#hibaharu

When giving that advice, Hibari never factored in how much he’d miss her. He was only home once, maybe twice a week, and fewer times was spent at the Vongola headquarters where she spent most of her time. Every so often, he’d find himself in her bed, embracing her with a desperation that he thought he abandoned a long time ago. Even so, he found himself slinking out of her bed, her house, her life, with the same desperation he possessed the night before. To see her, awake and alert and expecting him to disappear was something he decided he never wanted to see—the large, mouse-like eyes would provoke something in him that he’d rather stay suppressed.

The day she first told him she should leave, he had no idea what to do. He found her sitting on the counter, legs crossed at the ankles and eyes large and round, piercing him with a doe’s steady gaze. She sipped her coffee black, without needing any sugar or cream to help her keep it down, and told him that their little flings were a game to her, a game she hated that she was losing. There was something in her eyes, a carnivorous spark that almost intimidated him, but he told her to do what she wanted—to go to Italy. He knew she would, the opportunity was amazing and she loved to travel, and he figured that if he was ever there, they could play their game until the round ran out of time.

Since then, he’s described his life in three parts—Pre-Haru, Post-Haru and the in between. He’s only used these terms in the safety and privacy of his own mind, but he used them nonetheless. The doe-eyed girl left more of an impression on him than he thought possible, and he acknowledged her for it.

•

The next time he seen her, she was different. She cut her hair and dyed it black, probably to blend in better. Being in their line of work was dangerous, and now that she was alone, she was practically begging for something to happen to her. Changing her appearance was probably a part of the deal.

It didn’t suit her. She was never the kind of girl that blended into her surroundings, and standing in a sea of people with blunt bob haircuts and pretty, red lipstick-stained lips that looked just like hers, she was almost overtaken. That was kind of the point, Hibari figured, but that still didn’t ease the nausea in his stomach from seeing so many people who looked like her. It wasn’t until they locked eyes that the feeling subsided, and disappeared completely when those plump red lips spread into a wide, tooth bearing grin. She bent her head down and fished a cigarette out of her pocket and held it between her teeth as she walked towards him, he boots clicking as she neared. Hibari did nothing to catch up to her, standing still in the hotel lobby as people came and went around him.

Haru almost walked past him, doe eyes looking ahead and focused, the cigarette still perched in her teeth. Standing a hair’s breath behind him, she stopped and dug her hands in her pocket, fiddling and fumbling with a lighter. Dropping it between slick fingers, Hibari turned around and scooped it up, getting his first glimpse of her up close in eleven months.

Those brown eyes that he used to stare at seemed older now, farther off. They were doe-y and large, but possessed a strange edge, a ferocity that he hasn’t seen before. “You can keep it, honey. I’ve got another in my car,” she said, taking the cigarette out of her mouth for a moment. She tossed him a wink before leaving, and then sashayed away, leaving him empty and confused. Watching her leave, he noticed that she was carrying a small, black luggage behind her. The wheels were old but the case shined, as if she spent hours cleaning it.

He looked down at the lighter and saw an address etched into the silver case. It was more than likely intentional, though incredibly reckless; Haru was never one for safety, anyway.

•

The address led to an apartment complex in the diamond district by the coast—where politicians of both of legal government and the seedy underground spent thousands of dollars for everyone to keep quiet. The building itself was modern and sleek, the outside having white siding and the inside covered in bright, white tiles that Hibari seen his reflection in.

He followed the lighter until he found her door, a cute placemat with ducks situated outside of it. He thought to knock, but twisted the doorknob without doing so—remembering he always had a key to her townhouse in Japan so this should be no different. The door opened easily, and he found Haru sitting on the couch, her back turned away from the door and towards a wall entirely made of glass. The same white tiles flowed into her apartment until they met with the white carpet in the living room, contrasting vividly with her teal and black furniture.

Taking off his shoes and stepping inside, he broke the silence, “Leaving your door unlocked is stupid. I could’ve killed you by now.”

This earned a laugh from Haru, and she turned around and faced him. Standing up on the couch, she smiled as she revealed that she was clutching her own weapon, a small, pink gun wrapped around her fingers. Aiming it playfully, she said, “You’d have to get me before I got you.” Earning a confused look, she held her hands up and dropped the weapon, wandering towards him. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she mused, looking around, “it’s like a dream, Kyoya.”

He flinched at the use of his name. She noticed this, but didn’t say anything, watching him carefully. He didn’t give way to his emotions anytime when he was around her—though sometimes she pretended that he loved her when he was inside her—and seeing him as wary as he was made her a little nervous. Gently, she reached out and brushed his face with the side of her hand, and he caught it, quick and rough. “You left,” he said.

Her brown eyes lit up for a moment, but then cooled themselves down. "You told me to," she bit back, her voice small but bitter. She attempted to snatch her hand back but found herself powerless against him. They stood there for a moment, both too wrapped up in each other's proximity to do anything other than stare. In that moment, Haru thought she was back in Japan, getting ready to spend another night pretending they were something more than barely friends. It would've been a good night, where they spent most of wrapped up in each other rather than inside of each other, exploring each other's minds after exploring their bodies.

Hibari broke first, letting go of her hand and cupping her face, bringing his lips to hers and kissing her like he hasn't kissed her in years, though it had only been six months. He wasn't surprised that he was met with equal passion—Haru had always been a passionate girl outside of the bedroom, and she simply exploded inside of it—her arms wrapping around his neck tight enough to choke him. In a break from their usual routine, he found himself with his back against the door, overpowered by the small woman with dark hair. It was different, foreign and weird, but then again, he was in a completely foreign country with a woman who loooked weirder than he imagined.

•

He awoke to sunlight bleeding into his eyes through closed eyelids coming from a window he didn't know existed. He distinctly remembered Haru having black curtains to prevent herself from being awakened like this, something about it being "very intrusive and rude". He's also surprised to wake up alone, the owner of the bed not in her usual place beside him, with her head resting on his chest. She was missing from her spot—and it made it easier to leave—but that defeated half of the purpose of this trip. Hibari missed Haru, and she took it upon herself to be missed again.

Karma had a weird way of fucking with him, he supposed, collecting his thoughts and motioning to get out of bed.

He strolled into the kitchen and found her there, her head in her hands, short black hair falling forward, covering her face like a mask. He heard sniffling, and a few hiccups coming from her place on the countertop, and he made no move to go towards her, staying silent in his place. He'd caught her crying once before her confession—when her father was murdered. Hibari distinctly remembered Haru blaming herself—he was the friendliest math teacher in the world with a mafia-related daughter. Of course, his life was nothing if it meant it could rattle the black market engineer. Back then, she shed a few tears upon hearing the news, and then pulled her composure back together. His murderers were found dead less than two weeks later, and the woman never walked around without her gun on her hip again. Later, when it was just the two of them in her small townhouse, she cried again, wailing and screaming into his chest for what seemed to be an eternity.

This was more like the former, tears streaming down her face and the occasional sniffle. A warning rain before the hurricane.

"I lost everything moving here," she said, her voice raspy, barely above a whisper. "Fucking everything, Kyoya." She looked up at his, her eyes red and wide, bloodshot.

"You didn—"

"Shut the fuck up and let me speak." There was a definitive silence that overtook the room, her red eyes bleeding through him with everything they had inside of her. She seethed, the anger leaking from inside her like a pot, filled to the brim with water and set to boil. "I thought I didn't have anything to lose if I left—I'd end our fucking game and it'd be over. But you're so fuckin' sadistic, you just had to bring that shit back."

"I fucking miss you, Miura," he said, confused.

"And I miss my fucking dad!" she just about screeched, clenching her fist. "But you don't see me going to his grave and giving him a reason to come back!"

"You expect me to act like you're dead?" Hibari just about yelled. "Do you know how stupid that sounds?"

"You didn't want me when I was alive!" Silence swoooped in and stole his tongue out of his mouth. Haru sat on the counter, angry and burning with an unmatched desire to scream, her body heaving with her breaths. Her eyes narrowed for a moment, before widening slightly. In a last fit of anger, Haru tossed her gun at him, the pink pistol sailing through the air before hitting a wall behind him. It missed him—wasn't even close—but they both knew that she was not aiming for him. She was angry, yes, but it was very rare for her to attack someone out of anger. She saved fights for people that she hated—and no matter how badly she wanted to, she was still a slave to the love game she found herself playing months before. Quietly, she confessed, "I had to have an abortion before I came out here."

The silence that came after was deadly. Haru sat on her counter, full of rage and spiteful, staring at him with the same intensity a deer had when it held an incoming car. It held a phsyical weight, and that weight put pressure on Hibari, breaking his shoulders and spine, crushing him into nothingness.

"Fucking say something," she quipped, her voice holding more exhaustion than anger.

"You," was all he could get out before he ran out of words. She looked ready to cry again, still and shaken, like a leaf in winter, knowing doom is imminent. "You didn't say anything?"

"You couldn't even stay a full night with me—"

"I didn't have time—"

"And you have time for a baby?" The response hit him like a stack of bricks, hard and without restraint. "Because I didn't. I have time now, but I have a target on my back and there's so much fucking money on my head I have half a mind to kill myself and collect it." He chuckled, in spite of himself. It was a dry giggle of a chuckle, but a chuckle all the same, and he found himself amused despite the series of events that led to where he is currently. He wad surprised to find her laughing too, a small smile forming on her face without her permission. She shook her head softly, her hair falling back in front of her face. "You told me to leave," she said, her brown eyes narrowing at him. "I only did what you told me to do, Kyoya. I'm working in a big fuckin' lab doing science shit with Verde instead of Tsuna's basement, not stressing you 'cause I have much bigger things to do, and none of it makes me happy. I cheated myself, once again. I knew I would, because that was eventually and you are everyone."

At this point, Hibari was fuming. His fingers clenched themselves into fist and he stood still, afraid if he moved he might lose everything that he came all this way for. "You still think that this is some game, Haru?"  There was an iciness to his tone, a lost sounding voice coming from inside him. "I made a mistake in letting you walk away—I made a mistake walking away from you as may times as I did."

"You knew what you were doing! I told you everything and you still wanted me to run away rather than play house with you." She looked on the counter and threw the nearest object she could find—a yellow coffee cup—at him, narrowly missing his head. Again, she wasn't trying to hit him, though she wouldn't mind if the cup grazed him. "Well, I'll be damned if I play house by myself—especially  when there's such a bad world outside of the fucking playroom."

"You don't have to be in that world—"

"It's too late for that, Kyoya," she said, wryly. "As soon as I step out that door, I'm as good as dead. Every meeting I go to, every luncheon I attend, every fucking business date I go on to sell my fucking work, I can lose my life." She looked at him up and down before continuing, "And if anyone thought it'd bother me, you'd already be dead. I didn't and don't want to lose my baby because of the way I pay my bills, Kyoya."

"We can do this," he said, confidently. Without hesitation, he walked over to her and placed his hands on her shoulders, his steely grey eyes melting into her brown ones. "I'm not letting you walk away from me again."

That being said, she did not rest her head on his chest during the night her spent in her bed, despite every impulse telling her to do so. She did not let him drape his arm around her, despite wanting to feel his warmth on her. She did not face him, making his face the last memory of the day. No, this was a game she could never win, so she'd rather minimize her losses than play and lose everything. Instead, she turned over on her side and faced the window, letting the curtains be her last thought before falling into the emptiness of a loveless, dreamless sleep.

A loss of warmth woke her up the next day, and a slave to her desires, she found that she could never truly resist her impulses. Her body would never let her sleep with someone, sleep with him, without entangling him in her sticky webs, just for a moment. But the rules of the game state that she must wake up alone, and she did, for the body she knew—that beautiful boy who she could never have—left her, if only to go to the bathroom. Haru's big brown eyes looked towards the clock, seeing it to be fifteen minutes until four, the time he'd be walking out on her, anyway. A moment later, she heard the shower running, a sign that he was on his way out. It was so commonplace for him to sleepover and leave at dawn that he had a permanent drawer in her dresser, his toothbrush and toothpaste in the bathroom.

Well, if she were to lose the game, she would be a good sport, she thought, slinging her legs across the bed and rising. Grabbing her robe, she walked out of her room and towards the kitchen, bouncing to a song she only heard in her mind. It seemed to be a happy beat, for she had a pot of coffee on the stove too quickly for someone as depressed as she should have been. Maybe this was part of the game, she reasoned, grabbing two mugs and propping herself up on the counter. She knew that she was doomed to repeat the process of losing him, and whoever would come after, but she refused to be a sore loser. Maybe she was a terrible winner in another life and this was karma, so if she played well, the board would be even for next time around.

She spotted him coming down the hall, dressed and clean and ready to walk away from her. She stopped for a second, hesistating, then looked at the clock, seeing it was five minutes after the hour. When he reached the kitchen, he seemed surprised to find her awake and active, staring at him with big brown eyes and dressed in a yellow bathrobe. He snapped out of it a moment later, walking towards the door before she yelped, "Wait," in a timid, afraid voice. "S-Since you're leaving, you may as well have something, Hibari." A pregnant pause entered the room as she closed her tiny mouth, her brown eyes downcast and his slanted grey ones searching the room for any inclination as to where this behavior could have spawned from. Haru allowed a small laugh to break the silence, sliding off the counter and taking the pot off of the burner. "I don't know why I got so attatched to you," she said, pouring herself a mug, "when you don't do anything but come in and leave."

"I never said I would stay," Hibari spoke immediately, leaning on the wall. He seemed amused by the girl, sipping her coffee and speaking her mind without restraint. When she was like this was when he noticed her, unrestrained and uncensored, though she often switched to a quieter, more mouse-like creature.

"I know, all I could ever be to you is something comfortable, something we could both get accustomed to," she sighed, pouring the other mug. She handed it to him and sat back on the counter, knocking on the cupboard beside her, "Just in case you needed something sweet." She sipped hers, black and strong, and threw him a soft smile. He looked at her and smirked, walking over to the counter and throwing the cupboard open, taking the sugar jar out and pouring a hefty amount in. "I didn't take you for a sugar guy."

"Then why offer?"

"Because I was raised with manners." She watched him stir the drink until the white crystals all but disappeared, and then took a long drink. "I don't understand why I stress a man when there's much bigger things at hand," she admitted, looking at him with a hint of disdain. "If I didn't worry about you," she started, "I'd be working in Italy, under Verde. Doing some super science shit instead of being cramped in a basement, working on these damn rings for Tsunya." She took another sip and watched him, something she was always good at.

"Don't stress me," he said, "Go ahead and go to Italy."

"But then we couldn't have nice mornings like this."

"What is this?" he asked, his voice hazy. He didn't stop drinking, but he looked at her with those steely grey eyes, and she remembered why she stressed him—why she plays game of cat and mouse where she is both the cat and the mouse. Uncertainly, she took another sip and he looked away, backing away from the counter.

"This is my postponing of our inevitible conclusion," she said, looking directly at him. "I'm bad at love, and I'm just cheating myself again by playing this round with you."

"What are you saying?" he said, setting his mug down. He placed is arms on either side of her, trapping her on the counter and in his prescense without any resistance. Haru only stared at him blankly, knowing exactly where she was on the board. She was almost at the end, but some delay would cause her to double back and go around, all over again. It was a circle, a menacing cycle that ended in nothing but her heartbreak, and even though she tried to keep herself from feeling it this time.

"I'm saying that when you walk out that door, I'm going to go back to my room and lay on your side of the bed and cry. I'm saying that everytime you walk out that door, I lay on your side and cry. But I'm also saying that my tears dry on their own, I'd just prefer not to let them live in the first place." She threw the game, once again, preferring to quit before she was beaten. She couldn't remove her player from the board but she could show her opponent all of her cards and her strategy, and hopefully he would end it before it got painful. "It's your move," she said, sipping the last of her coffee and discarding it in the sink. "Honestly, I don't understand why you haven't walked away, yet."

"Do you want me to?" he asked, his voice confused but strong, not giving way to any other emotion other than confusion.

"Of course not," she started, "but I know you will. Everyone walks away, eventually."

"I'm not everyone, and this isn't eventually."

"Wha—"