Author: Kouryuu
Chapter: 1/3
Status: Incomplete
Type: drama, wry comedy, shounen-ai
Rating: G for this chapter
Pairing: Aya x Ken
Warnings: Not a lemon. =P At least not yet.
Archive: If you'd like. Please let me know where it's going. It's up on http://starry-vortex.net
C&C: Please. If you give me constructive criticism, I will love you forever. E-mail me at lonestarfruit@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: If I owned the bishies, they wouldn't be this confused... and they'd all be running around in yummy bondage gear. As things stand, they belong to Takehito Koyasu, Project Weiss, Media Blasters, and other people and stuff.. o.o; The song "Foolish Games" belongs to Jewel and her record label. The angst and fumbling belong to Ken. 9_9; This cruddy laptop belongs to me. Sue me, and you'll get the laptop, some Kleenex, and a baggie of Craisins. Tempting, I know.
/You took your coat off and stood in the rain.
You were always crazy like that.
And I watched from my window, always felt I was outside,
Looking in on you. You were always the mysterious one with
Dark eyes and careless hair, you were fashionably sensitive
But too cool to care. You stood in my doorway
With nothing to say, besides some comment on the weather.
Well, in case you failed to notice... In case you failed to see...
This is my heart, bleeding before you. This is me down on my knees.
And these foolish games are tearing me apart.
And your thoughtless words are breaking my heart.
Breaking my... heart.
You're always brilliant in the morning, and smoking your cigarettes and
Talking over coffee. Your philosophies on art,
Baroque moved you, you loved Mozart.
And you'd speak of your loved ones as I clumsily strummed my guitar.
Well, excuse me, guess I'd mistaken you for somebody else.
Somebody who gave a damn, somebody more like myself.
These foolish games are tearing me, you're tearing me, you're tearing me apart.
And your thoughtless words are breaking my heart...
You're breaking my... heart.
You took your coat off and stood in the rain.
You were always crazy like that.../
~~chapter one~~
It was one of those nights that Ken dreaded the most. Nothing about it set it apart from any other late November night in Tokyo. It was an average weekday night, drizzly and cold, but Ken was stuck inside, looking at the angry red letters of the digital alarm clock on his dresser and waiting expectantly to hear the silence of the slow night broken by the turning of a doorknob and the sounds of his teammates returning from their mission. He hated nights when he was the only one left out of a mission. He hated not being out there, moving, feeling the adrenaline flow through his blood and rush out in a slash of his claws. More than that, he hated not knowing how the mission went. Right now, everyone could be dead. There could have been a trap, or something could have gone wrong, or--
"Shit."
Ken reached for the remote and turned on the small TV in his room, flipping to the sports channel. A soccer game was playing and he managed to get lost in it, though he was lost in a manner more morose and longing than genuinely interested in which team won. Warm brown eyes kept darting back to the alarm clock. Midnight. 1:25. 2:40. 3:15. Just before 3:30, the door downstairs opened and Ken clicked off the TV.
"...though if it hadn't been for the weather, it would never have taken us so long."
"It's alright, Youji-kun. What matters is it's over and the mission was successful."
"Yeah, I guess so. I need a smoke."
"Smoking's bad for you, Youji-kun..."
The conversation faded in as the two assassins passed the bottom of the stairwell and faded off as they moved on into the kitchen. Ken could almost see Omi reaching for the cocoa and Youji gratefully taking in his first lungfull of nicotine. Still, something was missing. Usually Aya would make some brusque comment, or Omi would ask him if he wanted anything to drink, though Aya always refused. The redhead must still be out somewhere, then. A small thread of concern wound its way through Ken's mind, and he absently wandered over to his window, looking out at the city. Visibility was low thanks to the cover of clouds and the general darkness of the late--or early--hour, but he could almost make out the lights along Tokyo Tower sparkling valiantly in the gloom.
A movement of shadow on shadow drew his attention.
"What the hell is he doing..?"
So he talked out loud once in a while. As far as personal eccentricities went, this was something that Ken figured he could allow himself. Not that he had that much control over it. Besides, he didn't like it when things were too quiet.
The redhead had stopped on the sidewalk and was looking up into the rain, bright hair darkened and dampened by the heavy mist. His eyes were closed and, as Ken watched, he slid the trenchcoat off, the rain quickly moulding the black sleeveless turtleneck shirt to his trim body. The leather pants were going to get ruined if they spent any more time soaking.
Ken didn't presume to guess what Aya was doing or why. Aya did Aya-ish things because he was, well, just strange like that. At last he wasn't waving that sword around or howling at the moon. In this line of work, you learned to be thankful for the little things like that. Ken couldn't help looking, though he felt in a way that he was intruding on a private moment. Aya's skin seemed to grow even more luminescent in the pale light provided by the street lamps and it took Ken a moment to realize that his skin seemed paler now because moments ago, it had been covered to some degree by blood.
That realization brought with it a shudder.
Aya lifted one black-gloved hand and ran it through his slick hair, and then his shoulders seemed to lose their brutally straight set. The trench went over one shoulder, the sword over the other, and Aya disappeared from Ken's view as he entered the building. The brunette stepped back from the window, his hands trembling the slightest bit as he set the TV remote back on the dresser. Two pairs of footsteps trailed up the stairs loudly, Omi still nagging and Youji still retorting. Both passed by his closed door without hesitation, probably assuming he was asleep, as he should well be. Two clicks as doors at the end of the hall closed, and then silence.
That was one major difference between Aya and his teammates. With the others, you could always "see" what they were doing at any given time by listening to the sounds they made. The click of computer keys as Omi wrote out a mission report, the soft scratch of a pen on paper as Youji wrote in his journal. Ken was probably the loudest of all of them, except when he was alone. At any rate, none of them were as uncannily silent as the self-proclaimed team leader. Ken was holding his breath and even so he couldn't hear a damn noise from downstairs. If someone had asked him, he would have sworn that there was no one down there.
Anyone human would have made a noise of some sort. It was simple logic. It bothered him, the fact that he couldn't quite think of the redhead as human. He certainly didn't move or act like any person Ken had ever encountered before, and as for how he thought... well, that was just territory that he was smart enough to stay away from. It was as though Aya had this protective opaque glass wall around him, and you could look and look as hard as you wanted to, but you'd never be able to tell what was going on under that cold, impassive surface.
Maybe it wasn't just Aya's thoughts that were guarded. Even his appearance added to the general sense of isolation that surrounded him. The dark clothing, the stern looks. Those incredible, fathomless eyes that everyone seemed to comment on, fringed with dark lashes like eaves, making the amethyst shade look darker and more foreboding. Silky blood-red hair framed his pale skin perfectly and shielded those disturbing eyes even more. Unlike Ken's chocolate-colored bangs, which always seemed to fall in his eyes when it was the most inconvenient, Aya's seemed to be on perfect behavior and never disobeyed or fell out of place.
They were probably too scared to, Ken thought wryly.
All this was well and good, and Ken had lost himself in his thoughts when the door to his room swung open and the object of his contemplation stood in the doorway, his body haloed by the dim light in the hallway. The glow from Ken's bedside lamp caught the glint of a single droplet of water that made its way down an eartail, slid along porcelain skin, and was sucked in by the high collar of the turtleneck.
Ken swallowed hard.
"You're not asleep."
It wasn't a question so much as a statement with an incomprehensible note of command that seemed to permeate everything that Aya said, no matter how trivial. Ken was perched on the side of his bed and suddenly felt very underdressed in his dark green pajamas. The only casual thing about Aya at the moment was the fact that he was barefoot, but that only meant he'd kicked off his boots downstairs and tossed his socks in the creaky communal hamper in complete silence, disturbing to say the least. Ken looked down at his lap. At least he wasn't wearing the soccer-print shorts this time. Thank the gods for small miracles.
"N-no, I wanted to make sure you all got back from the mission in one piece. How did it go?"
He tipped his head to the side, and there went the bangs, falling right into his line of vision so that he had to blow them irritably out of the way.
"The rain got in the way."
Ken waited for more. More wasn't forthcoming. He started to squirm.
"Oh. Well, at least you guys are back inside where it's dry. Did anyone get hurt?"
"...not really."
Which, in Ken's dictionary of Things Aya Says That Don't Mean What He Says, meant "Someone might have lost a limb, but I didn't care enough to check, and I got stabbed/got shot/am suffering from massive internal bleeding caused by getting run over by a car. Twice." The brunette chewed on his lower lip for a moment, then hopped out of bed and grabbed a very startled Aya's arm, pulling him inside the room.
"I'll go get the kit."
"Hidaka, I'm fin--"
But Ken was already reaching into the hall closet for the large medical kit contained within. It was a big, official-looking box with a paramedic logo on the top next to the unobtrusive Kritiker seal and containd everything from cotton balls and band-aids to a defibrilator and suture needles. Needless to say, it wasn't the lightest thing ever, but Ken hefted it easily onto his bed. Frowning a little, he straightened the sheets and motioned Aya to sit down. The redhead had remained standing in the exact place that he'd been dragged to and didn't seem too happy to be moving even farther into the room, but finally perched on the edge of the bed as if he expected it to reach out and ruffle his perfect hair at any moment. Judging by the sheer mass of squishy pillows decorating one end of the bed, that wasn't all that unlikely.
"So, what's bleeding?"
Aya just glared at him, but Ken was starting to get irritated.
"Look, the faster you tell me, the faster I'll patch you up and you can be out of here and stop making the both of us miserable, alright?"
"..."
No reply, but at least the glare turned a bit more tired--which Aya must have been, by this point--and the redhead tugged his wet turtleneck off. Ken wondered for a moment how it was humanly possible that Aya's hair was not only almost dry already but had also not gotten mussed in the course of removal of said soaking wet turtleneck. Then his brain was distracted by processing the visual of Aya's bare upper body, which would have made any Greek sculptor salivate too hard to hold the chisel properly. Lithe muscle, smooth skin, not an ounce of visible fat. The only flaw in the whole picture was the long, almost surgical gash bisecting one side of Aya's upper chest, starting at the point of his right shoulder and angling down towards his sternum.
No one got hurt.
Right.
Ken sighed and opened the kit, reaching for gauze and sterile water.
"You know the drill."
They'd all taken turns in patching one another up so often that Ken fell into a sort of rhythm as he cleaned and disinfected the wound, inspected it carefully, decided that it was too shallow and minor to stitch, dabbed it with antibiotic ointment. It wasn't until he was taping the gauze down that he realized he'd never taken his turn at patching Aya up. The redhead usually preferred to take care of his own injuries, or else Youji would hold him down while Omi did the stitching. This was minor enough that Aya could have easily taken care of it himself, so why hadn't he said something along those lines? At almost the same moment, Ken came to the realization that Aya's skin was warm. Somehow he had always imagined the older assassin's skin to be as cold as it was pale, but it was perfectly warm and normal.
So much for the inhuman theory.
"Are you done?"
How long had Ken sat there, holding his hand just to the side of the neat bandages, almost exactly over Aya's heart?
"Er, yeah, I was just... uh... right."
He couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was about the gloomy man that made him uncomfortable--was that even the right term?--but whatever it was, it never failed to bring a frustrating blush to Ken's tan cheekbones. And of course, his bangs were back in his face. Being uncomfortable around a teammate was instantly processed as irritation at himself. Which just accented the blush with a mild pout.
Aya stood up abruptly, fast enough to make Ken glance up. Violet met warm brown and for a moment Ken could swear that Aya almost smiled. "You have the morning shift. Don't be late."
...or not.
Goodnight, Aya... No, it wasn't worth it. Besides, by the time Ken got the gall back up to actually say something to that, or to at least snap at him indignantly as he usually would, Aya was gone as silently as he'd appeared, leaving nothing except for a slight depression in the comforter where he'd been sitting.
What did it matter how he acted, anyway? Aya was Aya, he didn't care about anyone or anything. Not that he was exactly a "user". He wasn't one of those people that went around taking what other people had to give. No, he was just... in his own world, a world that no one could touch.
No matter how much they cared, though they'd never admit it.
No matter how hard they tried to get his attention.
The med kit got a very violent throttling as it was shoved back into the closet. Ken cast a final look at the solidly closed door to Aya's room, then returned to his own.
~~
No way in hell was it 6:00 already.
No. But yet... it was. Ken groaned loudly and flung one arm out of bed. It didn't quite reach the alarm, but it did knock a book off the nightstand, causing Ken to sit up with a curse and lean farther out of bed to flick the alarm off.
Ken's balance was impeccable. It helped him move things around the flower shop efficiently. It helped him ride his motorcycle without crashing it into pedestrians or hitting something solid and exploding into a ball of flaming scrap metal, even at high speeds. It told him when to shift his weight back or forward or up or sideways or just plain out of the way of whatever weapon was heading towards him on a mission.
Ken's balance didn't function until he was fully awake.
"Oof!!"
With a graceless thud, the brunette--and a sizable pile of blankets--plummeted to the floor. The pile of warm covers and groaning Ken lay still for a moment as said groaning Ken got his bearings, and then he finally stood up, promptly tripping on the blankets and slipping on the book he'd knocked over as he attempted to get his balance.
Back on his ass on the hard, mean floor, Ken decided that it was going to be One Of Those Days.
~~
The warm scent of hazelnut coffee and the sound of quiet classical music drew Ken out of the shower and down the stairs. The air was cold against his steam-warmed skin, but he didn't mind. It would just help him wake up faster. Aya was sitting at the kitchen table in old-fashioned Japanese pajamas, more like a black martial arts outfit without a belt than the Western pajamas that Ken favored. Still, the harsh, crisp lines of the cotton contrasted with the apparent softness of Aya's skin and just made him look like one of those little porcelain dolls they sold to tourists. Aside from the makeup and whatnot. And the pink kitten coffee mug cradled in one hand didn't help the image.
Ken was contemplating Aya in terms of souvenirs.
Ken never drank coffee, since juice was just so much better, but he decided that if there was ever a morning on which he should start a habit, this was it.
"How the hell can you look so damn... awake?" he muttered, pouring himself a cup with plenty of sugar and milk. His mug was blue with a yellow duck on it. The duck was wearing a World Cup jersey. While Aya was sitting in his chair in the epitome of Zen-like composure, Ken just collapsed into his haphazardly. The chair creaked for his efforts.
"I'm awake. Therefore, I look awake."
One elegant eyebrow arched up and Ken was rewarded with a "you're such an idiot" look before Aya looked back down at his newspaper.
Ken resisted the urge to walk around the table and calmly pour his coffee
into Aya's lap. He took a steady sip--and burned his tongue--and tried again.
"What are you reading?"
"The newspaper."
"What section?"
"Art."
"How come?"
"...There's a new exhibit of Western art at the museum. I was thinking of going. I wanted to check if it was worth the effort."
Aya liked art. That was news to Ken. Aya had also spoken more than one simple sentance. This was definitely progress of... some sort, at any rate. Aya turned the newspaper around to show Ken the front page of the art section. A drab-looking painting appeared on the cover. Ken attempted to look interested.
"'s nice."
"My sister always loved the Baroque era."
Ken blinked. Aya volunteering information about his background? He sat forward just a bit more, as though expecting the redhead to suddenly go off on a long, rambling explanation of the workings of his soul.
If that's what he'd been expecting, he was going to be sorely disappointed. Aya resumed reading the newspaper. Ken drank some of his coffee--thereby deciding that coffee was disgusting and he'd never drink it again--and started to fidget. He wasn't good at sitting still for long periods of time. Or any periods of time under the influence of caffeine. ...ok, to be fair, he just wasn't good at sitting still in general.
"So what kinda music is this?"
"Mozart."
"'s nice."
"...Do you know anything about music?"
"Well, I can sorta play a few things on a guitar, you know, some simple chords and stuff."
"..."
So much for morning conversations.
"So what's for breakfast?"
Aya reached for the pack of cigarettes in the center of the table.
"You smoke?"
The redhead lit a cigarette and inhaled lightly. It was a strange-looking cigarette, with a dark brown wrapping paper and a much more spicy scent than Ken was used to smelling around the house, what with Youji's constant chain-smoking and whatnot.
"No."
"Oh... then what's that?"
"It's a clove."
"What's a clove?"
"Breakfast."
Ken blinked. Aya's lips curved the slightest bit at the corners.
"Are you laughing at me?"
"I don't laugh."
Ken was promptly given a patented Fujimiya death glare, just as withering as always. Alright, so maybe it hadn't been a smile. But Aya didn't have to be such an asshole the whole time.
Aya's actions gave Ken plenty to think about as they tidied up the shop and opened up. Aya went upstairs to get dressed and reappeared in plain black slacks and a charcoal-colored sweater. Ken was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. As usual, he felt underdressed. But at least, he rationalized, he was dressed comfortably. There was no way that sweater could feel good against the bandages hidden underneath.
"...to make sure that those fuschias get enough water. Do you understand?"
"Huh?"
Maybe he should have paid attention instead of staring outside. Aya stepped closer, leaning close enough that Ken could discern the various light aromas of his body: some sort of fruit shampoo, a hint of crisp rain, cloves, hazelnut, mint toothpaste. Contrasting hot and cold scents that somehow melded together into one complete orlfactory identity.
"Try to wake up, Hidaka. And one more thing..."
His words were softly spoken, his breath barely caressing Ken's skin. The brunette found himself helplessly lost in impossibly clear violet that didn't, for once, seem at all mocking. He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe for the moment. What the hell was wrong with him?
"You can stop watering the tiles."
Ken looked down. He could have sworn he'd been aiming the watering can at the little pot of forget-me-nots right in front of him. When he looked up, Aya was already back hehind the counter, tersely explaining to some girl the benefits of red over yellow roses for a celebratory bouquet. One of the blood-red blooms was immaculately balanced in his pale hands. It looked perfect, as though its beauty was only enhanced by the man holding it. The flower seemed to preen as he turned it around, seemed to catch the light and appear only more full and wonderful. The customer didn't need much convincing.
Ken found himself staring at that one stunning rose as it was tucked into an artful array of many of its kin. He watched it disappear out the door in the arms of a faceless girl. It would be enjoyed for a day or two, then cast away when it had served its purpose. It had reached its perfection and now could only aspire to gracing a gutter as a dry twig.
"Aya... Do you think our lives are sort of like... those flowers?"
He should never have tried to phrase his thoughts, but the image of that rose was sticking in his mind for some reason. The caffeine seemed to wear off all at once, leaving him feeling somber. Maybe it was just the lack of sleep.
Ken didn't expect a reply, and he'd already turned back around to trim a few stray leaves on a miniature maple when Aya's quiet words flowed across the room.
"No. We're worth less."
~~end chapter one~~
