, Mr. No Brakes didn't want to stick around long enough to find out which it was or see the bloody aftermath.

Akabane, fingering the red marks HEVN had left on his neck by dragging him around by his tie, frowned and stirred the drink she'd bought him. "So you want me to pretend to be your fiancé so you can inherit a fortune? I'm a transporter, not an actor."

"That doesn't matter! I'll pay you handsomely!"

Akabane flicked the spoon out of his drink, eyes closed and a rather frustrated look on his face. "You should know by now that I decide my jobs based on how much pleasure, not how much money, they will bring me."

"Then... then... there has to be some way I can pay you in pleasure!" she shouted, pounding on the table. Several people at the bar stared, hearing what just sounded like a line from a bad porno spouted by the girl with the gigantic breasts.

Even Akabane himself took a moment to blink at that comment. "You're amusing, Miss Mediator."

"If I'm amusing, then please... take the job..." HEVN said, resorting to her final power... girl tears. Her eyes filled up with salty water and she began to sniffle. "If my father writes me out of the will, I'll... I'll... I'll have to stop finding jobs for Ban and Ginji and take up work as a waitress!"

Akabane pulled down the brim of his hat to think about that. If Ban and Ginji stopped getting jobs, that meant no more Get Backers. No more Get Backers meant very boring work for Akabane-san. Akabane-san hated to be bored. Thus, logically...

He surrendered. "Fine. I'll help you, but not for you. For Ginji-kun's continued employment for my enjoyment. You shall tell no one of this. I believe you know I'm earnest when I make that threat."

HEVN nodded. The tears worked every time. "Thank you, thank you, Akabane-san." In her joy over having brought him around to seeing her way, she didn't notice him pulling his hat down even further so he could roll his eyes without offending her.

"Now, to just secure a place of employment," HEVN mused out loud. "I know! I'll have Paul let me show my parents his computer room, and say the Honky Tonk is just a cover for the secret research going on below..."

"Secret research? My, Miss Mediator, the stories you've been telling your parents..."

HEVN froze. She'd said that out loud? Great. Akabane didn't know her past, and she was in no mood to share the details of it with him beyond what she had to in order to make him into a convincing fiancé.

"I- er- I... told my parents I help secret agents with their missions. If you consider Ban and Ginji to be secret agents, then it's almost true."

Akabane glanced at her and it was obvious even with that hat shading his face that the look he was giving her was one of doubt. "Stop looking so high and mighty. What do you tell your parents you do for a living?" she snapped.

"You really should learn more about me, Miss Mediator, before making such assumptions," was all he answered, confusing HEVN. Not that she really cared either way, mind you. She only had to put up with Akabane until her parents left Japan.

"Look, I'll send you the sheets of information so you can play my fiancé well enough to fool my parents. Think of it as a role playing game."

Akabane stood up, leaving his drink only half finished. "I'm not doing this for you, Miss Mediator, and I wish you to keep that in mind when dealing with me in the future." With that and a swish of black fabric, he was gone out the door, leaving HEVN to begin to break into a nervous sweat. Could she really trust him to fill the role, or had her brain just transformed him into the perfect replacement out of desperation and the sheer shock of almost being flattened by a truck?

"Ugh, bad brain!" HEVN muttered, paying the bar bill and heading back to her apartment. She had some changes to make to her living quarters.