This time, baby, I'll be bulletproof.

She knew that at night when the sky twinkled with the lives of contractors his green jacket turned black and bulletproof.

They all seemed to be the most active at night, taking up aliases when the sun was looking.

She had just never realized that contractors could be so close to her without her even noticing.

She had just never realized that a contractor could have been her next date.

acolorfadeout

"Ha ha," she laughed. "Is college really tiring you that much?"

He grinned sheepishly back at her. "Well there's only so much of a variety of food I can cook."

"There are a lot of good restaurants here. You shouldn't be afraid to treat yourself sometimes."

"I don't know any," he replied, and then considered a moment before asking, "Why don't you take me to a restaurant you recommend?"

Her mouth opened to soundlessly stutter at the unexpectedness, but he interrupted her.

"I'll treat you," he added to the offer.

"Well, I mean, of course!" she exclaimed, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically even for her own taste. "I can even take you to a place where they can actually accommodate even your meal size."

His eyes brightened, a sliver of blue glinting through the dark set eyes, smiling back at her.

It was genuine, she could tell.

For a human, at least.

caughtinthewire

Their stomachs hurt, filled with delicious food and cramped with incessant laughter, telling jokes and recollecting funny moments of their lives, sharing the wealth between each other just as how they split numerous plates of meat and vegetables in front of them for dinner that night.

"I don't know what I did to the television, but the manager of the compound has favored me ever since! She barely notices whether I pay the rent on time or not."

After: "The restaurant owner eventually fired me because he figured that I was 'sampling' my cooking so much that by the time my dish got to the customer, it was half gone!"

Later: "They thought I was Korean and even offered to cook kimchi for me but I slipped and mentioned I was Chinese. Those door-to-door preachers went right ahead and said 'ni hao', but their pronunciation was so bad that I had to ask them to translate what they were saying to me in Japanese!"

And then: "There was some preteen girl that was seemed completely infatuated with my collarbones or something."

She wasn't used to smiling so much, and after a while the edges of her lips hurt and her teeth were dry.

If his power wasn't already electrocution, she would have sworn that his ability was to make humor irresistible and to bring her out of her rigid self, pulling at feelings that she never realized she owned.

evenifsheknowswhy

Stepping outside into the brisk evening air outside of the cozy restaurant, they both decided to walk off the subsequent bloatedness.

Normally she'd feel uncomfortable being so full, but there was something about being with him that made her feel secure, even if she was looking at a wanted criminal straight in his midnight eyes.

She was guilty about having him pay for her, but he gave her a brief shake of his head to tell her to not worry about it.

"Your company means more than money to me," he insisted, the polite words easily rolling off his tongue.

It was at that moment she realized how easily that someone with emotion—human—could easily fall into traps with a just a few rehearsed words.

Because that was the same tongue that also rehearsed the line: Contractors are liars.

killerinthehallway

The rain came in sheets, and almost completely unexpectedly to two people that were in an intense discussion about which dish was cooked best during the dinner.

"Oh it's just a little drizzle," she said noncommittally.

Then: "Shit."

He flipped out his jacket, colored that strange shade of green and threw it over the two of their heads as a temporary umbrella of sort while they ran to the nearest shelter, finding that under the veranda of some random apartment building.

Heads covered from the sudden storm, he flipped off his jacket and waved to the side to drip the water off it.

"Thank you."

Without a moment, he answered, "No problem at all."

"I guess the running would make up for the rather large meal we had," she lightly joked.

"Hn," he replied nonchalantly before looking her over.

He held out his jacket to her in an offer to her shivering body, and arms crossed tightly over her chest, hugging herself, she declined, teeth chattering gently.

Laughing under his breath at the irrationality of her refusal, he slung the jacket over her shoulders anyway and put his hands into his pockets, looking up at the sky, where rain originated indefinitely somewhere in the black.

"I still think the chicken wasn't that well prepared," he picked up the conversation from right before the curse of rain, and then after his cloud of hot breath dissipated, he turned his head in her direction to see her facial reaction to the statement that was clearly against her opinions.

She dropped the argument, flashing him rolled eyes and concentrated on her cold skin instead, which contrasted greatly with the warmth of her deepest feelings when she mentally replayed his jacket offer to her.

From the distance she was at, she silently watched his smooth shaven face, his breathing misting against the cool air—as if he was actually warmly human, and not ice.

livingonasettime

"You like to look at the stars, too, don't you?" she asked him when they were back outside with only the sky over their heads, catching his upward tilted head.

He gazed a little while longer, lips pursed before he turned his attention to her.

"Too?" he asked, simply.

Slightly abashed at her slipped implication, she agreed.

Another nonchalant, "Hm." Perhaps this time more approving.

She was a bit overwhelmed, had been overwhelmed since his invitation to take her out on some form of a date. The last time, it was freer, and she wasn't always second guessing what he was saying or what he was doing, simply because of her ignorance that he was better known by his alter ego, and that in his shadows loomed a darker cloaked figure than of the simple foreign student alias he occupied at day.

She couldn't really figure out her mixed emotions either, torn by how she was headstrong about bringing him down to justice and how she somehow, maybe at least a bit more, understood where he was coming from.

She decided to let him sort her.

"There's one star I watch in particular," she confessed, returning her eyes to the sky.

She felt the glance of his true identity slice over her, his senses suddenly acuter and brought to more attention with the slightest mention of his other self.

Pointing up towards a rather radiant star, she continued, "That one."

And wondering if he recognized his own star, she looked back towards him, his eyes focused on his life in the heavens.

His head shifted, observing her apprehension, their eyes meeting.

"I watch, too," he said, black eyes lighter than the night sky, locking his gaze.

I noticed it would take at least twice this archive's size in order to get into the top one hundred anime. Assuming that 375+ stories can be written faster than the other fandoms that would have to be topped and we have perhaps 10 active authors scribbling away…okay maybe this is a bit too ambitious. Point is: we're slackin'. :P

But don't slack on the reviews! ;)

thir13enth