note: for the sake of simplicity, i refer to nagisa with male pronouns in the story even as i headcanon him as genderfluid.
c/p prompts: inure
four elements c/p challenge: love, mountain, mountaintop, aura, travel
challenges by the dozen: level three [write about your favorite character(s)] #3
Everybody else in Class 3E was grinning and cheering for Nagisa. He had finally taken down Takaoka again with that innocent smile, their classmates weren't going to die of the "virus," and Koro Sensei was still with them. But Nagisa himself wasn't grinning genuinely. He plastered on the cute smile but it wavered.
He couldn't keep going on like this, stuck switching back and forth but being unable to explain himself to his classmates when they questioned or teased him. Nobody knew, and so it weighed down on his chest even more heavily.
Nagisa had to tell somebody soon; it was just too painful. But... who would believe him and be able to keep the secret?
It always seemed like the majority of the class had sadly become inured to believing in static binary gender, and wouldn't be able to see beyond the binary to the spectrum. Not even Kaede would understand...
Karma.
The name instantly popped into his head. Karma and Nagisa had only recently become friends, but with his encouraging comments and teases, Nagisa just felt this trustworthy aura around him.
He could tell Karma.
...and now. It had to be now, on the top of the mountain hotel, before the end of the class's island vacation, before they would have to travel back and Nagisa would lose his spur-of-the-moment confidence, after most of the rest of the class had already gotten a ride by helicopter back down to where they were staying.
His breathing quickened slightly, and Nagisa had to carefully control his respiration as he awkwardly approached the red-haired Karma.
"'Sup, Nagisa?" Karma greeted him, rotating around his body to face his friend. "...You did really great back there."
Nagisa blushed pink at the compliment. "I, uh, wasn't coming to you about that... can you keep a secret?" he blurted out, crossing his fingers tightly and hoping for the best response.
A rare glimmer of worry flickered in the arrogant Karma's eyes, but he brushed it away to respond. "Yeah, of course I can, what do you-"
Before he could even finish his answer, Nagisa opened the floodgates and let it all flow out. "Karma, sometimes I feel like a boy, and then sometimes I feel like a girl. I legitly do. Some days I wear clothes as masculine as they can get to try and prove that I'm a boy not some girlish girl but then other days I just don't feel male, you know? And I want to try and wear dresses and sparkly tank tops and have my hair in pigtails and be a girl, because that's how I feel inside, and it's amazing to dress up as a girl like I did back in the hotel to fit in and not be suspicious. But I can't just choose, how can I choose, why do I have to choose a gender to be? Can't I be both? I couldn't tell anybody else until now, they're too used to a bias of believing in only a gender binary; you're the first one I've said anything to, Karma-"
Karma cut Nagisa off mid-ramble, and scooped him up to hug him a bit. "It's okay, Nagisa, you can talk to me about this. I don't know why any decent human being would ever force you to choose. I understand, and it's okay.
"I... I've also got something to confess," Karma said, flushed a bit in the middle of their hug. "Nagisa, I'm bisexual."
"And... I love you."
