Paradise [1/?]
Title: Paradise
Author: calorie-zero
Chapter: 1/?
Pairing: Aoi/Uruha
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, Romance, Angst
Warnings: the usual
Disclaimer: Unfortunately fiction. *tear*
Summary: Forced to redeem himself for his lack of good deeds as an angel, Aoi unwillingly becomes a poor college student’s guardian and finds that he is more than willing to stay with this human for as long as he can.
Notes: I’m sort of back again. This time with a new story I hope you all enjoy!
From the inconsolable clouds fell a glowing flicker of the hiding sun. Floating in and out of the skyscrapers of Tokyo, Aoi wearily eyed the crowd’s black umbrellas hurrying down the street in the pelting rain below. They were like millions of black mice trying to find the way out of a maze. He didn’t understand how humans could live like that, spending their entire lives chasing some impossible dream, some meaningless errand, until their bodies refused to keep up any longer.
To him, the thought that he could’ve been one of those very people once upon a lifetime was a lie. Nothing about him was human- or angelic, if he was to argue both sides.
Flowers did not bloom when he touched them. People did not smile or feel filled with a joy of mysterious origins and of all the cures indexed in the official Heaven book, he only knew one. Aoi saw no need to leave his rest inside of his bed of clouds but idleness was punishable by guardian duty and he couldn’t argue that he had gotten what he deserved, especially since he was still in the lower ranks of the hierarchy. It showed in the impure color of his feathers.
Flapping his wings once, Aoi glided his nonchalant presence past the traffic jam towards the location drawn out for him. The occasional radio signal that crossed his path amused him briefly with its talk of trivial human things and offbeat songs as the impending gloom of an approaching neighborhood lingered in the distance.
Skeptical that his assignment was going to be particularly easy, Aoi peered down at the faded brick in disdain. The walls weren’t the only things that needed a paint job, the rusty balconies and bicycles did too. He cautiously flew deeper into the ghetto. Fog had already settled but even in the blurry haze, he could see a soft glow a couple of streets in coming from a charm placed on somebody’s balcony beckoning him.
Reluctantly, Aoi floated a little closer to earth. The charm kept flashing until he landed on the balcony of one of the top floor apartments and folded his wings so he would fit into the cramped space. From where he was standing, he could see a light from the kitchen but after a few minutes, there was still no sign of its tenant in the run-down place. There were watermarks on the ceiling, no doubt from the leaky roof that couldn’t hold as many rainstorms as there were during autumn.
Sliding the unlocked balcony door open, Aoi stepped into the staleness and wrinkled his nose at the disorganization. If anything, he was meticulous about cleaning. The beer bottles littered on the floor along with the displaced pillows were not a good sign of how well he would get along with this human. He slipped past the messy living room into the bedroom, where the bed, just as he suspected, was rumpled and unmade.
The peculiar thing was that the room seemed to be made of teddy bears. They were strewn across the bed, on all the chairs and desks, and even the shelves of the closet were stuffed full of plushies, their wide innocent eyes watching him. Personally, Aoi found their unrelenting stares disturbing. They seemed to be peering underneath his skin into his soul.
_________
His key bit at the stubborn lock until it clicked open. Uruha tiredly stumbled into his tiny one-bedroom apartment and to his disdain, he noticed that he had left the kitchen light on all day again, a certain addition to his already costly electric bill. Scolding himself for being careless, he shut it off before grabbing a cold beer from the refrigerator to collapse on his ratty couch with.
His backpack, stretched out with textbooks that had been way too expensive for his budget, had been cast against the wall, a distraction for merely a few seconds. He had been living on his own for nearly two years now and he was still working the same three jobs he had gotten from the beginning and struggling to give up every cent earned to study at the local university. For a moment, Uruha worried about the purpose of his life.
After digging around the cushions for the remote and jabbing at the dented buttons, Uruha managed to turn the radio on. He had no television-he couldn’t afford to buy one and pay for the electricity-but he didn’t really mind so much since he didn’t really have much of an attention span anyways. Hip-hop bounced off every wall of his small apartment but he found no reason to dance. Dejectedly, he swallowed the last of his beer and dropped the empty bottle onto the linoleum, wandering mindlessly into his dark bedroom.
Frowning, Uruha stared at the strangely neat array of teddy bears on his bed. He didn’t recall having time to straighten up their awkward positions after waking up in a rush that morning. Brushing off the oddity, he picked up the small white one he had neglected for a few days and curled up with it, his head sinking into the round tummy of the biggest blue bear.
The blue plush felt worn against his cheek, memories of his childhood flooding his cold body. His family had never been rich, just average, but at least they’d been able to smile at each other and say goodnight happily before going to bed. Uruha couldn’t remember the last time anybody had said goodnight to him since he had starting living on his own. With the beat of the music still resonating dully in the background, he closed his eyes and realized that he couldn’t remember the warmth of somebody holding him either.
A flash of white hovered in his vision for a moment, forcing his eyes open again. There was something in his room. There was nothing in his room. Biting his lip, Uruha buried his face back into his teddy bear, the aftertaste of beer stinging his tongue, and filed the thought of wings into the back of his mind.
________
The light from Uruha’s lamp had caught his translucent presence. Usually, this wouldn’t have been a problem because a rare few humans could see the heavenly supernatural but once Uruha’s eyes had abruptly opened, staring right at where he had just been, Aoi knew this was not a normal case. Angels were all but allowed to be seen by the human eye. Hiding behind the wall, he peered into the room more carefully to watch Uruha; it was easy to make himself invisible but it was tedious to keep the cover.
Simple as I want happiness sounded, it wasn’t. Aoi couldn’t even calculate how long it was going to take to finish this obligation and it depressed him slightly. For a long while, Uruha tossed and turned in bed, staring up at the ceiling in his weary stupor, and Aoi killed time by discreetly recycling the beer bottles scattered across the already cramped floor space.
To fully assess the situation-sadly, Heaven did not hand out information to him on a silver platter-Aoi grumbled to himself about having to follow Uruha for a day. By the time he finished cleaning the floor, Uruha had already fallen asleep, still in his day clothes. Rolling his eyes at how the light had been left on again, Aoi shut it off and floated back out onto the balcony to find a space on the cold concrete to nap, the only place he could sleep without being caught in the morning.
_________
Aoi clung to the only isolated corner of the upturned apartment, watching Uruha tear his place part looking for where he had misplaced his keys. It was seven o’clock, the alarm having gone off in Uruha’s head five minutes late, and Aoi mused that the blond wore the rumpled style rather well. The wrinkles in Uruha’s white shirt looked impossible to smooth.
Kissing the dilapidated teddy bear he had thrown on the couch, Uruha snatched up his keys from beneath a cushion and struggled into his shoes while trying to put on a jacket. The stairwell was clammy from the rain the night before but Uruha didn’t seem to notice it when he slammed the door shut and clambered down the stairs. Aoi floated down just behind Uruha, covertly slipping a peach into the pocket of the blond’s backpack since he’d had to skip breakfast-Aoi suspected it was a daily habit-this morning.
The only good thing about the ratty apartment building was that it was close to the subway. Pushing through the crowd, Uruha stuck his rail pass into the machine and rushed past the gate, ignoring the sharp pain when his hip crashed into the sharp corner of somebody’s swinging briefcase. Just as the orange-line train was about to pull out of the station, Uruha managed to find it and snag an empty seat.
Letting out a breath of relief, he leaned his head against the window. Aoi hovered above the heads of the people to keep an eye on Uruha’s half-mast conscience, wincing irritably when a teenage girl pushed rudely past him.
Everywhere Uruha went, it was crowded. The local university was packed with students cramming into lecture halls and the rather tiny classrooms and Aoi struggled to breathe and follow Uruha at the same time. Grumbling, he slipped through the door of one of the rooms at the end of the hall with Uruha. The other students had assembled into their usual groups around a few easels, laughing or furiously copying homework, but Uruha only stared at them for a few moments before taking the seat closest to the window in the back.
The canvas that sat in front of him was completely blank, unlike the rest, which were half-finished masterpieces. The air was clogged with the smell of oils and Aoi had to sit on the windowsill, complaining to himself about the poor air quality, to keep from passing out. Even when class started and all the other students began to uncap their tubes of paint, Uruha just admired the whiteness of his canvas.
Aoi thought it looked perfect as it was, the never-ending space of untouched white starkly contrasting the bold array of colors of the other paintings. Several times, Uruha picked up his brand-new brush, dipped it in water and biting his lip, did nothing to change the blankness in front of him. There were too many possibilities.
_________
Neatly stacking the books they had used in the corner of their desk, Uruha pushed them towards the girl he was tutoring and told her what to do for homework in her math book. Her mother stood nearby, watching her daughter scribble down the assignment, payment already in hand. As they began to walk away, he folded the check into a neat square and tucked it away in the pocket of his striped shirt, sighing when he noticed the time. He was due to make cocktails at the Shibuya bar in half an hour.
Pushing his glasses up his nose, Uruha wiped the tears from his eyes from yawning with his sleeve and gathered his own book bag from the table. A peach fell out. He stared at it momentarily-he didn’t recall washing one in the morning- before picking it up from the table with the paper towel it had fallen from and took a bite of it as he started for the door. It was still juicy and slightly cold.
It was already dark out, despite being only six o’clock, but the city lights made it seem like it was still day. He sluggishly dragged himself down the block, unconsciously rubbing at his face with his free hand so his complexion didn’t seem so pale from being tired. The peach pit clanged into the trashcan outside of the club he worked at.
The dim lighting made Uruha’s eyes ache after an hour of squinting at the labels on the bottles. His hand almost slipped from a glass he was setting in front of a pretty lady and he turned red at his slight mistake. The woman simply told him it was cute, smiling the whole time. That only made him more mortified when he actually dropped her drink the second time, glass shattering and all eyes in the club turning to glance at him. Apologizing profusely, Uruha bent down to pick up the broken shards, wanting nothing more than for a hole to appear in the tile and swallow him up for his incompetence. To his dismay, the woman was still sitting there when he returned to making drinks.
Poising her long fingers underneath his chin, she pulled him forward until her lips were directly by the side of his ear. “When do you get off work?” she whispered, hot breath overwhelming the stuffiness of the packed nightclub. He could smell cigarettes.
Uruha was not so naïve that he couldn’t tell that she wasn’t really after his schedule and normally, he would’ve turned his head so his their mouths were nearly touching and said, “midnight” in that innocently seductive way of his. But instead of feeling aroused, fear overtook his mind and he jerked away, looking flustered and shook his head.
Even still, she left him a rather large tip underneath her empty glass.
_________
Brushing his hair back in relief, Aoi made sure that the woman didn’t manage to bring Uruha home. She was pretty, yes, but Uruha needed a pillow and his teddy bears for a good night’s sleep more than a body that would leave him in the morning. He applauded himself on having none of the broken glass scrape Uruha’s hands when the blond stupidly bent down to pick up the pieces with his bare fingers in his embarrassment.
Everything Uruha did seemed awkward, funny in a way that made him seem like he needed a good poke in the side to cheer up. He’d always been a little shy, especially in public, always walking with his head down and headphones jammed over his ears so he wouldn’t have to worry that people were talking about him or commenting on how waif-ish he looked sometimes. Since he lacked time for socializing, the friends he had were few and distant because he was afraid to get too close.
After just a single day, the obvious childishness that Uruha still harbored that made him so clumsy and sweet it almost broke Aoi’s heart.
As he sat on the edge of the bar, Aoi contemplated the strange thought of even having one for the first time. For just a second, as Uruha was turning to grab the vodka from the top shelf, his heart doubled its beat when those glazed brown eyes contemplated the space Aoi occupied curiously before shaking the seeming illusion of sudden warmth off.
_________
Just his luck, the clear sky Uruha had seen just before disappearing into the nightclub had grayed. Rain plummeted to the sidewalk, showing no signs of stopping anytime soon, and after standing gloomily underneath the overhang of a shop for some time waiting for it to at least ease up, he trudged through the pelting raindrops in his thin late-summer clothes. The weatherman on the radio hadn’t said anything about a rainstorm, Uruha griped. Though he passed by several convenience stores that sold umbrellas, he kept from going in to buy one; it would be a waste of money.
Wishing that he didn’t have to work past the time the last train schedule, Uruha stomped through every puddle that had formed, soaking his jeans up to the knee and getting water in his shoes. He couldn’t remember when he had jumped through the rain happily. Maybe when he had been in primary school, but certainly not any time as of late.
By the time he reached the gate of the rundown apartment building he lived in, he was shivering so hard that he was sneezing constantly. Buzzing himself in, he stumbled up the stairs, trying not to trip over his heavy bag. In the minute he stood in front of his apartment, rummaging through his bag looking for his keys, Uruha had formed a puddle on his doorstep, his drenched figure dragging water in through his already dank apartment.
Too exhausted to care about the already beat-up garage sale couch, he sank down into the broken springs and sat the teddy bear he had left there in the morning on his chest. It stared at him with its smile, the softest part of its blue butt soaking up the water from his shirt. Uruha smiled back half-heartedly, shifting his head so that it rested more comfortably on the arm of the sofa and as he was thinking about whether to turn on the radio or the heater, his eyelids drooped closed.
For some time, Aoi hovered over the coffee table, waiting for Uruha to wake up. But the blond had already fallen into a deep sleep, his chin resting against his collarbone as he snored softly and turned so that he was curled up into a ball on his side. Knowing what his responsibility required of him, Aoi floated into the bedroom to search for dry clothes. When he returned to the living room with a pajama shirt and a towel draped over his arm, Uruha was close to tumbling off the couch, clutching the teddy bear to his chest with his hands.
Biting his lip, Aoi gently pushed Uruha onto his back without waking him. Between the dark stripes of his collared shirt, creamy skin showed beneath the white cotton and even though he knew it was forbidden, he felt a sort of excitement running through his fingertips when he undid the buttons. Even underneath his clothes, Uruha radiated a sort of rare purity. Aoi carefully peeled off the rest of the wet clothes and replaced them with a large band t-shirt and green-mint green with black stars; it was a ridiculous color but Aoi found them amusing for that very reason-boxers.
With the help of his wings, Aoi carried Uruha to bed. It was with a slight reluctance, because he couldn’t help but feel embarrassed about what he was doing, that he put Uruha’s head in his lap so he could dry his hair with the towel he had found in the bathroom. Sighing, he settled the blond’s head on the pillow and pulled the covers up to protect him from the cold.
Uruha mumbled in his seat, his hand reaching out from beneath the covers and grasped at the loose cloth draped over Aoi’s shoulders. Stopping short, the brunette stopped on his way to putting the wet clothes out on the line to watch Uruha crumple the soft, almost nonexistent fabric against his cheek, his hands looking hopelessly small against the wide expanse of white. His eyelashes cast small shadows on his cheek and Aoi mindlessly thought that he looked just like an angel.
The next morning, Uruha woke up just as the sun was peeking over the horizon. Rubbing his eyes sleepily, he glanced confusedly down at how he was wearing clothes he didn’t remember putting on. He pushed the strange thought away, he stepped out of bed and wandered his way to the refrigerator for a glass of milk. A glimmer by the balcony door caught his eye.
The foreign feeling of warmth and joy suddenly ran through his veins and for the first time in a long time, there was a bounce in his step when he left his apartment for the day. The same glimmer seemed to be following him, yet he didn’t mind it in the least. Suddenly, the loneliness Uruha had suffered for so many years left his conscience and the emptiness that would’ve been there was filled with a certain euphoria that confused and sated him all at once and he wished that it would still be there when he woke up tomorrow.
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A/N: Yes, I am obviously a fan of sickeningly sweet stories, but this one was an idea that has to be credited partially to Sai! :D She brought me some new chibis to play with.
It’d be nice to see how you guys like this so far and if you have any ideas, etc. so…
Comments are love~