Ghostwriter

vi.

Hibari's standing there with the crimson blood spray from a point-blank shot all over his face and sleeves and shirt, and there's a gun in his hand. With the barrel of the gun trained between my eyes, all I can see is the dark black center of the gun bore, gaping like an open mouth.

Whoa now, I say. Can't we talk about this?

Hibari just stares me down with those cold, dead eyes. The blood spatter on his face like a butcher's apron, Hibari says, "You know... I'm sick of you."

The barrel of the gun looms over me ten feet tall. When Hibari cocks it, his hands aren't shaking at all.

I take one step towards him and say, look -, and he pulls the trigger.

i.

Eighteen minutes ago I saw Hibari's photograph paper-clipped to the list of equipment I'm requisitioning from the family, and it's like, well, fuck.

It brings back memories, actually, because back in high school we kinda had a thing going for a while. Or at least, I had a thing for Hibari. But that's all over now. I haven't seen Hibari for probably five years.

Five years ago I didn't see Hibari in the departure hall at Kansai International Airport, and the whole time I was kicking myself for thinking he'd show up in the first place.

Long story short, Tsuna wants me to do this thing with Hibari Kyouya who I haven't seen in five years and/or eighteen minutes depending on your point of view, and I tell him he can go fuck himself. Well, those aren't the exact words that I use, but they're close.

Tsuna just kinda looks at me like, what's the problem? And I go, you want to know what the problem is? I'll tell you what the problem is. The problem's name is Hibari Kyouya, and he wants to kill me.

"He wants to kill everybody," Gokudera says. "Man up, Yamamoto." And I'm about to argue with him, except I see the look on Tsuna's face, like he's saying, you know, Yamamoto - we're old enough now.

We're all adults here.

That was years ago.

This is just business.

And so I go, yeah, you're right. This is just business.

Then I cross my fingers behind my back, and pray I'll come back in one piece.

Hibari's flight gets in around four in the afternoon. I meet him at the gate, all smiles, the perfect welcome committee.

This is how I get under Hibari's skin.

Hibari and I have been playing this game for years. The rules are like this - I make friendly conversation and talk about stuff, and Hibari puts on a face like he has a bad case of indigestion and acts like he can't hear me. Occasionally he hits me, but I'm driving today, so unless he wants to end up a bloody smear on the pavement he'll keep his hands to himself. This helps pass the time, you understand. On a long drive you couldn't ask for a better conversational partner.

Had a drink with Tsuna and Gokudera the other day, I tell him. It was just like old times, you shoulda been there. Hibari touches the cold glass of passenger-side window with long fingers, leans his head against it, and says nothing. Outside the trees and rain and signposts blow past at sixty miles per hour, but inside the car it's toasty warm. This little Honda with the brand new license plate and the beautiful black-leather interior still has that new-car smell lingering inside. Breathe it in along with a whiff of Hibari's cologne, and you have to wonder, when did Hibari start wearing cologne, anyway?

That first night in the motel I'm staring up at the cracks on the narrow ceiling winding their way between strips of peeling plaster, and I'm wondering just how many bugs are in this mattress. All those little lumps - well, they're the cities, the settlements, the metropolises. Roll over and you could crush a whole civilization just like that.

Separate beds, I told the girl at the desk who looked at me with the dead zombie eyes of a morning person working the graveyard shift. "Of course, sir." Meanwhile, Hibari's standing off in the lobby acting like he doesn't know me. What, this guy? Just my driver. No, I don't know if he's packing. Ask me another question and I'll bite you to death.

Hibari puts his bag down next to the bed on the far side of the room, so I flop down on the other one to peel my socks off. You wanna watch some TV or something? I ask him.

Hibari just goes into the bathroom and slams the door, doesn't even spare me a glance. So I lie down on my bed to watch some baseball on TV, listening to the pipes squeal and stutter as they try in vain to produce hot water. When Hibari comes back out, he turns off the lights and the TV that I'm watching, and gets into his bed without a word. I guess even lying awake in a dark motel room is preferable to talking to me.

We're leaving at seven in the morning, I tell him. Don't make me wait.

Hibari rolls over and puts a pillow over his head like he's trying to smother himself to get away from me. All I can hear is my own breathing and the sound of a tap leaking, one door over. And I just shake my head and laugh.

ii.

In the morning I wake up because something's moving against my foot which is sticking out from under the blanket, and the first thing I do is reach for the loaded gun on the bedside table. The second thing I do is open my eyes. Hibari is seated on the edge of my bed, near my feet, patiently knotting his tie.

"Are you going to shoot me?" he asks, and his voice is deadly calm.

Should I?

"Guns are for people who can't stomach killing face to face."

So Hibari says, to no one in particular. He lifts his chin, pulls the knot up, up, until it comes to rest in the dip of his collarbone. Shrugs casually into his jacket like he must've done a million times before. I put the gun back down and watch his precise little movements. Hibari's psycho killer hands straightening out his collar, his sleeves. You're nothing if you don't look stylish while you're beating someone to a bloody pulp.

It's a couple hours before we reach the city. Hibari peels this dog-eared paperback copy of The Prince out of his briefcase and ignores me right up till the moment we pull up by the hotel. It's a fancy one, with a big red-carpeted lobby in front - the sort of place where they fold the corners of the toilet paper roll in your bathroom into a little triangle, like an arrow to let you know where you should wipe your ass. This city is where the number-two of the upstart arms-dealing ring that Tsuna sent us to deal with boozes and plays with his escorts all day. Hibari opens the first envelope and spreads its contents smoothly over the writing desk, over the room service menu and the notepad with the hotel logo stencilled into the corner. Photographs, schedules. Everything this guy does from morning till night, right down to the detail of his every bowel movement, it's all here.

You want this one? I ask him, watching him from where I lean against the door frame with my jacket slung over my shoulder. Hibari glances up.

"Don't smoke in here," he says, dismissively, and looks back down.

I take one last deep drag, just to finish it off, and sigh as I stub it out in the ashtray.

Hardass, I mutter.

"Noisy herbivore," he answers. I brush the ash off my fingers, and then sidle up behind him and lean over to rest my chin on top of his head.

So are you taking this one? I repeat, cheerfully.

"Stop crowding me," he goes, and plants the butt of his hand in my mouth to knock me back. I grin at him, massaging my bruised jaw. This is almost like old times, even if it's only for a moment. I pat him on the shoulder, avoiding the way he swipes at my hand like a cat, and go to take a shower.

Maybe I'll get out of this in one piece, after all.

iii.

Hibari is gone before sunrise, and I find traces of his stubble in the sink. I turn on the tap to wash it down the drain, and try not to think about Hibari shaving after his morning shower, naked but for a towel wrapped around his narrow hips. Shaving is one of those intimate little acts that just puts me in mind of... domesticity, of living together. If such a thing were possible with Hibari, which it isn't. And it's not like I have a death wish or anything, but people can be a little stupid when it comes to things like love.

(You know you're in deep when even disgusting personal hygiene routines become romantic.)

He'll be gone for a few hours, so for a little while I think about going out and picking up some girl and taking her back to the room. Just to make sure all the equipment's still functioning, you understand. Being around Hibari all the time and having to hold it in just isn't good for me. But then I think about what might happen if Hibari gets back while I'm in the middle of it, and, well...

Let's just say I don't need any more innocent blood on my hands.

I'm watching baseball on TV when he gets back, not a hair out of place. Looking at him, you have to wonder if he even got his hands dirty. Or maybe it was a clean kill. Picture him reaching out like a hug, then twisting this guy's fat head round a hundred and eighty degrees, and all the light going out of his eyes just like that. Not really the most pleasant image, so I stop.

Want to get dinner before we go? I call over to him.

Hibari looks at me and says one word: "Alcohol."

So I take him to a bar a couple blocks away, and buy him a drink. Watch his long fingers toy with the shot glass, the white half-moons on his fingertips trimmed down to blunt edges. Try not to think about how you used to fantasize about those fingers wrapped around your cock, and you can almost believe you don't really want him.

Afterwards I pick up a pack of cigarettes from the vending machine outside while Hibari waits impatiently by the car. What's the rush, I want to ask him. Who cares if we kill him today, or tomorrow, or next year. Everyone dies eventually.

But that's a vicious cycle. If you start thinking like that, you'll never stop. (One day humanity will become extinct. One day the sun will burn out and extinguish life as we know it. One day all the atoms that used to be you will be part of some distant nebula.)

When you start thinking like that - well, it's a lot harder to get out of bed in the morning.

After we get back I just lie in bed with my hands crossed over my abdomen, and watch the shower mist twist around the bathroom door, open just a crack. This isn't an accident, I know. Hibari doesn't do accidents. And killing has always turned him on a little, in the worst way.

He comes out of the bathroom in just his sleeping pants, skin still damp, nipples rosy pink from the hot shower. I shut my eyes tight and pretend to be asleep. I don't want to fuck him when he's drunk, I don't want to fuck him when he's got blood under his fingernails. Or so I tell myself, even if what I really want to do is pull his hair and fuck him so hard that he yells. He sits on the end of my bed for a while, just sits there with his back to me, waiting for me to make the first move, waiting for me to come to him. But I won't do it. I keep my eyes shut, slip a hand over my boner, willing it to go away, and I don't move a muscle.

After a while he gets up again, goes over to his own bed, slips under the sheets with barely a sound. And I almost think I've gotten off easy when he says, suddenly, into the dark and silent room,

"Coward."

Takes one to know one, I think, wryly, and roll over.

iv.

This is one of those great old pre-war buildings with the windows all blown out the way a compound fly-eye would look if you smushed it under your thumb, and the bare concrete floors with the dirty rust-brown water stains from puddles that dried up years ago. I set the rifle up by the window while Hibari goes through the other rooms as a precaution, looking for hobos or squatters who'll be able to pick us out of a line-up later. With every step you crush broken window-glass into a fine powder carpet that makes it so you can't sit down anywhere. I lean against the wall, by the window, and light my cigarette.

In about five minutes or so, I'm going to have to kill a guy. And I'm leaning there smoking, picturing this .338 hollow point bullet flying and spinning and tearing through flesh and tendon and bone, lodging at last in that plump, squishy organ that we all think of as pink, but really it's more old potpourri-grey. Final destination: the brain.

Hibari pokes his head in from the next room and glares at me.

"Put that out."

I tell him, if I don't have a smoke right now my hands are gonna shake. You want me to miss?

He just rolls his eyes, a look that says I'd never miss, and is about to disappear round the corner again when his phone starts buzzing. He answers it, listens for a few moments, then gives me a look. I shrug, stub out my cigarette on the wall, leaving a dark little burn like a sooty fingerprint in the crumbling plaster, and take up my post by the window. Across the street, my target's exiting a building, surrounded by a gaggle of bodyguards.

One shot is all it takes.

I throw myself to the floor just as the return fire whizzes over my head. In two quick steps Hibari is by the window with his back to the wall, pulling out his gun. Ow fuck ow, I say, fuck this glass! There's glass in my hands, and Hibari is firing back through the broken window, mouth drawn into a hard tight line.

"Get up," he says, shortly. "We have to leave."

Way ahead of you, I say, struggling to get to my feet. Hibari doesn't lend me his arm, but he does hold the door open as we take our leave, which is more than I'd expected of him. Maybe he just didn't want to have to fill out all the paperwork for my untimely death.

Afterwards, we're in the back room of this little store owned by this guy I know, and Hibari is digging out the glass embedded in my bloody palms with a pair of tweezers. I fidget, and he pauses to glare at me.

"Hold still, idiot," he snaps.

I grin, and run my socked toes up along the side of his leg. He retaliates by yanking a shard out with rather more force than necessary, making me wince.

… Hey, Hibari, I say to him, after a while. Hibari purses his lips, like he's wishing my mouth would fall off so I'd stop bugging him. You wanna go somewhere after we're done with this job? Just the two of us?

"No," he answers, flatly.

Thought not, I say, with a little smile. Light a cigarette for me?

"Light it yourself," he says, and drops the last fragment of glass into the shallow basin nearby before picking up the disinfectant. It stings like a motherfucker, but it's nothing I can't bear, and I keep smiling as Hibari starts to bandage my hands, because it's all I can do.

v.

This is the final mission, and just like in video games, it's the biggest pain in the ass. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if Hibari hadn't shot those guards out front because he got tired of waiting for me to bullshit our way in. On the other hand, you've got to take the good with the bad, and I wouldn't trade Hibari for anyone else in the world now that it's all gone to shit.

Listen - you go on ahead, I tell him, breathing heavily, gun shaking in my hands. (They're covered in bandages the way Ryohei does it, but at least they still work.) We're standing back to back in a bullet-scarred hallway littered with rapidly-cooling bodies. Any minute now, more will show up. If we stay here for too long we're never getting out.

I'll hold these guys off, I say again, sounding more confident than I am. There are footsteps charging up the hallway; reinforcements are on the way. Not much time left, and my hands won't stop fucking shaking.

"Don't make me wait," Hibari says, evenly, and then his comforting weight at my back is gone. I flatten myself against the wall, reloading my gun. I'm not ready to die, so I tell myself I won't, and it almost makes me feel better.

Half an hour later, I'm all out of ammo. Luckily, the other side runs out of people at the same time. I turn over the last body with my foot, stepping on his face just to make sure he's really dead, before I turn and head down the same hallway Hibari took just now.

A brief search turns him up in the boss's office, still hovering over the target's body like a ghost. I call out to him, wearily, holstering my gun, I say - hey.

He whips his head up and around, viciously, like he's just remembered where he is. There's a strange light in his eyes that I'm pretending not to see.

You ready to go? I ask him. Hibari?

And that's when he points the gun at me.

vii.

You ever heard a gun fired in the movies? All those little cracking noises, like someone's set off a bunch of party poppers. It's nothing like real life. The bullet whizzes past my head, about a mile too close for comfort, and for a moment I can almost see it boring a hole into my forehead the way it took out the fat guy I sniped in the street. But I don't falter, I don't hesitate, I can't, because I know Hibari would never miss a shot this close by accident.

This is Hibari's idea of foreplay.

I'm in front of him. I reach for the gun in his hand, and he snatches it out of my reach angrily. So I just smile, and ask him - gently - we done here?

Hibari glares down at the floor, doesn't say a word. But at least he's not pointing his gun at me anymore.

I lead the way from the room, down the long winding hallways, all the way out of the building which is now full of dead men, and the whole time I'm wondering if I'm about to get pumped full of lead between my shoulderblades. Hibari doesn't have the same ammo problem that I have. But nothing happens; he gets in the car and lets me drive, and doesn't say a damn thing all the way back.

It's only when we get back to the hotel room that he does anything. I'm standing over by the dresser, looking in the mirror to take off my tie, when I notice that Hibari's come up behind me, silently. I turn to face him. He's washed the blood off his face, which is good. Even if it's a good look for Hibari, it's so unsanitary.

He's just looking at me, unnervingly silent. I tilt my head at him, and attempt a smile.

Hibari? I say. What's up?

He ignores this, reaching out to silently work the tip of his finger under the knot of my tie, loosening it. The look on his face makes me swallow, hard. He pulls the fabric from my neck; discards it over his shoulder thoughtlessly. Smooths my collar down, straightening it neatly. Starts to undo the buttons on my shirt, one by one.

I don't think - I start to say, reaching up to take his hands away, and he just grabs me by the collar with both hands and smashes our mouths together. Our teeth click, and there's blood on my tongue. I'm just getting into it when he draws back for breath, draws back to spit venom in my face, eyes flashing.

"I can't fucking stand you, you know. I wish you'd never been born," he snarls.

I touch his face, run my thumb over his day-old stubble, feeling the blood trickle down to the scar on my chin from my split lip.

I know, I tell him. I know. I love -

His wild haymaker catches me by surprise. I topple back onto the bed, holding my jaw, and then Hibari's on top of me, pressing me down into the sheets with the weight of his body; kissing me, biting at my mouth. I run my hands up underneath his shirt, across his back, and he makes a feral noise deep in his throat.

"Yamamoto," he says, something like desperation in his voice, "Yamamoto -"

I know, I answer, I know. I undo his belt hastily, reaching inside his trousers to touch him, to fondle him and say, is that good for you? Do you like this? I roll him over, slide down to take him into my mouth, humming around his length as he twists fingers in my hair. He thrusts into my mouth a few times, nearly choking me, before dragging me off his cock, scratching raw red lines across my back and shoulder in his attempt to bring us skin to skin. He fumbles to get my cock out of my pants, and strokes us together, in time, fingers slick with spit and precome. I fuck his tight fist, fuck his mouth with my tongue and swallow the noises he makes as he jizzes, all over his shirt and my abs. The tight, almost pained look on his face puts me over the edge, too, and I groan his name against his ear as I come and he sinks his nails into my shoulder at the same time, making me bleed red.

After this I have just a few blissful minutes of resting on top of him, of looking into his blue, blue eyes, before the euphoria wears off and he starts pushing at my ripped-up shoulder irritably.

"Get off me," he mutters, eyes already half-closed. But I won't let him push me away, not now, not after that. I slip off, and tuck myself tight against his body. He rolls onto his side in an attempt to get away from me, but that's fine; I'm cool with being the big spoon.

I like the nape of your neck, I tell him, and kiss it gently. It's cute.

"Shut up," he murmurs, drowsily, but doesn't struggle. So I wrap an arm around his waist, pulling him close. Lips to the back of his neck, my jaw aching where he punched me, I just close my eyes, and pray to whoever's listening that morning never comes.

fin.