A/N: Guys, I'm back! I'm terribly sorry for how long this chapter took... if you read my profile previously, I was travelling abroad for a month so I had no time to write. The experience was amazing though!
I loved the reactions from the last chapter! It's always nice reading your reviews :) They always hit me in the feels.
I guess you guys already noticed that I switch from the present and the past. If it ever confuses you just look at 'say' and 'said', that's the biggest indicator if a scene is taking place in the past or present.
I had a weird time looking for a proper chapter title, but this one is inspired by Nirvana's 'Heart-Shaped Box' and the story of pandora's box.
Please, send me your thoughts on this chapter through reviews after you're done reading!
Paparazzi
Chapter IV: You opened my Heart-Shaped Box like it was Pandora's
"In music news today, Shinn Asuka, the frontman of indie rock band, 'The Impulse' takes another jab at Miguel Aiman! During an autograph session, he was asked by a fan on his thoughts on Aiman and his band's new direction in music. He responded bluntly with, 'It doesn't sound good. That's that.'
It has been allegedly reported that Asuka tried to sleep with Cagalli Yula Aiman multiple times. However, this has been denied by the couple. But who really knows the truth? There are speculations stating that that was the reason why he was kicked out of the famous 'Le Creuset' band. Perhaps he is still bitter about this rock and roll fiasco?
Miguel Aiman's response to Shinn Asuka's statement is one to start a fire!" the pretty gossip host states, her voice a flourish of nagging curiosity and excitement. She disappears the moment a clip is brought upon on for the television audience.
Within the clip, there are flashes of light coming from cameras aimed at Miguel Aiman and his fellow band mate, Rusty Mackenzie. They are leisurely walking through the mass of paparazzi on a dark street, with bulky bodyguards surrounding them. Rusty has a hand shielding his eyes while Miguel merely squints at the white that flickers at both of them.
Miguel bears on a faded green jacket and dark denim pants, his hands are casually placed in the pockets. His slick blond hair falls straightly across his forehead in jagged strands, while his chin is tilted upwards. A confident smile devours his face.
From outside the frame, a man's wheezy voice is heard. "Rusty! Miguel! What do you think of Shinn's Asuka's insult?!"
Rusty looks up from his hand, his childish face looks confused for a brief second, but he grins a sloped grin, one that made his usual sheepishness apparent. "It's...kind of embarrassing... for him. I mean."
Miguel instantly grunts and the camera shot turns to him, "Shinn's a complete loser. He can't think of anything original so all he does is imitate our sound." His voice is bitter but a playful smirk easily masks it. "He always was just a small step behind the band," he murmurs as he shrugs nonchalantly.
The clip is switched back to the gossip host. Her mouth is opened widely, and the way the edges of her mouth are pointed suggest an amused smile. When she realizes that the camera is back on her, she regains her composure and giggles, "Oh, how long will this rivalry last? Two rockers are going head to head in a battle of words. I wonder if the words will transfer into their music!"
This is ridiculous, Athrun thinks, as he drinks cold water from his glass. He is sitting on his couch, slumped over, watching the entertainment channel. It's a usual routine that's always practiced by paparazzi alike, although unlike them, Athrun watches without any glimmer of interest.
The shot jumps from the pretty host to the one that is male. He's looking into the camera, fully baring his white teeth as if they are fangs of wealth. Beginning to speak, his tone reeks of unfulfilling excitement, "Earlier today, in the Archangel District the sweet heart of Miguel –"
Athrun frantically reaches for the remote in front of him, panic stiffening up what feels like every joint in his entire body.
"I can't watch this... I can't," he says faintly, as the male host continues to speak. "How the hell is this already on TV...? How the fuck is this..."
" – Cagalli Yula Aiman is quite the contrast compared to her edgy rocker husband. Without a doubt, her kindness to the paparazzi has outshone most celebrities in the past. She has even saved a young paparazzo's camera from shattering into a million pieces! This paparazzo is quite a lucky man!"
Quite a lucky man? Athrun finally reaches the remote and stabs the 'off' button with his thumb. The screen flashes to black, and he is left with a darkened reflection of himself.
Staring blankly at the dark screen, he pays no attention to his tired eyes or his disheveled hair, or the fact that the clothes on his gaunt body are more wrinkled than hands that have been dipped in water.
He takes another swig from the glass, gulping down the cold stream of water. It cools him, but temporarily.
Its 3:47 am in the morning and Athrun cannot sleep even though drowsiness possesses the back of his eyes and his mind. A headache knocks at his skull, but the muted pain is ignored by him. This isn't real, I'm not in the media. This can't be real, he forces himself to believe.
Getting up from the couch, with the glass in hand, he walks over to the kitchen sink and places the glass beside it. His right hand still grips the glass while his sight roams over the small droplets of water that resides inside of it.
He stays there, just like that...frozen and aimlessly looking through its transparency.
Minutes pass. And nothing else appears in his dull mind.
Stare and ...stare and... stare.
Gradually, the headache and the drowsiness vanish, seemingly evaporated by vacancy.
Keep your mind a blank slate. Yet the mantra doesn't even need to make an appearance.
You're empty.
You're empty.
You're empty.
Just like the glass.
Only disappearing droplets of you remain.
A ring of his phone cuts through the state of suspended existence.
He answers, not entirely aware of what just happened.
"What do you want?" he grumbles, clutching the phone tightly.
"Hey, don't sound so mad, man. Can you do me a fav – "
"No."
"C'mon man, please. Help a buddy out. I need a place to stay."
"I've already said no, Dearka."
"I'm outside your door. I'll sleep outside of it if you don't let me in!"
Then the knocking begins.
"Fine," Athrun says, hanging up the phone and then walking to the door. He slams it open.
He sees Dearka smiling meekly like a fool, with a pillow and a camera bag in his right arm. "Yzak's bitchy girlfriend is over at our place... and Miriallia refuses to give me a place to stay and I can't sleep in my van, it smells like stale cigarettes," he explains, while scratching the back of his head.
Athrun only sighs. The minutes of his vacant state seem to be so far away now, unable to be retained, like sand slipping through fingers, each grain can not remain in one place.
"I'm sorry for waking you up or anything. But dude, you're the only person I can rely on."
A little tweak of his lips and Athrun is scowling. "I wasn't sleeping."
"Figures." Dearka shoves pass Athrun, throws his pillow on his couch, and then places his camera bag on the table. Stretching his body across the couch, he yawns.
Athrun closes the front door and quickly locks it. The headache sharply returns as soon as his hand touches the brass knob of his bedroom.
"Are you feeling better?" Dearka asks.
"Yes," he replies, snappishly.
"Oh...okay."
Athrun then hears Dearka weakly chuckle. "Well...the way you acted earlier...kinda sounds like she had a legit affect on you... just a word of advice Athrun... don't get attached to celebrities. They're not real people, if you know what I mean."
Athrun opens his bedroom door, and before he closes it he says to Dearka, "Then people like us aren't real either."
Walking into his bedroom, he falls onto his bed and tightly closes his eyes, waiting for his consciousness to slip away.
Autumn became as brittle as corpses bones. When heavy snowflakes tethered the campus grounds, the bones of autumn shattered. The colours of left over leaves turned into the dullest of bronze, while the blinding whiteness of snow thoroughly hid them.
Athrun and Cagalli threaded along a snow buried path, one that was imprinted with multiple boot marks. Sparse trees spread throughout the sides of the path, its branches were like naked arms, frozen with frost.
Whenever the chill of winter scratched at Cagalli's face, she would shiver and pull her burgundy parka closer to her body. And then she'd adjust the wool beanie that nestled on top of her head.
Athrun, on the other hand, seemed unaffected by the cold. Despite only wearing a leather jacket and a thick grey scarf, he did not shiver nor did any bit of redness appear on his face. His ears were perked up to the sound of Cagalli's teeth clattering endlessly. The loud clicking diminished the howl of winter's winds.
He kept a side long stare at her, watching her visible breath swim into the air in tiny waves. It looked as though small bits of smoke bloomed out from those lips. It was mesmerizing to watch her, and he wondered how it would look if there was a cigarette between her lips.
"I swear, if I freeze to death, you're responsible!" She shoved her naked hands in the pockets of her coat. "I can't even feel my body."
A smile quickly formed on his face. "I'd say that's the best part."
Her eyebrows furrowed and her frost bitten mouth attempted to frown, but the tiny tremor in her upper lip gave away the bewilderment she felt.
He shrugged. "When your whole body is used to the cold, you forget about your body temperature. So when a bit of warmth touches your skin, you notice the biggest difference... It's really all about comparing and contrast. Light and dark, negative space and positive space."
Cagalli didn't respond. She was staring at the trees in front of her, eyes narrowed in contemplation. She then said, in a dull tone, "You're strange."
A chuckle came out from him. "It's an interesting feeling, you just got to try to notice it from time to time."
He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a cigarette from its packet. He held it between his index and middle finger while his other hand grabbed the lighter from the back pocket of his denim pants.
"Care to light up my cigarette, Cagalli?"
She eyed the white stick amid his fingers, and then at him. "Fine, but I told you, smoking is bad for your health."
"Who are you? My mom?"
"Oh shut up and give me the lighter."
He threw it over to her, smiling.
With her thumb over the small grey wheel, she rolled it, making it spark immediately. Cagalli held her thumb there for more than a second, watching the flame momentarily glimmer as though it were a cracked diamond.
"Feel it?" Athrun asked.
"What do you mean?"
"The heat against your fingers."
She paused, allowing the small source of heat seep into her fingertips. Slowly, Athrun saw a smile develop on her lips.
"Oh, I actually notice it!" She lightly laughed, covering her mouth with a hand, while the lighter remained lit in the other. "You didn't have to make me use the lighter for me to notice a difference, we could just walk inside a hot cozy building!"
He laughed at that, feeling the hollows of his cheeks warm up.
Over the past three months, he felt...considerably happy.
Every single time he smiled, or even laughed, a shot of bliss coursed through his body. It was like the exhilarating feeling of leaping off a cliff and staying suspended in the air for a moment, right before you hit the waters.
Athrun knew exactly why he felt this high.
He was lying down on the cold carpet ground with a duvet wrapped around his body, and a pillow beneath his head.
Athrun wasn't sleeping in his bed tonight. Someone else occupied it. That kept his mind half awake even when his body screeched for rest. Glancing up at the digital clock beside his bedroom door, it read: 2:17 am. The red numbers beamed at him mockingly.
Athrun shut his eyes tightly, and turned away from the bed beside him.
He heard her breathing. The sound was soft and gradual like spring winds during a warm day, only noticeable if you focused on it.
He shifted his body again, facing upwards, while adjusting the duvet that acted like a cocoon to his figure.
"Hey... Athrun," he heard her whisper, her voice clearer than his mind. "I can't sleep."
He flinched. "I thought you were sleeping this whole time," he whispered back.
The bed made a creaking noise, and he saw Cagalli's head peak out from the edge of it, she was staring directly at him, her blonde hair falling over her cheeks.
The darkness of night and the natural moonlight peered out from the closed slits of the blinds. They gave little light to her face. Even then, it gave way to illusions, illusions that made her eyes look larger and her cheekbones appear too prominent.
"You know..." she said slowly. "I could sleep on the couch outside the room. You can take your bed back if it's hard for you to sleep on the floor."
"No, it's okay, I'm fine down here... and if Tolle – my roommate, just found a random girl on our couch, he would probably get the wrong idea."
"And what would that be?"
Athrun could feel his weak body heat up. He wondered if she could see the blush on his face. "N-nothing," he quickly replied.
"Okay weirdo."
The bed creaked again, and then he saw Cagalli's sock covered feet hover close to his face. "Come sit with me," she said, no longer whispering.
Athrun glanced at the clock again, it read: 2:20 am.
He tossed the duvet away from his body and got up, feeling his muscles groan. He sat down beside Cagalli, who now had her legs folded.
She stared at Athrun with her seemingly big eyes and he stared at her back, knowing that his lids drooped over his own. They stayed like that, with their long gazes entrapped in each other, until Cagalli spoke again.
"Let's talk until we fall asleep."
"I've never heard of anyone sleeping while sitting up."
"Then let's lie down," she said while yawning. She sluggishly moved to the furthest side of the small bed and then slid under the covers. With his head turned, Athrun watched her.
His brain wasn't at one hundred percent, and he knew that. Whenever the mind was close to sleep, the capabilities of having second thoughts disappeared like they never existed at all.
He decided to lie down next to her, not caring if they were face to face. He was so tired, his bones protested against him and his head felt so heavy. He could pass out at any second.
Athrun saw her eyes, gazing at him so intently. He couldn't see the colour of them, yet it didn't matter as much. He unconsciously closed his own.
"Don't fall asleep on me now..."
"Okay," he mumbled, "I'm listening... my eyes are just closed."
"I'll pinch your nose if you sleep before I do."
He smiled, wondering in his mind what kind of face she was making at him. All he had to do was open his eyes.
"Athrun, I just wanted to say thanks."
"You already said thanks earlier."
"I know but, you walked all the way to my dorm at twelve am in the morning and picked me up and you let me stay in your bed...that-that means a lot to me."
"That's what friends do... friends save friends from drunk people," he murmured tiredly, hearing his voice fade towards the end of his sentence.
"I-I know...but that's not, I don't know...something has been bothering me – well not bothering me in that way but...it's been keeping me awake," she stumbled with her words, and Athrun could sense the nervousness in them.
He opened his eyes, desiring to see how she looked.
She was still facing him, but not as close as she was before.
Cagalli gasped at seeing that his eyes were open to her. She instinctively pulled the white bed sheet over her mouth and nose, looking like a child afraid of the bogeyman.
With his voice slurred by lethargy, he asked, "What's been keeping you awake?"
She didn't answer.
Minutes passed without them saying another word to each other, and Athrun turned away from her then, thinking that they would continue in the morning. The curiosity that he would have felt if he was wide awake did not come by to him.
With eyes fully closed, his mind drifted away to mangled thoughts of cameras, of Cagalli putting a cigarette in his mouth, of her breath looking like the smoke he enjoyed seeing... of himself as a younger teenager taking photos with a DLSR starter kit...it was a whirl of memories meshing as one scene, quickly switching to others. A blur of memories became made up, the consciousness disappeared inconspiciously ... an existence fell apart.
"Athrun." Her quiet voice woke him from the second he was about to slip into his mind's inexistence. "...how do you feel about me?"
The exhaustion of his entire being convinced him that her words were just a fabrication thought up by his imagination.
Within imagination and dreams, you can do anything, say anything. Consequences meant nothing.
"Reach into the drawer beside you," he uttered lowly, as his eyes peeked open at her.
He witnessed her sitting up, with her hair tousled over and her body a slim, dark silhouette. She pulled the drawer open and then grabbed the single item inside of it.
The red camera glinted from the tiny sliver of light. She looked at him then, and he merely smiled at her. "I don't need that anymore, Cagalli."
She wordlessly turned on the camera, and the tiny lenses buzzed out from the surface. The screen lit up her face, revealing the eyes that had shrunken from fatigue. The colour of light changed in her speckled eyes every time she flicked through a different image.
Athrun dozed off, burying his face into the pillow.
"These...these pictures are mainly of me...I don't get it."
He simply grinned. When he spoke, his voice was drunk with drowsiness. "You said so yourself, the more you examine something, the more beautiful it gets... I found you beautiful before you even let me take photos of you."
Athrun breathed in tenderly, closing his eyes. "Now you know how I feel. Goodnight, Cagalli."
Suddenly... without warning, her lips touched his.
He felt her hesitance and uncertainty, it was as though she were experimenting with the feel of her lips against his, wondering if they would collide or meld softly. That charmed him into intoxicated confidence.
Athrun's fingers crawled into her tangled hair, and her hands wandered into his.
He tasted the mint toothpaste lingering in her breath. He felt the wetness of her lips, inviting him to stick his tongue in for exploration.
Risking it, he did just that and she responded back, all that hesitance gone in just a few seconds.
Was he dreaming?
No, he realized, he wasn't.
Her sensual lips were like the water's tides, they dragged him back to the shore of reality, urging him to escape an ocean that drowned him in unconscious dreams.
His whole being was reawakened for her, as hers was for his.
When they had finished, Athrun saw the dim sheen of her teeth, indicating a sweet smile.
"Goodnight," she whispered in his ear.
"Goodnight."
Dearka is sprawled on the floor, his hand covering his nose. Blood spurts out of his nostrils, dripping down over the ridges of his fingers to the bottom of his chin. His widened eyes are looking deliriously at Athrun. "What the hell man?!" he screams tortuously.
"Don't touch my things, please," Athrun says desperately, his fist opening. He stares at the blood that cakes his knuckles. He feels the air from his lungs disappear.
"Why'd you punch me?! You really have some serious fucking issues!"
Athrun looks blankly from Dearka to the small wooden box that was toppled over beside him. Photographs have leaked out of the open box, littering the floor like scattered bugs.
Some are flipped over, revealing stolen images that he had forgotten he even had.
He casts his eyes down on them, and then away.
Dearka picks up a photograph with his bloody fingers, and glances at it briefly. "Who is this?" he asks, looking back up at Athrun.
"No one," he mumbles as he bends down and begins picking up the photos.
When his fingers touch the photos, he could feel his entire heart unnervingly shudder in his ribs.
He sucks in his breath as he holds a photograph of Cagalli, smiling a genuine smile while her eyes are bright with liveliness. She appears to be sitting on the white sheets of a bed, her hair fuzzed with knots while her hand is holding onto a bigger hand, one that is pale.
From the framing of the shot, one could tell that whoever was behind the lenses was lying down in the bed with her.
"Who is this?" Dearka repeats, grabbing another photo from the ground. "Is this an ex-girlfriend?" He wipes his nose, accidentally smudging blood all over the edges of his cheeks. Scrutinizing the photo further, Dearka's jaw instantaneously drops. "This looks like – "
"Cagalli Yula Attha," Athrun says, his voice barely audible. "At least... that was her name when I knew her."
Dearka stares at Athrun, his mouth as wide as his eyes. "Holy fucking shit... holy fucking shit!" The more he talks the less he notices the blood that flows down his nose to his mouth. "You're not fuckin' with me right?"
Athrun reaches down and picks up more photos, his hands scatters through them. There is a pained expression on his face. "I don't want to talk about it," he says, catching glimpses of a younger Cagalli, one that was once his.
He silently takes each photo from the ground, ignoring the shocked expression from Dearka's face.
"I had a feeling you knew her from before..."
Athrun stops, and looks at Dearka, the muscles in his face struggle to keep a neutral appearance. But he feels his eyes glossing over, and his lips even tremble.
Dearka stares down at the photo in his own hand, and then he wipes his nose with the other, smearing blood on his upper lip. "I guess this is the last photo for the box," he says flatly. He flicks the photograph over to Athrun.
It lands face up on the floor.
One glance and Athrun turns away from Dearka, placing an arm over his stinging eyes.