Ikarishipping Scene #4: As I Lie Beside You…

An indescribable love between two opposites is told, and proven to each other as they slowly drift to sleep on a fall evening.

If she'd choose one moment she treasure in her heart the most…it would be when she lie beside him in bed during a spring thunderstorm.

He was so sincere, so honest and upfront…but mostly he was loving and lovable. A mystery he was to her, but she loved that factor about him. He held his past inside him, as if it would change her whole perspective on him. But it wouldn't. Sometimes he'd just spend most of the day looking out at the sea. She'd secretly watch from a distance as the wind blew passionately, his long spiked purple hair blowing in his face, his coat gracefully dancing in the air…he looked so peaceful…yet still mysterious. But she'd smile every time…she'd never seek to solve the mystery of him.

He wasn't the kind of guy who would sulk in deep forests at night. No…he was a guy who enjoyed quiet times…he'd take life at a leisure calm pace. He wasn't a boisterous guy, nor was he subdued…

He was just…a mystery that should never be solved.

If he had to choose the one thing he loved most about her, it'd be a tie between her eyes and her smile…for they were both treasure any man would eagerly search for.

If he took as little as a glance at her eyes, his heart would beat faster. They twinkled enchantingly, no matter what time of day it was, or what light she was under. Staring into her eyes would make him fall in love with her all over again…every time.

If you were to see her smile, you couldn't help but smile back. It'll light up any room or situation. Hell, even a funeral parlor would be rid of tears when she smiled, was what he thought. The lucky factor was that that smile of hers rarely left her face…especially when she saw him. The corners of her lips would curl beautifully to form a smile foreigners would travel to see…it was unreal, he believed.

It was a different night that night. Outside the leaves were brown and inanimate. Harsh winds blew, forcing piles of the ominous leaves to blow through the air with a rustling sound. He watched her fall asleep, and while she was asleep. He'd never been able to take his eyes off her whenever they were in the same room…her face was stained in his mind…her laugh and voice played over and over in his head…

She stirred. "Shinji…"
"Hikari…" He replied grasping her hand.

She smiled that same smile, making him smile back.
"You're too good for me." She said just above a whisper.

"Never would I imagine a girl like you would waste her time with me." He responded in the same tone.

"I'm not wasting time…I'm making memories."

His smile disappeared when she traced his jaw line with her fingertip. "Treasuring moments, writing a book…it doesn't matter what term I use…what I'm saying is that I'll always be happy spending any time with you Shinji."

He smiled and shook his head from side to side. "Hikari…you know you don't mean that."
She held a strand of his hair in her hand loosely. "Of course I mean it…you haven't even kissed me for awhile, and I'm happier than I ever have been."

"…Do you want me to?" Anxiety appeared in his eyes.

"You don't need to." She shook her head from side to side, the smile still on her face. "You've made me happier than any girl on this planet…just by being with me."

He smiled back and felt the side of her face with his thumb and index finger. "I can't explain how much happier I've been with you."
"I'm glad…"

"Hikari?

"Yes?"

He closed her eyelids delicately with his fingers. He hesitated for a few seconds, but then cautiously yet sensually kissed her lips. She responded at a leisure pace like himself. They never rushed it at all; they kept it lethargic and relaxed, not changing the peaceful atmosphere.

When he let go, she opened her eyes and grinned.

"Any time I spend with you…I get happier every time." She whispered tracing his jaw line again.

"You should probably get some sleep Hikari." He gently responded.

She nodded and laid her head back against her pillow.

"Hikari…you can't seriously like pillows more than me, can you?"
She sat up and smiled, her eyes twinkled again, like all those other times. "I was just testing you…of course not, your shoulder is much more relaxing."

He smirked as she climbed onto him and laid against him her head up against his shoulder, his chin in contact with her temple.

He enclosed her hands with his. "Much better."
She closed her eyes and nodded. "Mmm…" She muttered.

"Hikari?"
"Yes?"

"If I died…what would you do?"

She bit her lip. "…I'd kill myself, for I wouldn't find another man who has brought this indescribable happiness to me." She tilted her head so her forehead touched the bottom of his cheek. "…What if I were to die?"

He answered without insinuating hesitation. "I'd do everything in my power to prevent it from happening, even if I died myself…I'd never be able to deal with the fact that you will never be with me again."

"You won't wait long to see me if you die first…I'll be right behind you."

"What a relief…for not even Jesus himself could make me feel more loved than you do Hikari."

She smiled and intertwined their fingers. "I thank Jesus every day for bringing you to me."

"…Fate didn't bring us together."

She furrowed her eyebrows together, keeping her eyes forward. "Well then…what did?"

"You did."

"How exactly did I do that?"

"You do remember that one night, don't you?"

She started to think back…

ONE YEAR AGO

He stood at the edge of the cliff with an average kitchen knife in his left hand's grasp. He looked down the hundred or two feet at the glowing city where the one whom he loved, what he believed, the most was as of now.

His face tightened, the sight of another man sitting beside her, his arm laid over her shoulders. He had leaned over to put his hand on her chest, while kissing her neck when he had walked through the door. Neither of them saw him, for they had lied down upon the couch that pointed away from the door.

He had simply went into the kitchen, quietly grabbed one of her knives on purpose and started making his way to the cliff where they'd go on summer nights.

As he tightened his grasp on the knife, standing on the cliff edge, his countenance was gruesome, yet melancholy. He bared his teeth and clenched his eyes angrily as one tear from each eye started trailing down the sides of his face.

"I…I gave you everything…" He choked out, opening his at the present heartrending eyes. "And you just…THROW IT, RIGHT IN MY FACE!" He paused, watching the knife's blade gleam eerily yet teasingly in the moonlight. "So Haruka…I'm going to pay you back. For you to know I did this because of you…it'll kill you as well…inside. But it'll be too late…way too late…"

Why there were three mischievous girls in the forest right behind that cliff's periphery was a mystery to him, because he didn't even know they were there. They had the right materials to prove that they were mischievous girls…a lighter, solitude, angel dust, and cigarettes.

"This is going to be AWESOME…my brother says it makes you feel like you're flying." One said.

"What does your brother know?" Another questioned.

"He knows that he shouldn't lie to me…so he has to be telling the truth."

"I don't know guys…" The other asked, thoughtfully concerned. "This can kill us!"

"Not on the first try, moron…it'll be fine, we'll only do it for like a minute, and then we'll scram." The obnoxious girl said.

The thoughtful girl hesitated as the other two started lighting up. She had looked up to see her best friends being sucked into the profundity of peer pressure, but saw the dark tall shadow at the verge of the precipice. When she saw the knife rise in his hands, she pushed her friends out of the way and ran towards the dark tall figurine. When she reached him she wildly grasped the arm that held the knife.

"Who the hell are you?!" He exclaimed, lividly looking down at her.

"WHAT the hell are YOU doing?!" She questioned, her eyes wild with expression.

"What do you think?"

She let go of his arm and looked from the knife back up to him, then back to the knife. "Why are you doing this?"

"I don't have to tell you, do I?"

"I'd love to know."

"Get used to disappointment." He turned to face the city again as an efficient wind blew past the two.

"Please…talk to me." She said. "There's never a logical reason why anybody should die, especially under their own self-control."

He didn't face her when he spoke in his melancholy baritone pitch. "Have you ever walked in on the one you were going to propose to doing the things you did with them with someone else…in other words…being unfaithful?"

He glanced at her face. She was listening intently, care and concern on her face as he paused.

"No, you haven't, I can tell. You seem like a decent girl, no man would break your heart, would they? You wouldn't break his, would you?"

Then he sighed. "Why am I even asking you anyway? I don't even know you. Plus…I know it'll be better and more ethical than mine."

She sighed and gently took the knife out of his hands. "There's a reason why people fall in love with others. They feel like that person is well, that part of you that you thought was nonexistent. That's why it hurts when they leave; they break a part of you."

"And you don't think I should kill myself because…?"

"You know in your heart and mind that part of you needs to be filled, by someone else who needs that part filled also. If you keep on looking, I assure you, that person will turn up, and she'll love you like your more important than her own life."

He sighed through his nose. "You don't know what it's like…the way I'm feeling right now, you feel hopeless. I know in the adolescent romance novels they say that for an extra effect, but it's the unadulterated reality. If the one person I loved for over two years feels like she needs someone else to keep another relationship with me going, it's just…useless."

"You can't keep thinking that if this one girl rejected you, every girl will turn you down…it's not true at all. It's a big world, there is someone out there, you shouldn't feel hopeless, and you should look for hope."

"Hope never comes to someone instantly when their heart breaks…especially a guy like me of course."

"Why is that?"

He paused. "Okay, I need to know who you are before I start getting personal."
"Oh! Right…" She stuck her hand out, holding the knife by her side. "I'm Hikari."

"Shinji…" He shook her hand once firmly. There were a few tense seconds when they stared into each other's eyes, as they slowly let go of each other's hands.

He abruptly looked away from her, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I'm as gullible as they get."

"What do you mean by that?"

"It means that whenever a girl who I'm seeing says she loves me, I feel like she's the one who wants to spend the rest of her life with me, of course, it never happens. As soon as I even think about proposing, something happens. She'll break up, she'll cheat, or she'll just pack up and leave." He closed his eyes. "God obviously created me so he could have some entertainment."

She vigilantly gripped his arm. "That's a terrible thing to say Shinji! God always has a reason for why he puts people on this Earth…he wants them to live happy successful lives. He'd never put someone on Earth to give him personal entertainment…how could you say that about yourself?"

He opened his eyes, a faraway look in them. "Simple, I try too hard. I try too hard to make that girl my wife, my everything, and she realized it, and she takes advantage, so she'll make the break-up more entertaining for herself, and God."

She tauten her grasp on his arm. "Stop saying that! You've got it all wrong!"

He looked down at her, a dissuaded look on his face.

"You're not trying too hard, you're not trying enough. You see, when you convince yourself that that one girl is going to be your wife, you don't tell her you love her as much as you would and should. If you show her every day…or even every waking moment that you want her to be your wife, she'll realize just how special you really are to her…" A hint of a smile on her face appeared as she spoke, "…and yourself in general."

He blinked twice as the smile on her face grew wider.

She held the knife up. "This isn't the answer, it'll NEVER be the answer, even after the most poignant of separations. If you kill yourself now, you'll never find that one person, and that one person will never find you."

He turned fully to face her, the dissuaded look ebbing from his face, being replaced with a small smirk. "You must have a very supportive boyfriend." Anxiety for her response fleeted through his body.

Her face tinted red. "Oh no…I don't have a boyfriend, they tend to have only one ambition on their minds." Her face hued a deeper red after she spoke those words.

As she blushed he began to think. About how he began his relationship with Haruka, and how it was exactly akin to what this stranger had told him.

An intelligent…attractive stranger, and someone who actually cared enough to stop his suicide attempt.

He mumbled words she couldn't decipher.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that." She said.

He jumped. "Uh…"

There were several more tense seconds as they looked at each other once more.

"It's…" He spoke up. "It's useless; please just give me the knife."

"Are you crazy?!?" She wildly exclaimed, holding the knife out of his reach. "Have you not listened to what I've said?" She made sure the knife was pointed away from the two.

"Yes I have."

"Then why do you still want to kill yourself?!?"
"Look…" Sincerity lingered in his eyes. "I want to die; not only because of Haruka, but everything. Over the years nothing interesting at all has turned up. I want this."

"Someone will turn up, I assure you. You need to give more time—"

"I've waited over three long years Hikari, alright? I'm done. I'm done waiting, and I'm done living."

"Can you give up anymore time?"
"How much, three more years?"
"No, three seconds."

She threw the knife over the cliff and looked back at him. Without thinking, she hugged him tightly, making him stumble back from the momentum.

"What…?!?" He angrily muttered.

She ignored. "Everybody deserves to live." She hid her blushing face in his chest. "That's why we were created."

He wanted to push her away, but he couldn't. She was a stranger, and she was hugging him, she was in contact with him. An intelligent attractive stranger was hugging him.

His arms hung at his sides, not knowing what to do. "Do you do this with regular people who want to kill themselves?"

She hesitated to speak the words she wanted to so badly.

"Am I just like the others you've persuaded out of killing themselves?" He questioned.

His annoyance was overtly shown. "N-no…" She feebly replied.

"But you have done this before, right?"

She stepped away some, but not too far away to make eye contact with him. "No, never…I'd do all this for somebody I've fallen in love with."

After he blinked twice, he widened his eyes. He stared into her honest shy eyes, seeing that she was being integrative.

"I told you there's someone out there who loves you, and it just so happens to be me."

He denied it to himself. "I know that I want to kill myself, but you don't have to go THIS far to try to persuade me, alright?"

She looked down at her feet as he turned away from her. She saw that her friends had wandered off, and that she was completely alone with a depressed peer.

He was a depressed peer who she beggaring description fell in love with. She looked up at him and saw that his face glowed from the moonlight, dark shadows dancing across his face slowly. She shook her head from side to side. "Don't deny it just because it happened right after I talked ot you."

"You don't love me, nobody does."

"SHINJI!" She exclaimed.

He turned to face her annoyed and livid. "What?!?"

She hesitated, but accomplished her task. She gently pinched his face with her hands and kissed his lips. She shut her eyes closed and kept her body a distance from his. When she let go, she relaxed the hold she had on his face as she opened her eyes halfway to see him surprised and filled with emotion.

"Do you believe me now?" She questioned in a rather loud tone.

He didn't have the nerve or courage to respond. For a few seconds he couldn't find his voice, or even reminiscent on what is sounded like.

Instead, he united their lips once more, and action he highly preferred than speaking. She was more willing to lean her body up against his, it curving just a slight bit to fit his body form.

He had kissed her rather roughly, eagerly. It surprised him, it surprised her, but what had happened the past fifteen minutes was all a vague impression. A girl who came into sight without warning stops a man from ending his rather despondent life.

Surprise, surprise, it was.

"What…just happened?" He asked, observing the situation they were now in.

She observed also. "…No idea."

"Well, that's number four…" He fruitlessly sighed.

"No, no I'm not number four. There will never be a number four."

He pinched his eyes somewhat when she spoke.

"I will love you like there's no tomorrow for us."

"…Ditto."

She smiled. "I vow to make you the most mirthful man in the whole universe, do you?"

"You'll live like you've never lived before, Hikari, when I make you the most mirthful girl in the whole universe."

"I told you that one person would show up."

PRESENT

"Have I kept my promise?" She asked.

"No doubt you have, what about me?"

She laid on her stomach and hugged him. "Of course you have."

"I can't imagine what would've happened if you weren't there, and if you didn't persuade me out of it."

"I'd be with some mindless boyfriend…not knowing you weren't there…I'd die." She buried her face in his neck and sighed, feeling his relaxed pulse.

He gripped her shoulder bone, and stroked it in sensual circles, looking up at the ceiling. "Hikari, I don't plan to marry you."

"Why is that?"

"We need to prove to ourselves that we love each other, not by some mindless priest in front of a minute or gargantuan crowd. We need to do that ourselves, to prove it's true."

"I do trust you Shinji. I trust you, I believe in you, in some ways I look up to you…most of all, I love you, and never plan to leave you for a man who we all know will never be like you." She smiled as she spoke, then her voice dropped to a whisper. "No one will ever be like you, or give as much love as you've done for me."

He didn't need to think, the words came right to him. "Hikari, I need to see you when I say this."

She scooted up farther to make direct eye contact with him. He grasped one of her hands when he closed his eyes.

"People say that eternal happiness only happens in stories. They say that your life will be tough no matter what. Hikari, you make me eagerly face a life that I know will be the complete paradox of what those people think. You're not my princess in the story, you're just that happy amorous feeling throughout the whole story." He opened his eyes to see a loving look on her face, her eyes trembling.

He gripped her hand tighter. "You were more than willing to help me through a tough time, or times…" She smiled, him smiling back. "You make me feel like I was created for a reason, which is to love you, and for you to love me. That night is still stuck in my mind, it plays over and over every day. Do you know why?"

The loving countenance remained on her face, her smile plastered there as he paused.

"It's not because I was rejected by my at that time lover, or because I almost killed myself. No, I met my real angel, an angel who was more than willing to help, even though a complete stranger at that time. You were the intelligent attractive stranger who talked to the smart-aleck depressed reject, who helped him…look at him now. He's lying because that same angel a year later."

He kissed the back of her hand. "I don't know how I survived without you, and I certainly don't know how I'd ever survive if you left. I know I'd never be stupid enough to leave you. Whatever you do, I'll be there to do it with you. If you're scared, I won't comfort you, I'll be scared with you. I won't try to be the intrepid man standing up for his girl…no. All I ask is this, anywhere you go, let me go too. I'll do anything for you."

When he opened his eyes, she was ready to cry.

"Oh, Shinji…" She choked out, the first tear escaping her eyes. "…Do you really mean that?"
"Why else would I say it?" He questioned in a gentle tone.

"All I can say…" She buried her face in his neck again. "Is that I will love you eternally, forever. You don't need to be my husband, I know I'll love you until the end of time itself."

He continued stroking her shoulder bone in circles, looking down at her relaxed position, feeling her relaxed sighs tickle his neck. Her closed eyes, so relaxed…

When he finally saw she was asleep, he concentrated on falling asleep too. When he relaxed his whole body, and felt her breathing against his neck every five seconds, he had no trouble at all.

He made sure that he was close to her that night, because he was never more in love with her at that moment.

But they both knew that tomorrow, that they'd love each other even more.

THE END