Ikarishipping Scene #9: Difference is Key

A bright, bouncy girl is with a dark lonesome boy, who she, him sort of oblivious, deeply, deeply loves and cares about. Revealing the past to her will be hard for him, as they both discover what love really is, and why it's so important to each other.

The back of her head gently lied upon his chest as she finished the last line of the book. She sighed and closed it, holding it against her heart.

"What a romantic story…" She closed her eyes.

The late evening wind blew across his dark emotionless face as he grunted and shut his eyes. "Please… romance only builds up the pain when you separate."

She looked up at him with a smirk on her face. "Then why did you choose to get involved with it?"
Seeing the twinkle in her eyes was what he loved about her the most. It was one of the unending reasons why he wanted to be with her. "I know you're gonna leave me soon." He smirked.

She now had a warm smile on her face. "Never… there's a reason why I wanted to be with you."

He looked back up at the appearing stars. "Which would be…?"

"I can't tell you…" She said teasingly.

"Then why bother mention it?"

"To build suspense of course."

He grunted, which kind of sounded like a laugh as he closed his eyes. "I'l never understand you."

She grinned. "I know!"

Then all was silent, both of them watching the stars make their appearance before the eerie glow of the moon. She closed her eyes halfway, not hesitating a thought of falling asleep there in his lap.

"You're always so happy." He brought up, both of their gazes still up at the sky.

"You're always so grim." She pointed out.

"Which is what I don't get…"
She slouched against him more. "If I was with somebody energetic like me then well… the whole world couldn't stand us. Plus… being with a guy who's different is kind of like… an adventure."
"Yeah, I'm a freaking safari…"

She grimaced, but then their gazed averted to all the cars pulling up with young teenage lovers like themselves. The only reason they came was overt. The night sky… solitude…

"The young lovers are out again…" She muttered, seeing one guy give roses to his chick, her going crazy, then a long, kind of disturbing make-out session.

"This is too repulsive to watch…" He stated shutting his eyes and turning his head to the side. "Thank God we're back here…"
"Mmm…" She replied putting her hands over his.

"You don't expect me to you know… do that, right?" He asked, hope in his deep, harsh voice.

"Do you think I'd want to torture you just so we can have a picture perfect relationship like…them?"

"No, hopefully… sometimes peers and friends of that girl get the best of her…"

"Then I won't have any friends or peers, only you."

He stood up, annoyed. "Okay… what kind of person dedicates her life to another person… especially someone like me."
She stayed on the ground. "Relax, it was only a figure of speech!…What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter what other people say, I won't leave you."

"Well what if I left you?" He looked away from her.

She was taken aback from his even harsher tone of voice, and choice of words. "Would you?" She asked in a gentler tone.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, hanging his head so his purple, long, spiked hair hung over his face, casting more shadows across it; he didn't answer.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't though…" She said closing her eyes.

He opened one eye to see her get to her feet.

"All this time… it seems as if you've been testing me… a happy bright girl with a dark and scary guy like yourself… you were seeing if I could make a compromise with you or not, am I right?"

He closed that eye once more and slouched against the tree. "It was all a bet…"

"What?"
"You remember that night, don't you…?"
"Of course I do… what do you mean a bet?"

"You don't think I was just sulking around that alley did you? A group of us were there, and when we saw you all helpless and everything, being a bit drunk, we made a bet. It was a bet on which of us could take you home and…"

"And what?"

"N-Nothing… two-hundred bucks was on the line, so of course I went for it. But when we got to that point where everything was dark… you clutched onto me… and I couldn't do it… there was just some instinct that said I shouldn't ra—I mean do that thing… I'll never understand it."

She smiled at his confusion warmly. "I do understand it."

She walked closer to him, took his hands out of his pockets and grasped them tightly. "That was actual love."

He flinched back when she said, 'love." She only smiled wider.

"And the reason I clutched onto you was because I knew I could trust you, there's just something about you that made me feel I was safe."

He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. "You… are strange. What kind of girl trusts a guy like me who appears out of nowhere to get her home safely?"

She closed her eyes, the smile still on her face. "I think I know why I did what I did…"

"This can't be right…" He muttered to himself.

She grabbed his face and kissed his cheek gently, his face wild with expression afterwards.

He wanted to slap her, hard and badly… but he couldn't… something was holding him back.

"You're getting that same feeling, aren't you?" She asked.

He looked down at his trembling hands, his mouth slightly ajar. "What did you do to me?!"
"Simple… I make you feel loved."

He raised an eyebrow. "WHAT?!"
"Look… you're a dark and scary guy. Nobody except your own mother makes you feel loved, am I right? But whenever someone does a gesture of care toward you, you feel as if you're loved by somebody."

He opened his eyes, vile and disgust pulsing through them. "You wouldn't dare speak of my mother again! YOU HEAR ME?!"

She flinched back as his anger dissolved, replaced by a distant semblance.

He sighed, not looking up at her with melancholy eyes when he spoke. "Mom abandoned me when I was two… Dad killed himself when I was twelve from depression… my abusive brother and I were forced to like with other child delinquents just like ourselves…" He choked up. "I had to live in the shadows… so nobody would realize I was the boisterous little kid every knew me as in school years… I hurt people because their own kind hurt me, I live in solitude so the house of corrections won't FIND me…"

"Oh… Shinji…" She softly spoke, her eyes watering.

"I'm tough because I was made tough…" He pulled his sleeves back to show punctures and scars, stitches and black blood on both arms. "From my own flesh and blood these wounds were from… some of them even from my so-called 'friends.'"

She covered her trembling lips with her hands as he continued on.

He pushed his hair away form his neck to reveal a hand-sewn foot-long stitching; she gasped.

"Six months old…" He choked out. "I wouldn't shut up…so Mom whacked me with a frying pan. Split my head wide open."

"Your own mother?" She whispered, balls of tears streaming down her face.

He let his hair fall back into place. Then swiftly, the sadness turned to anger as he bared his teeth at her. "And what do you have? A mother, a father… who support you in EVERYTHING you do? Friends, peers… nobody who REJECTS you? Huh? Have you ever been forced to sleep on a cold cement floor next to children who burn down houses and stab their own kittens to death? Crush their heads in? Poison them? Drown them? NO! You haven't… you don't know what it feels like… to be rejected, alone…forgotten about…" He angrily pounded his fist against the tree; she jumped.

He glanced at her tear-stained face, her red watering eyes; he grunted. "You cry about this huh? Everyone else laughs… everyone else says, 'oh that sucks man. Well let's go get drunk,' or 'so what?' or they just plain laugh… no tears were shed but mine…" A small tear slowly marked a trail down the side of his face, unlike the innumerate ones on hers, coming and going.

"There are too many scars with too many stories to tell… not even a frickin' counselor or therapist came to me. All of them walked by, looks of disgusts, even laughter as I stood in my dark alley…"
"I…" She didn't know what to say. Never could one person hoard such a scarred life.

"So… a great lively person like you shouldn't waste her time with a juvenile reject like myself…" he turned around. "I'll just…slow you down."

He started walking away, but she thrust forward and grabbed his arm. "No!"

He looked at her irately, but she didn't care.

"Shinji, you say people reject you…have I done so? You say you're alone…are you now? You say you've been forgotten about…I just say no."

"Look…just forget it, okay? Do yourself a favor and find the golden boy girls like you dream of!" He growled through bared teeth.

"NO! Don't you get it?" She asked choking up once more. "I CARE about you! I don't want any 'golden boy,' alright? Golden boys frequently buy stuff for me, they keep telling me I'm pretty, they say to have sex after marriage…no. That's why I'm with you Shinji. You drink underage, you'd never think to buy me anything, and I'm not your whole life; most importantly though…you're a mystery to me. I've always been attracted to men who have a mysterious vide to them. You might think you're a reject, but I'm still in love with you, no matter what happens. You don't need to start a new life, you don't need to marry me… I love and care about you." She gripped his hand tightly. "Please understand me when I say this… the reason I trusted you that night was because I wanted to be with you."

"You FORCED yourself to trust me just because you thought I was attractive…"

"I didn't have to force myself… you WERE trustworthy, you still are… you WERE attractive…and you still are."

He relaxed his muscles; she sighed with relief.

"The whole world hasn't given up on you Shinji… I care for and about you more than my own family…"

As he stared at her wide-eyes, she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed gently, letting him know she cared for him.

"If you ever left… then you and I would have nothing… please don't go…" She said into his chest.

He looked down at her with despondent eyes, and a fraction of a smile on his face. He closed his eyes, the right corner of his lips tugging higher and higher. "Hikari… you're not human."

"I am Shinji," she said looking up at him. "I just haven't forgotten about you."

THE END