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"On a Clear Day," Angel Sanctuary, Kira/Alexiel, Kira/Katou, PG-13 [unfinished]
Fandom: Angel Sanctuary
Pairing: Kira/Alexiel, Kira/Katou
Rating: PG-13
Warnings, Etc.: Midseries, cursing, general oddness. Started out as a character study, and while it's unfinished it probably wouldn't take much revamping to complete. Kira/Alexiel dominates this piece and Katou doesn't really get anywhere.
"On a Clear Day"
by ruriruri
But princess tales are poor substitutes for reality, and on a clear day, you can wait forever.
It would have been a lie to say that in thousands of years, he hadn’t thought of sleeping with her before.
Slight and frail, she has large green eyes that cry out her cursed mixed-blood status, the product of an affair—between a seafaring scoundrel of an Englishman, he finds out later, and a slip of a Japanese girl.
He’s glad she doesn’t look like her. Alexiel was taller, paler. The cascade of wavy brown hair, tangled and matted with blood.
He closes his eyes and pretends, raking his fingers through her dark hair in desperation. He mumbles her name under his breath and Alexiel’s in his mind. He promises her that this time he’ll settle the score with God and heaven himself.
It’s not enough. It never is.
--
He doesn’t love her. Love’s for the Harlequin romances and tear-jerking chick flicks, love’s for dashing knights daring to win the favor of their ladies. Love’s what made the king of India throw away his millions on a sepulcher for his wife, love caused some addled old man to carve out monuments in stone for a girl who’d left him the night before their wedding. He’s lived with the humans long enough to know that what he feels for Alexiel doesn’t have that genuine, if pathetic, sheen.
It’s raw, cutting, brutal. Dangerous.
He wants to break her curse. He wants to have her. He wants to fuck her. He wants to kill with her again, side-by-side, equals now.
He wants her back, is what he wants, and God help whoever tries to stop him.
--
Katou is firmly stuck in the present time, which makes him exquisitely better company than anyone else, even Setsuna. Setsuna’s brain is rooted with images of his sister, flushed and lovely, and Kira’s borne that knowledge longer than anyone. He supports Setsuna the way a brother would, unfailing but dull. Setsuna’s not surprised when Kira unsheathes his sword in his defense, less still when out of nowhere Kira procures lunch for the entire group—a mundane but appreciated use of black magic.
Katou’s not surprised by feats like that, either, but he treats it with a dry remark or two before idly jabbing his elbow into Kira’s ribs.
“What was so great about her, huh?”
Kira blinks at that, wondering just where the hell that question came from, because best he could remember they’d been talking about something stupid. PlayStation games they’d never get to beat, or maybe it was hot chicks they didn’t have a snowball’s chance in (cue a dry, sardonic laugh and a smile that never quite reaches their eyes) hell of getting with. Something like that.
So he gives Katou his best attempt at a confused, puzzled look, but Katou doesn’t back down.
“C’mon, man. Fess up. Setsuna told me he figured you had a thing for her. And if he says something like that—well. S’gotta be really damn obvious for him to pick up on it. Tell me what was so great about Alexiel.”
Kira chews his lip. Swallows, tries to tilt one edge of his mouth up into a grin. He considers playing the old record of responses, the ones that made Arachne roll his eyes, unbelieving, and terrified Setsuna. But Katou’s a living corpse, Kira reasons. Cannon fodder.
He’ll let him have the truth.
“There wasn’t anything that great about her. But I put her on a pedestal. She was just a woman.”
“You never took her off that pedestal of yours, either, did you?”
“How could I?” This is as sober as Katou’s been in two years, and Kira despises him for it, irrationally grinding his boot into the ground as he replies. “She gave me something to work towards. Eternity gets old without a goal.”
“Real romantic, Sakuya. Couldn’t even sweep her off her fucking feet and carry her off in style.” Katou’s scrutinizing his fingernails, picking out the dirt and dried bits of blood. “So you just didn’t want to face the sun like those vampires from that one movie. Y’know, that one with Tom Cruise?”
“Interview with the Vampire.”
“Yeah, yeah. We snuck into the theater to see it, remember? Got tickets for something else… what the hell was it? I don’t remember. Then we walked into the wrong theater on purpose. I told you I figured you could’ve passed for seventeen almost ‘cause you were so tall—Jesus, you were almost six feet even then—how tall are you anyway now, six-two?—aw, but you don’t care about that, do you?”
“Long time ago.”
“Oh yeah, a whole five years.” Katou’s procured a pocketknife, God only knows how, and now he’s working on cutting tiny absentminded marks onto his fingers, no expression on his face. There’s half-healed cuts running up and down his bony arms that Kira hasn’t bothered to notice until now.“Must’ve been two seconds’ worth of time to you, huh? Bet you anything you don’t even remember.”
“Sure I do. We poured sodas on people from the balcony seats. They screamed because they thought it was blood. You said Louis and Armand were queer for each other and—” Kira abruptly stops ticking off the memories, snatching the pocketknife from Katou right while he’s in the middle of cutting, blade flashing in the afternoon sun. “And what the hell are you doing?”
“None of your damn business. Give it back.”
Kira just toys with the blade as if he hadn’t heard.
“There’s quicker ways to kill yourself than cutting your fingers. Cut your wrist straight down like so and—”
“Kira, you—Kira!”
Katou grabs Kira’s wrist, wild look in his eyes. A second later he’s ripped the hem of his shirt, desperately wrapping it up into a tourniquet, before Kira laughs and the illusion’s broken.
“You bastard.” But Katou’s not laughing. “Stop screwing around, you’re not doing so hot these days. If you’ve just offed yourself I—”
Kira unwinds the tourniquet, hands it to him. Clean. No mark on his wrist at all, because he hadn’t cut at all.
Katou flips him off.
“Faking me out? Give me back the knife.” He lunges for it, but Kira pulls back.
“Not until you tell me what you were cutting yourself for.”
Katou glares.
“Didn’t realize it mattered.”
“Just tell me.”
Katou shrugs offhand but doesn’t answer. Kira’s always hated and admired the careless ease of the other teenager’s movements, if only because Kira’s own usually end up as deliberate as a heroin injection.
He drops the pocketknife back in Katou’s lap all the same. Some old cruelty stirs, and Kira touches his shoulder lightly. Katou flinches.
“Just don’t let Setsuna see you with that, all right?”
Katou purses his lips.
“I’m not a moron, Kira.” He puts the knife away. “C’mon. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Like?”
“Like… oh, hell, I don’t know. You remember what we did this time last year?”
“Got high in the schoolyard.”
“Not that.”
“Set fire to that old man’s birdcage with the parakeet still inside it.”
“Besides that.” Katou pulls out a lighter from the same pocket the knife came from, flicks it impatiently without taking his eyes off Kira’s face. The flame’s refusing to come up to the top.
“Crashed that American soldier’s Chevrolet—”
“No. No. Borrowed each other’s acne meds.” Katou laughs, a harsh sound that turns into a cough prematurely. “Isn’t that hilarious?” He doesn’t wait on Kira to respond. “I mean, really. That’s so—so damn high school. That’s what I’m gonna remember about you forever, Senpai. That’s my mental image no matter what kind of monster you really are. I just see Sakuya Kira, straight-C student, putting Noxema on his face three times a day.”
Kira shakes his head.
“Anyway. Anyway.” There’s a distant look in Katou’s light brown eyes, almost glazed. It doesn’t quite pass, either, not until he straightens up from his spot on the ground and twists his focus away from Kira’s face. “Gimme a smoke, Senpai.”
“It’s the last one in my pack.”
“You gave me the lighter.” It’s a cheap thing, an old, red Bic, but Katou fingers it like a piece of jewelry, lets it catch the glittering afternoon light of hell itself. “Now gimme the smoke. S’not fair otherwise, you know.”
“Cigarettes are contraband where we’re going."
“How would you know? You ever been on the grand tour of heaven, Ki—”
Half to stifle the question, Kira pushes the pack against Katou’s chest. Lets the pack drop from his hand to Katou’s lap, but keeps his hand there, feeling for a heartbeat. He’s stunned to find one, stunned that, despite everything, Katou’s body is still capable of that much of a pretense of humanity.
The pulse is surprisingly fast. He can feel Katou’s breath now, tinged with cigarettes.
“Kira, what’re you—”
Fingers run across his chest through the thin material of his T-shirt. Much thinner, and Kira would be feeling the raised scar from Nanatsusaya now, instead of just the cotton, and Katou’s warm skin beneath it. Katou’s flinching, now, drawing back from the touch with a halfheartedness that tells Kira everything he’s always suspected.
“Was it fun?” Katou just keeps going, on and on, pressing all the issues one after another. It’s almost as if he doesn’t expect to live to hear his questions answered if he doesn’t ask them right now, or maybe Katou simply likes to bother Kira. “I don’t mean the acne. Hanging out—going to school, faking being human, all that crap. Did you even like it?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did—what about—” and Kira understands it then, even if Katou’d sooner die than come out and say it.
“Was I faking the friendship too?” Kira watches the other teenager flinch at the sound of the words, before Katou jumps back onto the defensive like always.
“Well, why the hell not tell me? Were you?”
“No.” It’s the answer Katou wants and will probably go to his grave believing, and it’s not so much of a lie as Kira wishes it was.
“Okay.”
Pairing: Kira/Alexiel, Kira/Katou
Rating: PG-13
Warnings, Etc.: Midseries, cursing, general oddness. Started out as a character study, and while it's unfinished it probably wouldn't take much revamping to complete. Kira/Alexiel dominates this piece and Katou doesn't really get anywhere.
"On a Clear Day"
by ruriruri
But princess tales are poor substitutes for reality, and on a clear day, you can wait forever.
It would have been a lie to say that in thousands of years, he hadn’t thought of sleeping with her before.
Slight and frail, she has large green eyes that cry out her cursed mixed-blood status, the product of an affair—between a seafaring scoundrel of an Englishman, he finds out later, and a slip of a Japanese girl.
He’s glad she doesn’t look like her. Alexiel was taller, paler. The cascade of wavy brown hair, tangled and matted with blood.
He closes his eyes and pretends, raking his fingers through her dark hair in desperation. He mumbles her name under his breath and Alexiel’s in his mind. He promises her that this time he’ll settle the score with God and heaven himself.
It’s not enough. It never is.
--
He doesn’t love her. Love’s for the Harlequin romances and tear-jerking chick flicks, love’s for dashing knights daring to win the favor of their ladies. Love’s what made the king of India throw away his millions on a sepulcher for his wife, love caused some addled old man to carve out monuments in stone for a girl who’d left him the night before their wedding. He’s lived with the humans long enough to know that what he feels for Alexiel doesn’t have that genuine, if pathetic, sheen.
It’s raw, cutting, brutal. Dangerous.
He wants to break her curse. He wants to have her. He wants to fuck her. He wants to kill with her again, side-by-side, equals now.
He wants her back, is what he wants, and God help whoever tries to stop him.
--
Katou is firmly stuck in the present time, which makes him exquisitely better company than anyone else, even Setsuna. Setsuna’s brain is rooted with images of his sister, flushed and lovely, and Kira’s borne that knowledge longer than anyone. He supports Setsuna the way a brother would, unfailing but dull. Setsuna’s not surprised when Kira unsheathes his sword in his defense, less still when out of nowhere Kira procures lunch for the entire group—a mundane but appreciated use of black magic.
Katou’s not surprised by feats like that, either, but he treats it with a dry remark or two before idly jabbing his elbow into Kira’s ribs.
“What was so great about her, huh?”
Kira blinks at that, wondering just where the hell that question came from, because best he could remember they’d been talking about something stupid. PlayStation games they’d never get to beat, or maybe it was hot chicks they didn’t have a snowball’s chance in (cue a dry, sardonic laugh and a smile that never quite reaches their eyes) hell of getting with. Something like that.
So he gives Katou his best attempt at a confused, puzzled look, but Katou doesn’t back down.
“C’mon, man. Fess up. Setsuna told me he figured you had a thing for her. And if he says something like that—well. S’gotta be really damn obvious for him to pick up on it. Tell me what was so great about Alexiel.”
Kira chews his lip. Swallows, tries to tilt one edge of his mouth up into a grin. He considers playing the old record of responses, the ones that made Arachne roll his eyes, unbelieving, and terrified Setsuna. But Katou’s a living corpse, Kira reasons. Cannon fodder.
He’ll let him have the truth.
“There wasn’t anything that great about her. But I put her on a pedestal. She was just a woman.”
“You never took her off that pedestal of yours, either, did you?”
“How could I?” This is as sober as Katou’s been in two years, and Kira despises him for it, irrationally grinding his boot into the ground as he replies. “She gave me something to work towards. Eternity gets old without a goal.”
“Real romantic, Sakuya. Couldn’t even sweep her off her fucking feet and carry her off in style.” Katou’s scrutinizing his fingernails, picking out the dirt and dried bits of blood. “So you just didn’t want to face the sun like those vampires from that one movie. Y’know, that one with Tom Cruise?”
“Interview with the Vampire.”
“Yeah, yeah. We snuck into the theater to see it, remember? Got tickets for something else… what the hell was it? I don’t remember. Then we walked into the wrong theater on purpose. I told you I figured you could’ve passed for seventeen almost ‘cause you were so tall—Jesus, you were almost six feet even then—how tall are you anyway now, six-two?—aw, but you don’t care about that, do you?”
“Long time ago.”
“Oh yeah, a whole five years.” Katou’s procured a pocketknife, God only knows how, and now he’s working on cutting tiny absentminded marks onto his fingers, no expression on his face. There’s half-healed cuts running up and down his bony arms that Kira hasn’t bothered to notice until now.“Must’ve been two seconds’ worth of time to you, huh? Bet you anything you don’t even remember.”
“Sure I do. We poured sodas on people from the balcony seats. They screamed because they thought it was blood. You said Louis and Armand were queer for each other and—” Kira abruptly stops ticking off the memories, snatching the pocketknife from Katou right while he’s in the middle of cutting, blade flashing in the afternoon sun. “And what the hell are you doing?”
“None of your damn business. Give it back.”
Kira just toys with the blade as if he hadn’t heard.
“There’s quicker ways to kill yourself than cutting your fingers. Cut your wrist straight down like so and—”
“Kira, you—Kira!”
Katou grabs Kira’s wrist, wild look in his eyes. A second later he’s ripped the hem of his shirt, desperately wrapping it up into a tourniquet, before Kira laughs and the illusion’s broken.
“You bastard.” But Katou’s not laughing. “Stop screwing around, you’re not doing so hot these days. If you’ve just offed yourself I—”
Kira unwinds the tourniquet, hands it to him. Clean. No mark on his wrist at all, because he hadn’t cut at all.
Katou flips him off.
“Faking me out? Give me back the knife.” He lunges for it, but Kira pulls back.
“Not until you tell me what you were cutting yourself for.”
Katou glares.
“Didn’t realize it mattered.”
“Just tell me.”
Katou shrugs offhand but doesn’t answer. Kira’s always hated and admired the careless ease of the other teenager’s movements, if only because Kira’s own usually end up as deliberate as a heroin injection.
He drops the pocketknife back in Katou’s lap all the same. Some old cruelty stirs, and Kira touches his shoulder lightly. Katou flinches.
“Just don’t let Setsuna see you with that, all right?”
Katou purses his lips.
“I’m not a moron, Kira.” He puts the knife away. “C’mon. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Like?”
“Like… oh, hell, I don’t know. You remember what we did this time last year?”
“Got high in the schoolyard.”
“Not that.”
“Set fire to that old man’s birdcage with the parakeet still inside it.”
“Besides that.” Katou pulls out a lighter from the same pocket the knife came from, flicks it impatiently without taking his eyes off Kira’s face. The flame’s refusing to come up to the top.
“Crashed that American soldier’s Chevrolet—”
“No. No. Borrowed each other’s acne meds.” Katou laughs, a harsh sound that turns into a cough prematurely. “Isn’t that hilarious?” He doesn’t wait on Kira to respond. “I mean, really. That’s so—so damn high school. That’s what I’m gonna remember about you forever, Senpai. That’s my mental image no matter what kind of monster you really are. I just see Sakuya Kira, straight-C student, putting Noxema on his face three times a day.”
Kira shakes his head.
“Anyway. Anyway.” There’s a distant look in Katou’s light brown eyes, almost glazed. It doesn’t quite pass, either, not until he straightens up from his spot on the ground and twists his focus away from Kira’s face. “Gimme a smoke, Senpai.”
“It’s the last one in my pack.”
“You gave me the lighter.” It’s a cheap thing, an old, red Bic, but Katou fingers it like a piece of jewelry, lets it catch the glittering afternoon light of hell itself. “Now gimme the smoke. S’not fair otherwise, you know.”
“Cigarettes are contraband where we’re going."
“How would you know? You ever been on the grand tour of heaven, Ki—”
Half to stifle the question, Kira pushes the pack against Katou’s chest. Lets the pack drop from his hand to Katou’s lap, but keeps his hand there, feeling for a heartbeat. He’s stunned to find one, stunned that, despite everything, Katou’s body is still capable of that much of a pretense of humanity.
The pulse is surprisingly fast. He can feel Katou’s breath now, tinged with cigarettes.
“Kira, what’re you—”
Fingers run across his chest through the thin material of his T-shirt. Much thinner, and Kira would be feeling the raised scar from Nanatsusaya now, instead of just the cotton, and Katou’s warm skin beneath it. Katou’s flinching, now, drawing back from the touch with a halfheartedness that tells Kira everything he’s always suspected.
“Was it fun?” Katou just keeps going, on and on, pressing all the issues one after another. It’s almost as if he doesn’t expect to live to hear his questions answered if he doesn’t ask them right now, or maybe Katou simply likes to bother Kira. “I don’t mean the acne. Hanging out—going to school, faking being human, all that crap. Did you even like it?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did—what about—” and Kira understands it then, even if Katou’d sooner die than come out and say it.
“Was I faking the friendship too?” Kira watches the other teenager flinch at the sound of the words, before Katou jumps back onto the defensive like always.
“Well, why the hell not tell me? Were you?”
“No.” It’s the answer Katou wants and will probably go to his grave believing, and it’s not so much of a lie as Kira wishes it was.
“Okay.”