君と僕の上に空で
Title: 君と僕の上に空で
Pairing: Akame
Disclaimer: They're not mine. Sad but true.
Rating: R
A/N: Fic for the one and only Nhixxie, who's amazing and deserves something much better than this... alas, I can't provide, so this will have to do. All the love to you, you wonderful person ♥ I know you said City of Angels but I ended up including details from the film that one's based on, Wings of Desire and even from its sequel, Faraway, So Close!. So... Hope you like it! The title reads kimi to boku no ue ni sora de and if my Japanese is half decent it should mean In the sky above you and me.
Summary: Jin's a modern day angel
“He looked right at me,” Jin tells Nakamaru, his tone persistent and unrelenting. “He looked right at me, just when I was about to reach over and stop the heart of his patient, and he told me ‘it’s not over.’.”
“You’re an angel, Jin.” Nakamaru sighs, “We’re angels. Humans can’t see us unless we want them to.” He takes a few steps forward, ascending to the ledge of the rooftop, tottering slightly. Jin hops to the spot right next to Nakamaru and peers over the edge.
“What if I want him to?”
“You know the rules, Jin. Don’t get in trouble.”
Jin nods distractedly, looking down at the streets as people go about their daily business. They’re happy or sad or worried or lonely or euphoric; Jin can feel all their emotions, and his job as an angel is to offer comfort to the sad ones, to restore the will to live in those who don’t feel able to go on anymore. Humans can’t see angels unless they want the humans to, and they rarely do. It’s better to keep a distance, they’re taught, because humans are just different from them.
Jin thinks about the surgeon, with his intense stare and desperately working hands and the ruthless determination in his voice. Jin thinks humans are fascinating.
Kamenashi Kazuya is a well known trauma surgeon, and even though he’s young enough that his career can hardly be described as long, there are not that many things that will shock him anymore. Except for the man napping on his couch, bare feet dangling from one of the armrests. For the moment it takes for panic to set in, Kame thinks that with the way the man is hugging a cushion, he looks pretty much like the Rilakkuma on the bento box his mother gave him for his last birthday, as if Kame has any time to make lunch, let alone to eat it during work.
Kame’s quick to react, though. He doesn’t have anything to hit the man with but he’s fairly confident he can take the intruder with his fists if he needs to. He readies himself to punch the guy in his guts, but it’s Kame who squeaks out loud when his fist goes through the man’s stomach and hits the couch underneath it. He recoils and hits the low coffee table and grunts in pain. All the noise seems to wake up the man lying on his couch, because suddenly he’s stretching and yawning and blinking at Kame before he smiles.
“Hey.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Dude, no need to be so rude.” The man frowns, offended, and Kame would find the situation funny if it wasn’t so spooky.
“You broke into my house and my fist went straight through your stomach. Who the fuck are you?”
“Uhm, yeah. About that. My name is Jin. I’m an angel.”
“What?!” Kame’s voice is a bit too high, more of a screech than the yell he was aiming for. He forces himself to take a deep breath and closes his eyes, but when he opens them again Jin is still sitting on his couch, looking a bit amused and mostly guilty. “You can’t be real. Angels don’t exist.”
“That’s mean,” Jin huffs. “I’m as real as you are.”
Kame squints at the man and reaches out to poke his knee, but his finger pushes through Jin as if he were mere air, despite looking very real. Jin’s looking guilty again, and it’s only when Kame stops to take a second look at the man’s face that he realizes it’s not the first time they have met.
“You’re the guy who was in the OR. I saw you. You were only there for a moment and then you vanished and… Oh.”
“’Oh?’?” Jin asks. He’s leaning forward a bit, like he wants to touch Kame to see if he’s alright even though he can’t touch humans. “What does oh? mean?”
“You’re just a hallucination. I’m just tired, and today’s been a stressful day, and obviously the shock of losing that man is making me see hallucinations. That’s all.”
Jin looks a bit unsure about what to say or do, but he finally decides this might be for the best and shrugs. “If that’s what you want to believe. I’m here to make you feel better.”
Kame nods, it all makes sense now. He gets up and strips off his clothes, because really, it doesn’t matter if his hallucination sees him naked, even if Jin’s now trying to look anywhere but at him. Kame makes Jin promise to be there after he’s done with his shower, and is pleased to find out half an hour later that he has hallucinated not only a shy angel but also quite an obedient one. Jin pokes him to get dinner, and explains with a mournful pout that he can’t eat like humans do when Kame offers him some. Jin settles with Kame on the couch to watch some TV after dinner and makes Kame laugh when he tries to pick up a blanket with which to cover Kame when Kame starts getting sleepy but the blanket keeps slipping through his immaterial hands.
“I don’t believe in angels,” Kame says. He’s curled up against his side of the couch and wrapped tightly in his blanket that he finally got up to fetch it himself when watching Jin try and fail stopped being funny. He’s getting sleepy, even though it’s not that late. “How come I imagined an angel if I don’t believe in them?”
Jin shrugs. He’s tracing silly patterns on Kame’s naked calves where they stick out from under the blanket and his fingers make a warm tingling sensation run through Kame’s skin even though they can’t really touch it. Jin looks sad about it. “There’re things that exist even if you don’t believe in them. Angels always see the best in everyone. We don’t believe in Evil, but it doesn’t make Evil any less real.”
Kame stretches to push his feet through Jin’s lap. It feels a bit like another blanket, though Jin squirms a bit. Kame wonders if the feeling is uncomfortable for him, but Jin doesn’t complain. “You’re saying you’re real, then? I know you’re a hallucination, but I can let you think you’re real if you want.”
Jin rolls his eyes. “Well, that’s nice of you.”
“I had never seen an angel before, though. If you’re real, why have I never seen an angel before?”
“You probably did, back when you were a kid. Only children can see us, but they forget when they grow older because you’re not supposed to see things that don’t exist. Humans can only see us when we want them to.”
“You wanted me to see you?”
“Part of our job is to comfort people when they’re in distress. It’s usually more subtle, kind of… Something like a sudden feeling, but I thought you needed a bit of extra comfort today. You know, because of what happened with the patient.”
“You were there with him too.”
“Another part of our job is to fetch the souls of those who pass away. We talk to them and make it easier for them. You shouldn’t feel bad; you did all you could for him, but his time had come. He was not scared. People always think that dying hurts, but that’s not true. It’s living that hurts. Death is easy, kind of like a transition… You barely notice it. He had a happy life. We have to ask them what their favorite thing in life is too. He said his daughters.”
Kame yawns. His eyes are dropping closed and he should probably move to his bed, but it feels nice and cozy on the couch with Jin, even if they can’t touch. “That’s nice,” Kame says and yawns again. He’s more asleep than awake already. “It’s been nice chatting with you, even though you’re only a hallucination. Please come around next time I’m tired enough to be delusional.”
Jin’s laughs, but Kame’s already too gone to realize how sad it sounds.
“You showed yourself to him?”
It’s windy on the rooftop, but Jin and Nakamaru can’t feel the cold. They hear the wind rushing around them, but it doesn’t rustle their clothes or mess their hair. Jin wishes he could feel things like humans do, even though Nakamaru always tells him he’s silly for wanting that, because he’s an angel and angels are not supposed to feel those things. Below them the city bustles with activity, a world in shades of grey to the colorblind eyes of angels.
“I thought he needed a bit of extra comfort.”
“We’re not supposed to show ourselves to humans, Jin.” Nakamaru is a few steps behind Jin because he doesn’t like to get too close to the rooftop’s edge. Nakamaru is afraid of heights, which is a bit ridiculous for an angel, in Jin’s opinion, even if they don’t have wings anymore. Modernization catches up even with celestial creatures. “You know the rules. You’ll get in trouble.”
“I was just doing our job,” Jin bristles back even though he knows he’s being unfair to Nakamaru.
“That’s not how it works, Jin, and you know that. You’re not supposed to show yourself to living humans.”
“He didn’t believe I was real anyway,” Jin huffs. Nakamaru’s hand is a slight pressure on his shoulder, but there’s no warmth, no comforting feeling. Jin’s voice is tiny, and maybe just a little bit broken. “I wanted him to believe in me. I like him so much.”
“Of course you like him. We’re angels. Angels like all humans.”
“It’s not that!” Jin jumps off the rooftop’s rail and paces around angrily. “I don’t like him like I like the rest of humankind. I don’t like him like an angel… I like him like humans like each other.”
Nakamaru sighs and looks down at the bustling city despite his vertigo. Humans rush in the streets far below, going about their lives without even imagining angels watch over them. An elderly man worries about his sick wife, a young woman shines with joy as she thinks of her soon-to-be-born baby, two school children blush and fidget after they share their first kiss. They live and they feel, they’re sad or happy, they hurt and heal and feel cold or warm or excited or depressed, they love and hate and love again, but it’s all a distant blur for angels, concepts they understand rather than feelings they experience.
“It doesn’t work like that, Jin. You can’t ignore the rules.”
The wind whistles around him, and Jin really wishes he could feel the cold.
It becomes a bit of a habit for Jin to show himself to Kame, despite Nakamaru’s warnings. He appears at the hospital while Kame’s visiting patients, and during lunch breaks to poke Kame into eating, and back at home when Kame’s tired and feeling cuddly even if they can’t cuddle. Jin appears in the OR room too, even though he hates these times because he hates to see the desperation in Kame’s eyes and the way something breaks in them when he sees Jin and knows there’s nothing else he can do. Jin tries to explain again and again that there’s nothing Jin can do about it either, that it’s not him who takes away the humans’ lives, but sometimes Kame doesn’t talk to Jin for days even when Jin’s around.
It soon becomes obvious that Jin’s not quite a hallucination, though, not when he’s around so often and even in the morning when Kame’s feeling fresh and awake. Kame worries for a while that he’s going crazy and the fact that his own supposed hallucination tries to convince him that’s not the case is not as reassuring as Jin intends it to be. Jin is the only thing out of place in his life, though. He doesn’t see any other hallucinations, he doesn’t start acting weird or delusional about anything else and his colleagues on the psychiatry ward insist the only trait that maybe hints towards any unnatural behavior he has been showing recently is him obsessively asking if he has been showing any at all.
It’s hard to accept that Jin is, maybe, possibly, a real angel. Jin dresses in baggy pants and loose hoodies and ratty sneakers, and sometimes he shows up with three-day stubble. He has bad skin and he’s rude and gets angry and upset and he doesn’t have wings. He’s nothing like the white-clad, winged, ethereal creatures Kame has been taught angels are, even though admittedly, religious iconography has never been a great part of Kame’s education. Jin grumbles about old-fashioned beliefs, how impractical getting feathers all over the place is, how white robes get stained way too easily and about moving on with modern times, and Kame thinks that this is all a bit too complex to be just a delusional fantasy of his tired brain.
Kame does some research about angels while Jin scoffs behind him and points at how ridiculous the representations look, all effeminate men in white dresses and silly little floating golden crowns, and Kame considers it safer not to mention that more often than not, despite his best efforts to look casual-trashy, whatever that means, Jin looks quite like a lady himself. None of the depictions he finds look anything like Jin, though, but Jin’s too persistent and loud and annoying to not be real. Little by little Kame finds himself believing that maybe angels are real, and maybe Jin’s really his guardian angel. Jin explains that the concept of guardian angel doesn’t really work like that, that there aren’t enough angels for each person to have a particular one and it’s more like all the angels in a city are guardian angels for all of its population, but he spends too much time with Kame for this to be entirely believable.
Kame likes talking with Jin, hallucination or not, and he asks Jin all kinds of things. He asks Jin about his job, about being an angel, and anything he can think of. Jin laughs and answers the best he can, and one day when he’s been watching children play and a couple who has been married for sixty years silently drinking tea together, Jin asks Kame too, about being alive. Kame frowns like he doesn’t understand.
“But you’re alive too.”
“Not like you.” Jin sighs, and he sounds so sad that Kame wishes he could hug Jin. “If you could check my pulse or try to listen to my heartbeat, you’d find none. I can sleep but I don’t feel sleepy. I don’t feel hungry or cold or warm, I don’t feel the sun or the wind and even my emotions are different from yours. I envy humans because they get to experience life. I can only observe it from afar.”
There are a few moments of silence as Kame takes in this information. They’re sitting on the couch and Kame’s feet are stretched through Jin’s lap; it’s become so usual for Kame to do it that Jin doesn’t even flinch anymore. It’s warm inside the house, or so Jin thinks because Kame’s not wearing anything but a short sleeved t-shirt despite it being autumn already.
“How old are you?” Kame asks.
“How old do I look?”
“Uhmm,” Kame frowns and bites his lip as he looks at Jin in his old jeans and socks that are full of holes. He looks young. “Around… twenty five I guess?”
Jin smiles, but his smile looks so sad it makes Kame’s heart clench uncomfortably. “I don’t have an age.”
“What do you mean? I know angels are immortal but…”
“It’s not that we are immortal. We can’t die, but we’re not born either. I’ve always existed here as I am. I don’t have memories of being created. I just… am. And I’ve been this way since always and I will be forever just like you see me. Angels are not immortal; we’re eternal.”
“That sounds like… a very long time,” Kame says quietly, and Jin’s smile is so broken that he can’t even look at the angel.
“Always doesn’t feel so long when you have forever to look forward to.” Kame wonders how boring life had to be when there was nothing but angels, how angels had looked when there weren’t humans to look like, or if maybe humans look like angels instead. “Kame,” Jin says, and Kame has never heard anything so heartbreaking. “Kame, I don’t even get to see colors.”
Kame doesn’t know if angels can cry or not, but it’s he who cries instead at the sight of Jin bent forward and hugging himself, and Kame can’t remember ever wanting to touch someone so much and being unable to do so.
“Jin, you have to do something about this. You can’t keep breaking the rules so blatantly. It’ll bring trouble.”
They are on the rooftop of the hospital where Kame works. Jin thinks it’s funny that he always ends up meeting Nakamaru on rooftops, even though Nakamaru is afraid of heights. Jin just enjoys being able to see the world from above, and being alone because he chooses to be so for a change. He doesn’t like walking between the seas of people down below and knowing no one can see him.
“I will do something about it, don’t worry. I’ve already decided.”
“Good,” Nakamaru sighs. Jin knows Nakamaru only wants the best for him. “I know it’ll be hard, but this is for the best. Humans are not like us, Jin. He’ll die someday and…”
“Promise me,” Jin interrupts him, “that when Kame dies you’ll be the one to pick up his soul. Promise me.”
Nakamaru frowns. “He’s your friend. I thought you’d want to do it yourself…”
Jin continues without heeding his friend’s confusion. “And promise me you’ll be there for me when I die too. Please.”
Nakamaru’s frown is closer to alarm than to confusion now, and his eyes search for Jin’s desperately. “What do you mean? You’re an angel, Jin. You can’t die. What are you thinking about doing? Don’t even dare to…”
“Promise me. Please. I need you to promise.”
“Okay, I do. I promise you, but Jin, what…”
Jin wraps his arms around Nakamaru and pulls him into a tight hug that would have squeezed the air out of Nakamaru’s lungs if angels could breathe or had actual lungs. It’s a weird feeling because despite looking completely opaque they’re not quite corporeal, and it feels more like hugging a human shaped mass of slightly warmer air. Jin wonders how hugging someone for real feels, but the thought doesn’t sadden him anymore.
“Thank you, Nakamaru. I trust you to look over us.”
Nakamaru looks like he wants to protest, but Jin’s faster. He climbs atop the rail of the rooftop and looks down. It’s the first time the height actually scares him, but there’s no room for doubts anymore. Nakamaru is quickly catching up with the situation and he’s yelling at Jin to stop, getting rid of the shock that freezes his body to try and reach for his friend. His fingers only brush Jin’s hoodie before the other angel jumps off the seven storey building.
Jin doesn’t even make a sound as he falls.
Kame’s not sure what the first thing that goes through his mind when he sees Jin being wheeled into the hospital on a stretcher is. He thinks that maybe he’s dreaming and Jin’s found a way to find him even there, because Jin’s an angel and who knows what angels might be able to do, but there are people touching Jin, actually touching him and their hands don’t disappear through his body. There are machines attached to Jin’s body and Kame can see Jin’s chest rising and falling as he breathes and nothing make sense, and Kame thinks this is just a nightmare and he only has to wake up, he only has to close his eyes tight and wait a moment and when he opens them he’ll be awake in his bed and it’ll be just another day with incorporeal Jin pestering him.
When he opens his eyes, though, it’s to face one of the EMTs shaking his shoulder and looking worriedly at him.
“Kamenashi-san, are you alright? Do you know this man?”
“Yes… Kind of, what… What has happened to him?”
“We don’t know, Kamenashi-san. He was found lying on the ground outside the hospital but no one can report having seen him fall from anywhere. He’s unconscious but seems stable. It’d be better to take some tests as no one can account for his current condition.”
“Yes...” Kame shakes his head a bit. He’s a professional and Jin or not, this is not the moment to lose focus. “Yes. We’ll need a CAT scan, a test of his bloodwork and a tox screen. I'll check to see if anything suggests x-rays for his extremities. We’ll see after that. Get going, I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“We haven’t found any ID for him or anything that would help us identify this man, Kamenashi-san. If you could just provide us with his name to find his relatives…”
“His given name is Jin but I can’t… I don’t know his family name, we’ve only met a couple of times and…”
Kame fumbles for an excuse, but the paramedic just nods and rushes away after his colleagues and the stretcher, because they’re professionals and the one risking lives with useless fumbling and delay is Kame. He closes his eyes for a second and steels himself. There will be time to ask Jin later, but the priority now is to make sure he’s alright, and Kame will do all he can to ensure the answer is yes.
It turns out Jin is, indeed, perfectly alright. Normal brain activity, normal breathing, normal pulse and the blood work reveals nothing. Jin’s still unconscious, even though no one can figure out why. Kame sits by his hospital bed every free moment he has and touches Jin’s hands and cheeks and hair and watches him breathe and marvels at the thought that Jin is finally alive, tangible, human.
Kame’s taking a nap by Jin’s bed when Jin wakes up with a loud gasp that startles him so much that Kame almost falls off the chair. Jin’s sitting straight up on the bed, fisting the sheets like he can’t believe he’s touching them, touching himself and his hair and the hospital gown and everything he can reach. Jin clutches at his head and scrunches his face up in pain with a low moan.
“It hurts so much.”
“Jin? Jin, are you alright?” Kame’s hand is on Jin’s shoulder and Jin shivers at the contact. “If it hurts too much I can give you some morphine or…”
“Kame,” Jin moans again, and Kame’s startled to see tears running down Jin’s cheeks. “My head hurts so much.”
“I know, don’t worry. It’s alright, okay? We took tests and you’re okay, I can… I can sedate you if you want and you’ll feel better later or I can…”
“Kame, I can feel pain!” Kame’s a little taken aback that Jin sounds happy, and only then realizes that Jin’s tears are of happiness, because angels don’t feel pain. He smiles tentatively, but suddenly Jin’s hands are framing Kame’s face to bring it closer, so close Kame can feel Jin’s warmth, and it’s awkward and exhilarating at the same time. “Kame!” Jin exclaims. His eyes are so full of wonder one would think he was seeing an angel himself. “Kame, your eyes are the most beautiful of all the colors.”
Kame thinks it’s lucky no one enters the room, because they must look like a pair of idiots hugging each other and crying like that.
It seems only natural for Jin to move in with Kame, just like it seems natural for them to somehow be together. Kame almost freaks out when Jin tells him he jumped off a building, but at the end of it Jin’s okay and he doesn’t even have a broken bone. He has allegedly no memory of who he is, what his name is or how to contact any friends or relatives other than Kame, but that’s just a story they tell the hospital. Pictures of Jin are published in some newspapers asking for any information that can help to identify him, but obviously no one knows anything.
Jin pretends to be down about it when he’s made to visit the hospital, but when he’s around Kame he’s full of a happy and healthy energy. Everything is new for Jin, and there’s nothing he doesn’t want to try. Jin stuffs himself with food until he’s sick and his stomach hurts and when Kame sighs and lectures him he just grins even though he’s clutching his stomach in pain, because stomachache is new and human to him. Jin stays in the bath until his skin is pink and soft and he’s wrinkly like an old man and wonders aloud if this is what he will look like in thirty years now that time passes for him too. Jin touches everything he can reach and burns his fingers and cuts his hand and spends so much time under the rain that he ends up falling sick, and every time Kame has to take care of him.
Jin likes, most of all, to be around Kame. Jin likes to sit on the couch and let Kame rest his feet on his lap or his head on Jin’s shoulder and when Kame’s body meets the solid resistance of Jin’s own he smiles like there’s not a better feeling in the world. Jin loves to hold Kame and touch Kame’s cheeks and Kame’s chest and Kame’s hair and everything of Kame he can touch, simply because Jin doesn’t think there can be anything better than being able to touch the one you love. Jin likes kissing Kame too, because he likes how Kame feels warm and alive under him and how Jin’s own body reacts, but with so much kissing and touching there are things Kame can’t help no matter how he tries.
Jin breaks the kiss abruptly when he feels Kame thrusting his hips slightly and pulls away to discover a bulge in Kame’s pajama pants. Kame’s flushed and panting a bit, but he smiles when he sees Jin’s sudden awkwardness.
“What, you don’t know what to do with one of these?”
“Of course I do!” Jin glares with an offended pout. “I’ve been watching humans forever and you guys are dirty. It’s just that… Angels don’t have sex okay?” Kame snorts and Jin rolls his eyes, unamused. “Not in that sense, you pervert. Well, in that sense too but… We can look male or female, but that’s just to adapt to how humans think we should look. We don’t have any form and so we can’t have any physical sex.”
Jin blushes a dark shade of red and Kame laughs lightly as he reaches to caress Jin’s cheeks. Jin blushing is a wonderful sight to him, because angels don’t have a blood stream that allows them to blush. The warmth under his fingers only reminds Kame of how human Jin finally is, and all the things they can do together now. Kame wraps his arms around Jin’s waist to pull him closer until Jin’s pressed flush against him and gasping. There’s a sea of emotions in Jin’s eyes, but a soft kiss from Kame is enough to settle them even as Kame grabs his wrist to lead him into something new.
It’s slow and sweet and cuddly and Kame does most of the work, pressing himself up against Jin with his hand between their bodies. Jin’s breathing heavily and calling Kame’s name in breathless little gasps that send shivers of pleasure through Kame’s whole body. Jin’s mouth is clumsy when he tries to keep up with both Kame’s kisses and Kame’s hand and he trembles deliciously in Kame’s arms, the little thrusts of his hips urgent and without any rhythm until he finally stills and tenses and then melts in a boneless heap against Kame’s body, barely able to hum in response to Kame’s lazy thrusts anymore.
They’re sweaty when Kame finally finishes, but Kame can’t bring himself to pull himself away from Jin when Jin’s clinging to him like he might drown without Kame’s support. Jin’s dark hair is sticking to his forehead and his still flushed cheeks. When Kame reaches out to tuck the damp strands behind Jin’s ear, Jin opens his eyes and they are so dark and bottomless that Kame almost fears Jin has become an angel again. He strokes Jin’s neck slowly to reassure himself with the feeling of warm skin brushing against his fingertips and Jin shivers.
“Kame,” he whispers like it’s a secret. “Kame, when the angels come for me I’ll tell them you were the best thing in my life.”
Maybe, Kame thinks, if angels are real that means Heaven’s real too. He kisses Jin softly and lets Jin hold him closer, and he decides he doesn’t care. Heaven, Kame thinks, can’t feel better than this.
Pairing: Akame
Disclaimer: They're not mine. Sad but true.
Rating: R
A/N: Fic for the one and only Nhixxie, who's amazing and deserves something much better than this... alas, I can't provide, so this will have to do. All the love to you, you wonderful person ♥ I know you said City of Angels but I ended up including details from the film that one's based on, Wings of Desire and even from its sequel, Faraway, So Close!. So... Hope you like it! The title reads kimi to boku no ue ni sora de and if my Japanese is half decent it should mean In the sky above you and me.
Summary: Jin's a modern day angel
“He looked right at me,” Jin tells Nakamaru, his tone persistent and unrelenting. “He looked right at me, just when I was about to reach over and stop the heart of his patient, and he told me ‘it’s not over.’.”
“You’re an angel, Jin.” Nakamaru sighs, “We’re angels. Humans can’t see us unless we want them to.” He takes a few steps forward, ascending to the ledge of the rooftop, tottering slightly. Jin hops to the spot right next to Nakamaru and peers over the edge.
“What if I want him to?”
“You know the rules, Jin. Don’t get in trouble.”
Jin nods distractedly, looking down at the streets as people go about their daily business. They’re happy or sad or worried or lonely or euphoric; Jin can feel all their emotions, and his job as an angel is to offer comfort to the sad ones, to restore the will to live in those who don’t feel able to go on anymore. Humans can’t see angels unless they want the humans to, and they rarely do. It’s better to keep a distance, they’re taught, because humans are just different from them.
Jin thinks about the surgeon, with his intense stare and desperately working hands and the ruthless determination in his voice. Jin thinks humans are fascinating.
Kamenashi Kazuya is a well known trauma surgeon, and even though he’s young enough that his career can hardly be described as long, there are not that many things that will shock him anymore. Except for the man napping on his couch, bare feet dangling from one of the armrests. For the moment it takes for panic to set in, Kame thinks that with the way the man is hugging a cushion, he looks pretty much like the Rilakkuma on the bento box his mother gave him for his last birthday, as if Kame has any time to make lunch, let alone to eat it during work.
Kame’s quick to react, though. He doesn’t have anything to hit the man with but he’s fairly confident he can take the intruder with his fists if he needs to. He readies himself to punch the guy in his guts, but it’s Kame who squeaks out loud when his fist goes through the man’s stomach and hits the couch underneath it. He recoils and hits the low coffee table and grunts in pain. All the noise seems to wake up the man lying on his couch, because suddenly he’s stretching and yawning and blinking at Kame before he smiles.
“Hey.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Dude, no need to be so rude.” The man frowns, offended, and Kame would find the situation funny if it wasn’t so spooky.
“You broke into my house and my fist went straight through your stomach. Who the fuck are you?”
“Uhm, yeah. About that. My name is Jin. I’m an angel.”
“What?!” Kame’s voice is a bit too high, more of a screech than the yell he was aiming for. He forces himself to take a deep breath and closes his eyes, but when he opens them again Jin is still sitting on his couch, looking a bit amused and mostly guilty. “You can’t be real. Angels don’t exist.”
“That’s mean,” Jin huffs. “I’m as real as you are.”
Kame squints at the man and reaches out to poke his knee, but his finger pushes through Jin as if he were mere air, despite looking very real. Jin’s looking guilty again, and it’s only when Kame stops to take a second look at the man’s face that he realizes it’s not the first time they have met.
“You’re the guy who was in the OR. I saw you. You were only there for a moment and then you vanished and… Oh.”
“’Oh?’?” Jin asks. He’s leaning forward a bit, like he wants to touch Kame to see if he’s alright even though he can’t touch humans. “What does oh? mean?”
“You’re just a hallucination. I’m just tired, and today’s been a stressful day, and obviously the shock of losing that man is making me see hallucinations. That’s all.”
Jin looks a bit unsure about what to say or do, but he finally decides this might be for the best and shrugs. “If that’s what you want to believe. I’m here to make you feel better.”
Kame nods, it all makes sense now. He gets up and strips off his clothes, because really, it doesn’t matter if his hallucination sees him naked, even if Jin’s now trying to look anywhere but at him. Kame makes Jin promise to be there after he’s done with his shower, and is pleased to find out half an hour later that he has hallucinated not only a shy angel but also quite an obedient one. Jin pokes him to get dinner, and explains with a mournful pout that he can’t eat like humans do when Kame offers him some. Jin settles with Kame on the couch to watch some TV after dinner and makes Kame laugh when he tries to pick up a blanket with which to cover Kame when Kame starts getting sleepy but the blanket keeps slipping through his immaterial hands.
“I don’t believe in angels,” Kame says. He’s curled up against his side of the couch and wrapped tightly in his blanket that he finally got up to fetch it himself when watching Jin try and fail stopped being funny. He’s getting sleepy, even though it’s not that late. “How come I imagined an angel if I don’t believe in them?”
Jin shrugs. He’s tracing silly patterns on Kame’s naked calves where they stick out from under the blanket and his fingers make a warm tingling sensation run through Kame’s skin even though they can’t really touch it. Jin looks sad about it. “There’re things that exist even if you don’t believe in them. Angels always see the best in everyone. We don’t believe in Evil, but it doesn’t make Evil any less real.”
Kame stretches to push his feet through Jin’s lap. It feels a bit like another blanket, though Jin squirms a bit. Kame wonders if the feeling is uncomfortable for him, but Jin doesn’t complain. “You’re saying you’re real, then? I know you’re a hallucination, but I can let you think you’re real if you want.”
Jin rolls his eyes. “Well, that’s nice of you.”
“I had never seen an angel before, though. If you’re real, why have I never seen an angel before?”
“You probably did, back when you were a kid. Only children can see us, but they forget when they grow older because you’re not supposed to see things that don’t exist. Humans can only see us when we want them to.”
“You wanted me to see you?”
“Part of our job is to comfort people when they’re in distress. It’s usually more subtle, kind of… Something like a sudden feeling, but I thought you needed a bit of extra comfort today. You know, because of what happened with the patient.”
“You were there with him too.”
“Another part of our job is to fetch the souls of those who pass away. We talk to them and make it easier for them. You shouldn’t feel bad; you did all you could for him, but his time had come. He was not scared. People always think that dying hurts, but that’s not true. It’s living that hurts. Death is easy, kind of like a transition… You barely notice it. He had a happy life. We have to ask them what their favorite thing in life is too. He said his daughters.”
Kame yawns. His eyes are dropping closed and he should probably move to his bed, but it feels nice and cozy on the couch with Jin, even if they can’t touch. “That’s nice,” Kame says and yawns again. He’s more asleep than awake already. “It’s been nice chatting with you, even though you’re only a hallucination. Please come around next time I’m tired enough to be delusional.”
Jin’s laughs, but Kame’s already too gone to realize how sad it sounds.
“You showed yourself to him?”
It’s windy on the rooftop, but Jin and Nakamaru can’t feel the cold. They hear the wind rushing around them, but it doesn’t rustle their clothes or mess their hair. Jin wishes he could feel things like humans do, even though Nakamaru always tells him he’s silly for wanting that, because he’s an angel and angels are not supposed to feel those things. Below them the city bustles with activity, a world in shades of grey to the colorblind eyes of angels.
“I thought he needed a bit of extra comfort.”
“We’re not supposed to show ourselves to humans, Jin.” Nakamaru is a few steps behind Jin because he doesn’t like to get too close to the rooftop’s edge. Nakamaru is afraid of heights, which is a bit ridiculous for an angel, in Jin’s opinion, even if they don’t have wings anymore. Modernization catches up even with celestial creatures. “You know the rules. You’ll get in trouble.”
“I was just doing our job,” Jin bristles back even though he knows he’s being unfair to Nakamaru.
“That’s not how it works, Jin, and you know that. You’re not supposed to show yourself to living humans.”
“He didn’t believe I was real anyway,” Jin huffs. Nakamaru’s hand is a slight pressure on his shoulder, but there’s no warmth, no comforting feeling. Jin’s voice is tiny, and maybe just a little bit broken. “I wanted him to believe in me. I like him so much.”
“Of course you like him. We’re angels. Angels like all humans.”
“It’s not that!” Jin jumps off the rooftop’s rail and paces around angrily. “I don’t like him like I like the rest of humankind. I don’t like him like an angel… I like him like humans like each other.”
Nakamaru sighs and looks down at the bustling city despite his vertigo. Humans rush in the streets far below, going about their lives without even imagining angels watch over them. An elderly man worries about his sick wife, a young woman shines with joy as she thinks of her soon-to-be-born baby, two school children blush and fidget after they share their first kiss. They live and they feel, they’re sad or happy, they hurt and heal and feel cold or warm or excited or depressed, they love and hate and love again, but it’s all a distant blur for angels, concepts they understand rather than feelings they experience.
“It doesn’t work like that, Jin. You can’t ignore the rules.”
The wind whistles around him, and Jin really wishes he could feel the cold.
It becomes a bit of a habit for Jin to show himself to Kame, despite Nakamaru’s warnings. He appears at the hospital while Kame’s visiting patients, and during lunch breaks to poke Kame into eating, and back at home when Kame’s tired and feeling cuddly even if they can’t cuddle. Jin appears in the OR room too, even though he hates these times because he hates to see the desperation in Kame’s eyes and the way something breaks in them when he sees Jin and knows there’s nothing else he can do. Jin tries to explain again and again that there’s nothing Jin can do about it either, that it’s not him who takes away the humans’ lives, but sometimes Kame doesn’t talk to Jin for days even when Jin’s around.
It soon becomes obvious that Jin’s not quite a hallucination, though, not when he’s around so often and even in the morning when Kame’s feeling fresh and awake. Kame worries for a while that he’s going crazy and the fact that his own supposed hallucination tries to convince him that’s not the case is not as reassuring as Jin intends it to be. Jin is the only thing out of place in his life, though. He doesn’t see any other hallucinations, he doesn’t start acting weird or delusional about anything else and his colleagues on the psychiatry ward insist the only trait that maybe hints towards any unnatural behavior he has been showing recently is him obsessively asking if he has been showing any at all.
It’s hard to accept that Jin is, maybe, possibly, a real angel. Jin dresses in baggy pants and loose hoodies and ratty sneakers, and sometimes he shows up with three-day stubble. He has bad skin and he’s rude and gets angry and upset and he doesn’t have wings. He’s nothing like the white-clad, winged, ethereal creatures Kame has been taught angels are, even though admittedly, religious iconography has never been a great part of Kame’s education. Jin grumbles about old-fashioned beliefs, how impractical getting feathers all over the place is, how white robes get stained way too easily and about moving on with modern times, and Kame thinks that this is all a bit too complex to be just a delusional fantasy of his tired brain.
Kame does some research about angels while Jin scoffs behind him and points at how ridiculous the representations look, all effeminate men in white dresses and silly little floating golden crowns, and Kame considers it safer not to mention that more often than not, despite his best efforts to look casual-trashy, whatever that means, Jin looks quite like a lady himself. None of the depictions he finds look anything like Jin, though, but Jin’s too persistent and loud and annoying to not be real. Little by little Kame finds himself believing that maybe angels are real, and maybe Jin’s really his guardian angel. Jin explains that the concept of guardian angel doesn’t really work like that, that there aren’t enough angels for each person to have a particular one and it’s more like all the angels in a city are guardian angels for all of its population, but he spends too much time with Kame for this to be entirely believable.
Kame likes talking with Jin, hallucination or not, and he asks Jin all kinds of things. He asks Jin about his job, about being an angel, and anything he can think of. Jin laughs and answers the best he can, and one day when he’s been watching children play and a couple who has been married for sixty years silently drinking tea together, Jin asks Kame too, about being alive. Kame frowns like he doesn’t understand.
“But you’re alive too.”
“Not like you.” Jin sighs, and he sounds so sad that Kame wishes he could hug Jin. “If you could check my pulse or try to listen to my heartbeat, you’d find none. I can sleep but I don’t feel sleepy. I don’t feel hungry or cold or warm, I don’t feel the sun or the wind and even my emotions are different from yours. I envy humans because they get to experience life. I can only observe it from afar.”
There are a few moments of silence as Kame takes in this information. They’re sitting on the couch and Kame’s feet are stretched through Jin’s lap; it’s become so usual for Kame to do it that Jin doesn’t even flinch anymore. It’s warm inside the house, or so Jin thinks because Kame’s not wearing anything but a short sleeved t-shirt despite it being autumn already.
“How old are you?” Kame asks.
“How old do I look?”
“Uhmm,” Kame frowns and bites his lip as he looks at Jin in his old jeans and socks that are full of holes. He looks young. “Around… twenty five I guess?”
Jin smiles, but his smile looks so sad it makes Kame’s heart clench uncomfortably. “I don’t have an age.”
“What do you mean? I know angels are immortal but…”
“It’s not that we are immortal. We can’t die, but we’re not born either. I’ve always existed here as I am. I don’t have memories of being created. I just… am. And I’ve been this way since always and I will be forever just like you see me. Angels are not immortal; we’re eternal.”
“That sounds like… a very long time,” Kame says quietly, and Jin’s smile is so broken that he can’t even look at the angel.
“Always doesn’t feel so long when you have forever to look forward to.” Kame wonders how boring life had to be when there was nothing but angels, how angels had looked when there weren’t humans to look like, or if maybe humans look like angels instead. “Kame,” Jin says, and Kame has never heard anything so heartbreaking. “Kame, I don’t even get to see colors.”
Kame doesn’t know if angels can cry or not, but it’s he who cries instead at the sight of Jin bent forward and hugging himself, and Kame can’t remember ever wanting to touch someone so much and being unable to do so.
“Jin, you have to do something about this. You can’t keep breaking the rules so blatantly. It’ll bring trouble.”
They are on the rooftop of the hospital where Kame works. Jin thinks it’s funny that he always ends up meeting Nakamaru on rooftops, even though Nakamaru is afraid of heights. Jin just enjoys being able to see the world from above, and being alone because he chooses to be so for a change. He doesn’t like walking between the seas of people down below and knowing no one can see him.
“I will do something about it, don’t worry. I’ve already decided.”
“Good,” Nakamaru sighs. Jin knows Nakamaru only wants the best for him. “I know it’ll be hard, but this is for the best. Humans are not like us, Jin. He’ll die someday and…”
“Promise me,” Jin interrupts him, “that when Kame dies you’ll be the one to pick up his soul. Promise me.”
Nakamaru frowns. “He’s your friend. I thought you’d want to do it yourself…”
Jin continues without heeding his friend’s confusion. “And promise me you’ll be there for me when I die too. Please.”
Nakamaru’s frown is closer to alarm than to confusion now, and his eyes search for Jin’s desperately. “What do you mean? You’re an angel, Jin. You can’t die. What are you thinking about doing? Don’t even dare to…”
“Promise me. Please. I need you to promise.”
“Okay, I do. I promise you, but Jin, what…”
Jin wraps his arms around Nakamaru and pulls him into a tight hug that would have squeezed the air out of Nakamaru’s lungs if angels could breathe or had actual lungs. It’s a weird feeling because despite looking completely opaque they’re not quite corporeal, and it feels more like hugging a human shaped mass of slightly warmer air. Jin wonders how hugging someone for real feels, but the thought doesn’t sadden him anymore.
“Thank you, Nakamaru. I trust you to look over us.”
Nakamaru looks like he wants to protest, but Jin’s faster. He climbs atop the rail of the rooftop and looks down. It’s the first time the height actually scares him, but there’s no room for doubts anymore. Nakamaru is quickly catching up with the situation and he’s yelling at Jin to stop, getting rid of the shock that freezes his body to try and reach for his friend. His fingers only brush Jin’s hoodie before the other angel jumps off the seven storey building.
Jin doesn’t even make a sound as he falls.
Kame’s not sure what the first thing that goes through his mind when he sees Jin being wheeled into the hospital on a stretcher is. He thinks that maybe he’s dreaming and Jin’s found a way to find him even there, because Jin’s an angel and who knows what angels might be able to do, but there are people touching Jin, actually touching him and their hands don’t disappear through his body. There are machines attached to Jin’s body and Kame can see Jin’s chest rising and falling as he breathes and nothing make sense, and Kame thinks this is just a nightmare and he only has to wake up, he only has to close his eyes tight and wait a moment and when he opens them he’ll be awake in his bed and it’ll be just another day with incorporeal Jin pestering him.
When he opens his eyes, though, it’s to face one of the EMTs shaking his shoulder and looking worriedly at him.
“Kamenashi-san, are you alright? Do you know this man?”
“Yes… Kind of, what… What has happened to him?”
“We don’t know, Kamenashi-san. He was found lying on the ground outside the hospital but no one can report having seen him fall from anywhere. He’s unconscious but seems stable. It’d be better to take some tests as no one can account for his current condition.”
“Yes...” Kame shakes his head a bit. He’s a professional and Jin or not, this is not the moment to lose focus. “Yes. We’ll need a CAT scan, a test of his bloodwork and a tox screen. I'll check to see if anything suggests x-rays for his extremities. We’ll see after that. Get going, I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“We haven’t found any ID for him or anything that would help us identify this man, Kamenashi-san. If you could just provide us with his name to find his relatives…”
“His given name is Jin but I can’t… I don’t know his family name, we’ve only met a couple of times and…”
Kame fumbles for an excuse, but the paramedic just nods and rushes away after his colleagues and the stretcher, because they’re professionals and the one risking lives with useless fumbling and delay is Kame. He closes his eyes for a second and steels himself. There will be time to ask Jin later, but the priority now is to make sure he’s alright, and Kame will do all he can to ensure the answer is yes.
It turns out Jin is, indeed, perfectly alright. Normal brain activity, normal breathing, normal pulse and the blood work reveals nothing. Jin’s still unconscious, even though no one can figure out why. Kame sits by his hospital bed every free moment he has and touches Jin’s hands and cheeks and hair and watches him breathe and marvels at the thought that Jin is finally alive, tangible, human.
Kame’s taking a nap by Jin’s bed when Jin wakes up with a loud gasp that startles him so much that Kame almost falls off the chair. Jin’s sitting straight up on the bed, fisting the sheets like he can’t believe he’s touching them, touching himself and his hair and the hospital gown and everything he can reach. Jin clutches at his head and scrunches his face up in pain with a low moan.
“It hurts so much.”
“Jin? Jin, are you alright?” Kame’s hand is on Jin’s shoulder and Jin shivers at the contact. “If it hurts too much I can give you some morphine or…”
“Kame,” Jin moans again, and Kame’s startled to see tears running down Jin’s cheeks. “My head hurts so much.”
“I know, don’t worry. It’s alright, okay? We took tests and you’re okay, I can… I can sedate you if you want and you’ll feel better later or I can…”
“Kame, I can feel pain!” Kame’s a little taken aback that Jin sounds happy, and only then realizes that Jin’s tears are of happiness, because angels don’t feel pain. He smiles tentatively, but suddenly Jin’s hands are framing Kame’s face to bring it closer, so close Kame can feel Jin’s warmth, and it’s awkward and exhilarating at the same time. “Kame!” Jin exclaims. His eyes are so full of wonder one would think he was seeing an angel himself. “Kame, your eyes are the most beautiful of all the colors.”
Kame thinks it’s lucky no one enters the room, because they must look like a pair of idiots hugging each other and crying like that.
It seems only natural for Jin to move in with Kame, just like it seems natural for them to somehow be together. Kame almost freaks out when Jin tells him he jumped off a building, but at the end of it Jin’s okay and he doesn’t even have a broken bone. He has allegedly no memory of who he is, what his name is or how to contact any friends or relatives other than Kame, but that’s just a story they tell the hospital. Pictures of Jin are published in some newspapers asking for any information that can help to identify him, but obviously no one knows anything.
Jin pretends to be down about it when he’s made to visit the hospital, but when he’s around Kame he’s full of a happy and healthy energy. Everything is new for Jin, and there’s nothing he doesn’t want to try. Jin stuffs himself with food until he’s sick and his stomach hurts and when Kame sighs and lectures him he just grins even though he’s clutching his stomach in pain, because stomachache is new and human to him. Jin stays in the bath until his skin is pink and soft and he’s wrinkly like an old man and wonders aloud if this is what he will look like in thirty years now that time passes for him too. Jin touches everything he can reach and burns his fingers and cuts his hand and spends so much time under the rain that he ends up falling sick, and every time Kame has to take care of him.
Jin likes, most of all, to be around Kame. Jin likes to sit on the couch and let Kame rest his feet on his lap or his head on Jin’s shoulder and when Kame’s body meets the solid resistance of Jin’s own he smiles like there’s not a better feeling in the world. Jin loves to hold Kame and touch Kame’s cheeks and Kame’s chest and Kame’s hair and everything of Kame he can touch, simply because Jin doesn’t think there can be anything better than being able to touch the one you love. Jin likes kissing Kame too, because he likes how Kame feels warm and alive under him and how Jin’s own body reacts, but with so much kissing and touching there are things Kame can’t help no matter how he tries.
Jin breaks the kiss abruptly when he feels Kame thrusting his hips slightly and pulls away to discover a bulge in Kame’s pajama pants. Kame’s flushed and panting a bit, but he smiles when he sees Jin’s sudden awkwardness.
“What, you don’t know what to do with one of these?”
“Of course I do!” Jin glares with an offended pout. “I’ve been watching humans forever and you guys are dirty. It’s just that… Angels don’t have sex okay?” Kame snorts and Jin rolls his eyes, unamused. “Not in that sense, you pervert. Well, in that sense too but… We can look male or female, but that’s just to adapt to how humans think we should look. We don’t have any form and so we can’t have any physical sex.”
Jin blushes a dark shade of red and Kame laughs lightly as he reaches to caress Jin’s cheeks. Jin blushing is a wonderful sight to him, because angels don’t have a blood stream that allows them to blush. The warmth under his fingers only reminds Kame of how human Jin finally is, and all the things they can do together now. Kame wraps his arms around Jin’s waist to pull him closer until Jin’s pressed flush against him and gasping. There’s a sea of emotions in Jin’s eyes, but a soft kiss from Kame is enough to settle them even as Kame grabs his wrist to lead him into something new.
It’s slow and sweet and cuddly and Kame does most of the work, pressing himself up against Jin with his hand between their bodies. Jin’s breathing heavily and calling Kame’s name in breathless little gasps that send shivers of pleasure through Kame’s whole body. Jin’s mouth is clumsy when he tries to keep up with both Kame’s kisses and Kame’s hand and he trembles deliciously in Kame’s arms, the little thrusts of his hips urgent and without any rhythm until he finally stills and tenses and then melts in a boneless heap against Kame’s body, barely able to hum in response to Kame’s lazy thrusts anymore.
They’re sweaty when Kame finally finishes, but Kame can’t bring himself to pull himself away from Jin when Jin’s clinging to him like he might drown without Kame’s support. Jin’s dark hair is sticking to his forehead and his still flushed cheeks. When Kame reaches out to tuck the damp strands behind Jin’s ear, Jin opens his eyes and they are so dark and bottomless that Kame almost fears Jin has become an angel again. He strokes Jin’s neck slowly to reassure himself with the feeling of warm skin brushing against his fingertips and Jin shivers.
“Kame,” he whispers like it’s a secret. “Kame, when the angels come for me I’ll tell them you were the best thing in my life.”
Maybe, Kame thinks, if angels are real that means Heaven’s real too. He kisses Jin softly and lets Jin hold him closer, and he decides he doesn’t care. Heaven, Kame thinks, can’t feel better than this.