"Just think, Ginji!" Ban laughed, as he pulled the small car up beside their regular alley and set the parking brake. "Tomorrow at this time we'll be sleeping in a nice, big apartment..."

It was just after midnight, and Ginji's smile was not so much because of the idea of sleeping in an apartment instead of the 360, but because of the look on Ban's face. Nothing made him happier than to see Ban happy - and nearly nothing made Ban happier than getting paid. "With a nice big kitchen with lots of real food," Ginji chimed in, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the dumpsters a little further back in the alley.

"And a nice big bed..." Ban continued dreamily, turning the motor off and putting his hands behind his head, stretching as much as was possible within the small car.

Ginji's eyes widened at the thought. "Er... only one bed, Ban-chan?"

"It'll save money," Ban stated. "One bed big enough for both of us will be cheaper than two small ones." When he turned to his friend, however, there was a wicked gleam in his eye that told Ginji he rather liked it that way.

Suddenly, Ginji felt that a whole day was a bit long to wait. "...Tonight's client was pretty generous," he pointed out. "Couldn't we go to a hotel room for the rest of the night?"

There was a hopeful look in Ginji's big brown eyes, and though that often was enough to make Ban give in, this time he stood fast. "I did the math earlier," he told Ginji. "We have exactly enough for the deposit on the apartment and the first three months' rent, plus a bed and a few other essentials, like paying up for our tab." His fingers glided over the steering wheel almost lovingly. "It won't hurt to spend one more night in the car, will it? We've spent so many nights in her already..."

"I suppose you're right," Ginji agreed reluctantly. If it wasn't such a crazy idea, he'd almost have thought Ban enjoyed sleeping in his tiny little car. But that just wasn't possible - not even for someone as strange as Ban.

With a sigh, he dutifully climbed into the back seat and curled up so that he could fit, and Ban turned onto his side to lie across the two front seats, pushing the seatbelt buckles aside so that they wouldn't poke him all night. After a great deal of shifting around, they both managed to get comfortable - or at least as comfortable as they had become accustomed to being after their financial situation had forced them to sleep in the car for weeks.

But all of that was over after tomorrow, Ban thought, a somewhat manic grin creeping over his face. Tomorrow, as soon as they got up, bright and early, they would be at the apartment complex they'd been looking at for months, right when the doors to the office opened. They'd already gotten halfway through the process a few times before getting kicked out for not having enough money, so Ban knew everything that was needed - he'd nearly memorized the paperwork. They'd get through it before noon, and then he and Ginji could go shopping and find a nice bed, and get it upstairs along with their other meager belongings. And after all that hard work, then they could just settle down and enjoy the night - really enjoy it, Ban thought, his grin growing slightly more manic.

Glancing back through the small gap between the door and the passenger seat, he caught sight of Ginji staring up through the sunroof, and looking somewhat uncomfortable. Ban couldn't exactly say he was comfortable either, leaving things this way till the next day. "Hey, Ginji..." he began, an idea coming to mind. "How come we've never made use of the back seat before?"

Ginji looked puzzled for a moment. "But I make use of - ohhhh," he exclaimed, eyes widening as he turned his head to look back at Ban. "Ban-chan, I would say let's give it a try, but, er..." He squirmed a little, with a different sort of discomfort. "Well, I barely fit back here by myself..."

Ban shrugged, sitting up to look at Ginji between the front seats instead, eyeing him with interest. "I'm pretty thin, thanks to you always stealing my food..."

Ginji mock-glared at him. "Me? You're the one who always steals my food!"

"Yeah - and if I didn't, I'd probably have died of starvation by now," Ban grinned. "Let's give this a try..."

"Ban-chan-" Ginji's half-protest, half-exclamation was smothered as Ban climbed into the back with him. Or at least, most of Ban did - even lying on top of Ginji, who had his legs drawn up to his chest due to the tight fit, he couldn't find any room for his left leg, which remained on the driver's seat in front. Wedged in as tight as they were, any potential for romantic pursuits was stifled by the fact that neither of them could move very much.

"Hmm..." Ban remarked, looking down at Ginji's face, nearly hidden beneath his knees. "This won't work." He couldn't so much as kiss Ginji with him in this position, so he would have to find another way.

"Ban-chan..." Ginji's voice was somewhat faint. "Could you... get off me while you're thinking...? No room to breathe..."

Ban obliged, moving back to kneel in the front seat as he considered the possibilities. After a moment, he nodded. "I've got it - Ginji, come sit up here for a second."

After having unwedged himself from the back seat, Ginji crawled to the front again, rubbing his neck painfully. "What...? We can't do anything up here, can we...?"

Ban was already crawling to the back seat again himself, and turned around to sit down in the center, his legs still between the two front seats. Thank goodness the car was a little longer than it was wide, he thought with a grin as he beckoned to Ginji.

"Ahhh..." A grin broke out on Ginji's face as well as he got the idea. Ban hunched down a little to straighten his torso a bit more, bending his knees to make up for the length of his body, as Genji crawled over him, finally settling down with a knee on either side of Ban's hips on the back seat.

There seemed to be enough room for his head, especially with the sunroof, Ban noted. "Comfortable?"

Ginji nodded. "Are you?"

"Not yet..." His grin twisted into a smirk as he reached up to take Ginji's head between his hands, and pulled the blonde down into a kiss. Ginji returned it eagerly, perhaps more eagerly than usual. It had been awhile, really, since they'd done anything of this sort. Paul hadn't been happy when he'd walked in to see how they were doing with the task of cleaning the Honky Tonk's restroom... Well, at least it hadn't been Natsumi, Ban had reasoned. At any rate, it wasn't often they had a place they could be sure they'd be left alone.

Ginji had been pulled off balance by Ban's strong grip, and now was somewhat sprawled atop him, straddling his lap. His fingers worked between their stomachs, tracing up the edges of Ban's shirt to find the lowest button and unfasten it. He drew back just long enough to catch his breath and ask, "How about now?"

"Much better," Ban told him, and their lips met again, parting to explore each other's mouths in more detail. For all Ginji's warmth, Ban always had found him to have a strangely cool, natural taste, like raindrops during a thunderstorm. It was only fitting for the former Lightning Emperor, he supposed.

In fact, Ginji's hands on his stomach, caressing their way to the next button of his shirt, energized him just as Ginji's electrical currents could have powered a light bulb or a motor. His own hands stroked his friend's back, running over the firm muscle appreciatively before sliding under the waistband of his pants. Ginji was already grinding his hips against Ban's, very softly, perhaps unconsciously, and Ban returned the motion, subtly lowering Ginji's pants little by little.

As focused as he was, Ginji had fully unbuttoned Ban's shirt and was tracing over his bare chest with his fingertips before it dawned on him that his pants were around his knees. "But... Ban-chan...?" he began hesitantly. "We don't have anything here for this, do we?"

Ban shrugged, and let his right hand drop to fumble around on the floor until it found a plastic bottle. When he held it up, Ginji didn't look relieved. "Motor oil? Isn't that poisonous?"

"You're not going to drink it," Ban told him, unscrewing the cap.

Ginji's nod was a somewhat apprehensive one, but he slid his pants the rest of the way off as Ban smeared some of the lubricant over his fingers. He grimaced slightly at the sight of it. "It's so dirty..."

"It's only dirty after it's been used - this is fresh," Ban pointed out, grinning. "And tomorrow we can take a real shower, in our brand new apartment."

The thought cheered Ginji tremendously, and he settled down atop Ban again, leaning forward to come face to face with him. After only a moment, he hesitated as something occurred to him. "But... that bottle wasn't there last night, and just this morning you said we didn't have any money for breakfast. So..."

"If the car didn't run well, we couldn't get to our job," Ban said, closing the bottle and tossing it back to the floor.

Ginji pouted at him. "But Ban-chan, I was hungry! And you bought things for the car instead? It was running fine!" His pout turned to a glare. "And you made me do my job on an empty-" His argument was cut off in a gasp as Ban's index fingers slipped between his legs.

This was one of Ban's favorite ways to make Ginji see things his way, really. Ginji seemed to enjoy what his fingers were doing, and Ban certainly couldn't object to the little gasps that Ginji made either. "B...Ban-chan..."

Any thoughts of food vs. car maintenance were forgotten entirely as Ginji's warm brown eyes met Ban's deep blue ones, which narrowed into an intense glittering stare which appeared nearly as snakelike as his signature move. "Ginji..."

Ginji's sudden kiss was as energetic as anything else he did, and more enthusiastic than usual for the moment, as he buried his hands in Ban's unruly hair, locking the two of them together. Momentarily forgetting where they were, Ban began to roll over on top of Ginji - and only succeeded in grunting painfully against Ginji's lips as he banged his ankles against the gear shift and fell back into his previous place. Ginji didn't seem to care, or maybe he was just too busy undoing Ban's belt to realize that the noise wasn't inspired by him.

Already Ban was too impatient to bother with trying to completely remove his pants, which would have required some fancy maneuvering within the small interior of the car and with Ginji on top of him, and he instead settled for pushing them down to his shins. Bracing himself with his feet, one on each of the front seats, he grasped Ginji's hips to pull him into a suitable position, and Ginji wasted no time in taking advantage of it.

There was no need for subtlety or restraint when it came to Ginji, and Ban thrust upwards further into him, making Ginji gasp. He leaned back against Ban's thighs as he rode the rhythm of Ban's hips and pressed back with his own. "Ah, Ban-chan... Ban-chan...!"

Ginji might have had a tendancy to babble a bit too much at any given time, but Ban wasn't going to complain. The way his name sounded in Ginji's breathless voice made up for any chatter he might have had to endure. He was beautiful, too - there was an innocence at all times that was hard to explain as being present in a former gang boss, but the carefree, blissful smile as Ginji tossed his head back made him appear all that much more innocent at such moments. It was hard to imagine that such a face had ever looked as sad as the Raitei's had.

It grew happier still when Ban reached up to fondle him, closing his hand around Ginji and pumping him in time to the rhythm of their hips, making Ginji moan faintly, almost laughing in his pleasure. "Ban-chan... I love your hands... When you touch me, I... it's hard to believe you use them to tear people apart..."

Ban's hands slipped in his surprise before he recovered himself. Was this Ginji's idea of being romantic, he wondered? He sure did get weird sometimes in bed.

Despite his words, the sex was growing rougher as the tension grew, and Ban didn't hold back - Ginji was tougher than anyone he'd ever known. In fact, it was a challenge to hold on as long as Ginji before it was over, and he gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, willed himself to hold out just a little longer, take it just a little further...

Finally Ginji let out a stifled cry, his hands gripping Ban's wrists and squeezing hard as he climaxed, his hips bucking against Ban's hands. The look on Ginji's face, the sticky warmth of him in his hands and against his bare stomach, was enough to drive Ban out of control as well, and his body convulsed beneath Ginji's weight.

The moment was spoiled, however, by the sudden loud and very close sound of the car's horn, which Ban somehow managed to kick in his thrashing around.

In alarm, they both scrambled to an upright position before they realized what the sound was, Ginji still straddling Ban's lap. Peering through the windows, their faces turned bright red as they realized that there were a fair amount of pedestrians out for that time of night, no doubt coming from the cinema down the street - and every single one of them was now staring at the two of them inside the small car.

Worse yet, the car was now moving.

Ban made an instinctive lunge for the front seat, only to find that the pants he hadn't quite removed had gotten tangled up around the parking brake, releasing it. His lunge was further hindered by Ginji, who was clinging to him for dear life. "Ban-chaaaaan!"

"Stop it, Ginji!" Ban shouted, trying to disentangle himself from the arms and legs wrapped around him. The pleasure of their encounter had faded as quickly as the car they were in had picked up speed - it was currently rolling down a hill. They shot straight through a red light, only narrowly being missed by a truck coming the other way through the intersection, which blared its horn loudly. Still slightly disoriented, Ban found he could do nothing to correct the situation, and helplessly clung to Ginji in return, both of them yelling as the headlights in front of them grew closer much too quickly.

There was a tremendous crash, the sound of metal folding, and only Ginji's shoulders, too broad to fit between the front seats, kept them both from being thrown from the back seat through the windshield as the car came to a sudden halt. The two of them still clung to each other, shaking, amidst the sounds of shouting and of vehicles screeching to a halt.

His pants around his ankles, Ban just let his head sink miserably onto Ginji's shoulders as his pantsless friend sheepishly waved at the policeman shining his flashlight through the window.

Paul raised an eyebrow at the two repossessors as they stumbled into the Honky Tonk late the next morning. "Hey... you two look even worse than usual."

Natsumi nearly dropped the coffeepot as she turned and caught sight of their wrinkled clothes and downcast, bloodshot eyes. "Are you all right? I thought yesterday's job was an easy one!"

"Yeah, and they called a little before midnight to let me know they'd finished," Paul put in, coming over to get a better look at them, baffled. "What happened?"

Ban dropped his head onto the counter with a thud. "Don't ask..."

"Oh..." Natsumi thought for a moment, then brightened. "Well, whatever happened, you two can rest up in your brand new apartment - right, Ginji?"

"Wrong," Ginji moaned, resting his head on Ban's back. "Our pay's already been spent..."

"Already?" Paul exclaimed. "On what?"

"Tickets and fines," came Ban's muffled voice. "Reckless endangerment, loss of control of a moving vehicle, destruction of property..."

"Indecent exposure," Ginji added unhappily, his head still lolled on Ban's back.

Paul and Natsumi stared at them, then at each other, then back at the two of them again.

"And then there's the car repairs," Ban mumbled into the wooden counter. "After all of that, there's no money left over for the apartment..."

"Or even one night in a nice hotel..." Ginji moaned pitifully.

Paul and Natsumi stared at them in silence, until Paul sighed. He didn't know what on earth had happened, but one thing seemed rather obvious. "So you two aren't going to pay your tab today, are you?"

Ban curled his arms under his head and sobbed.