Please, please...Please look over here. Talk to me. Laugh at my jokes. Give me a smile. Anything. Please, please.
Please.
Nagisa sat in class, wearing his trademark boyish smirk of his, his feet streched out underneath his desk while his eyes focused on the mess of a page in front of him. It was covered with little doodles and a sad excuse of notes they were suppose to be taking. Sure, he looked as relaxed and carefree as possible upon first glance, but beneath the surface, he was an anxious wreck. He hoped his classmate beside him couldn't hear his loud and eratic heartbeat as it threatened to tear through his chest and his palms felt more than a little sweaty. Hidden underneath the crumpled up piece of notebook paper on his desk was his sketchbook, filled with drawings of the boy sitting one seat across and one seat forward.
Rei Ryugazaki.
He'd fallen hard for that boy and it wasn't like any other crush Nagisa had developed before. Not to mention this was the first time he had felt so attracted to a guy. Since he'd caught a glimpse of him on the first day of school, he'd become captivated by that pale skin, those unmistakable red framed glasses and that deep blue hair. But what pulled him in with no hope of escape were his eyes. He had such unusual purple eyes.
He remembered the first time he saw them, leaning across the way in the middle of English, asking the blue haired teen if he could borrow something to write with. When Rei turned to examine him, a surprised expession gracing his features at the fact that someone had tugged him back into reality from whatever dreamland he had been in, Nagisa was so caught up and shocked that he acutally fell out of his chair, landing in the aisle with a thud.
His eyes caught the morning light streaming in from the windows in such a way that they glowed, little dark flecks randomly dotting them. His skin was pale in a way that made Nagisa want to reach out and touch it. Of course, the rational side of him knew that would be awkward and managed to keep his hands to himself. There was a term for it though, that pale skin of his, almost like porcelain that you couldn't resist running your fingers over.
Alabaster.
That's it. Nagisa, being an art student, was always looking for references to compare things to, trying to find the perfect colors to paint or draw something or someone. He'd never met anyone with skin like Rei's. He wanted nothing more than to sit him down and sketch him, knowing he'd never be able to do his beauty justice.
As soon as he hit the ground, the other students began laughing and pointing, but Nagisa's eyes were fixated only on Rei, who covered his mouth with his hand in attempt to hide his smile, but when he pulled his hand away...Nagisa had found his new mission in life.
He wanted to make Rei smile.
Those white teeth, those soft lips, that quiet chuckle...And the way his eyes lit up. There weren't just purple. He couldn't describe the color. There was no color in his pencil box or in his paint palette that could even come close to recreating it. He was so beautiful when he smiled and all Nagisa wanted to do was make him smile again. Make him smile so he could draw it. He wanted to capture that perfect moment so he could see it whenever he wanted.
So, he became the class clown. He cracked jokes, he let himself trip over things as often as possible and he made careless mistakes, but only when he was in Rei's view.
And yet there were no smiles.
Nagisa tried his best to recreate that very moment, but he could never manage. He could never match that pink in his lips and cheeks, that color in his eyes, the way his skin glowed in the sunlight. That smile that graced his lips.
He just wanted Rei to look at him. He wanted him to smile. That's all he ever wanted.
Please, just notice me. Look over here. C'mon, you idiot! Why...? Why won't you just look at me?
You idiot.
Rei sat in class, hunched over his notebook, writing frantically, trying to get all his thoughts on paper...But he was at a loss for words. He tapped his pen against his notebook, pressing the tip into the white sheets because there was a word right at the tip of his tongue and it refused to come to him.
He turned his head discreetly, trying to catch a glimpse of the boy sitting in the back left corner of the room, right next to the one window in the classroom.
Nagisa Hazuki.
He'd caught Rei's eye in one of their first classes together. It was an English class and they were reading poetry. The teacher had called on Nagisa to read a few passages out of the book. Rei had been glaring down at his notebook, scrawling notes in it, just for the cheerful voice to cut through his concentration like a knife. His heart almost stopped. He looked up, trying to find the source of the voice until his eyes fell on the boy immediately to his left. He'd never heard him speak before and truthfully...He never wanted him to stop.
Rei was a writer. Poetry, short stories...Just little works he could pull up out of nowhere in fits of inspiration or when he witnessed something beautiful, but when it came to a voice like that...There weren't any words to describe it. He couldn't think of any words that could truly and completely sum up how beautiful that voice was.
It ran across his skin like silk, reminding him of a happy child, but that would never work. Because there was a rough quality about it too, forcing a shiver down Rei's spine and fantasize about hearing it late at night, whispered softly over pillows while they held each other closely in bed. Just thinking about it heated his cheeks.
Hearing Nagisa's lips and tongue form those words perfectly, filling the room and falling mostly on the deaf ears of the other students and the half asleep teacher, but Rei listened intently, not paying attention to the book in front of him. It wasn't until Nagisa stopped talking that he realized he'd been pressing his pen into his book so hard that it broke, covering his book and most of his writing hand with blue ink. He desperately wiped the ink with some tissues in his bag, looking over his hands when that same lively voice crashed his train of thought.
"Can I borrow a pen?" He asked and Rei looked at him, surprised the blonde was talking to him. As soon as their eyes met, Nagisa fell out of his chair, a small yelp escaping his lips as he hit the floor, but their eye contact never broke once. Rei smiled at the sight, chuckling as he covered him mouth. He wasn't good when it came to talking to others and he always hated his smile. He remembered his hand was still dripping with ink so he placed it back against his desk, but he couldn't help the smile.
Nagisa was...Well, words couldn't possibly describe him. His hair was blonde, but at the same time...It wasn't. It was golden, but not in every light. His eyes were the hardest to get down on paper. Sometimes they were a soft pink, like in gym, where the light bouncing off the polished wood reflected off of them, that competitive nature burning in those eyes.
Sometimes, they were darker, when he was lost in something, whether it was his sketching or homework. Either way, Rei was intrigued by it. He loved seeing them both, like when he sat outside, drawing in the shade of the little oak tree in the school courtyard, surrounded by the green of leaves and grass.
Rei wanted to create a word. He wanted to design a word, woven from every single beautiful language there was in existence so it could truly describe Nagisa. How absolutely gorgeous he was, how amazing his voice sounded, how he made Rei's heart stutter in his chest with just a glance. All of it in just a single word.
Sometimes, when he was fighting to remember a word he'd learnt through his readings, he'd look at what he was trying to describe and it would come to him, just like that. So, he would refuse to look at Nagisa when he caused a ruckus in class. The expressions, the sounds he made always seemed so forced, him trying to be a clown for whatever reason and...Rei didn't want to look at him like that. He didn't want to look at him, just to come up with the wrong word. A clichéd one that would forever be stuck in his mind when his eyes fell on Nagisa, filling the space where the right word should be.
He wanted Nagisa to be himself, he wanted Nagisa to look at him with that exposed expression he had when they first spoke to each other. He wanted to find that perfect word to fully describe him.
He just wanted Nagisa to notice him.
It was three years after their initial meeting in freshman English, at the beginning of their senior year. Everyone in their grade whispered about them and the gossip had reached an all time high. Everyone noticed the looks they cast at each other, but it took Gou, Nagisa's friend in the same year, and Makoto, who had already graduated, to bring them together, setting up a date at a diner they both visited regularly, mostly because there was an off chance they could catch glimpses of the other.
After a week, they confessed to each other. They took small steps together, like calling each other boyfriend and meeting each other's parents. That was the same time Nagisa painted the first portrait he ever sold and Rei wrote a piece that won a writing competition, being published in a book of short stories.
After three weeks, they went on their first weekend away together. They slept in the same bed, talking about what they wanted to be in life, where they wanted to go. Everything about them...They talked about it. Nagisa started his first collection that night, sketching while Rei was asleep and accidentally smudging the bed with charcoal. Rei began his first novel early the next morning, waking up with the sunrise, barely after Nagisa fell asleep with his hands dirtied. The blue haired teen pressed his lips to the blonde's forehead before scribbling notes on the small hotel notepad left on the nightstand.
After a month, they first made love. It was at Nagisa's house, his parents at work late that night and his sisters out on vacation. Nagisa traced every inch of Rei's body, trying to lock the colors of his skin in his head and commit every scar or curve to memory. He wanted to try and recreate this on a canvas, although he knew that he'd fail inevitably. Rei's internal dictionary ran through words to describe everything he felt, managing to come close but not quite close enough to finding that word he was looking for. Little did he know, he was saying them aloud.
"Nn...Pulchra...Ugh...Sans défaut..." Rei had managed between moans.
Nagisa didn't question the words slipping from his lips, although he did recognize the Latin Rei had no doubt learned from old textbooks and some French in there as well, probably from all the songs he had listened to. Although he did not know what he was saying, Nagisa thought it sounded beautiful. But, Rei knew these words were far from a match. He hadn't found one...Not yet.
After a year, they graduated from high school and began living in a house together. Nagisa was going to university, taking a fine arts course while Rei majored in literature and creative writing at the same school. They didn't see each other nearly as often as they had liked, Rei's classes being mostly later on in the afternoon, sometimes even at night. Nagisa's were early in the morning, sometimes crossing over to Rei's, sharing a quick kiss as he handed Rei a cup of coffee.
They were together late at night, at least. Rei would be on his stomach, jotting down something in his notebook or typing on his laptop, researching different words to describe beauty, covered in the sheets of their bed. Nagisa, on the other hand, sat in the small window seat, a blanket draped over his shoulders while he propped his sketchbook on his raised leg, drawing something up for Rei, to try and explain something he couldn't quite put into words.
"Rei?" Nagisa murmured, breaking the silence between them. The blue haired man looked up from his computer and at the blonde, finding himself watching how his mouth formed every syllable he spoke, falling in love all over again. He always emphasized the right words to make Rei's heart pound even after so many years.
"What is it, Nagisa?" Rei replied and Nagisa struggled to bring his attention back to his original thought, distracted by the way Rei examined him like the day they first met, his purple eyes glowing in the moonlight.
"I-I..." Nagisa stammered, having trouble forming words. Usually, he was good with things like this. Speaking truthfully from the heart. But...He wanted this to be perfect and he wasn't going to let himself mess this up. So, he fell to his backup. Drawing. He was always better at getting his thoughts and words across with images. He stood from the window seat, making his way back over to the bed with his sketchbook grasped tightly in his hands and handed it over to Rei.
He took it, sitting up and closing his laptop so Nagisa could climb in beside him, burying his face into the crook of his neck, trying to do anything to distract himself...Because he was afraid to look at Rei's face, to see how he reacted to what he desperately needed to say with his art.
"Nagisa." Rei whispered as he looked through the sketchbook. The first picture was of a bouquet of delicate white flowers with deep blue ribbons holding them together. They were the exact shade of his hair.
The second was a church with an arch, completely covered in those same blue colored ribbons and those white flowers. Rei narrowed his eyes. The church looked familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on it. But, he was beginning to put the pieces together.
"Nagisa...? Are you-?" Rei breathed, but Nagisa refused to answer. He just hid his face from him, his fingers tracing down Rei's arm, moving over the contours he had already memorized all those nights ago. He was to afraid to speak, just motioning for him to turn the page.
Rei's trembling fingers turned the page, a small gasp escaping his lips as he gazed at the final picture.
It was of him and Nagisa with smiles on their faces. Nagisa held Rei's hand tightly and then...Something caught his eye. They were both wearing rings.
"N-Nagisa? Are you asking me to-?" Rei whispered, feeling tears begin to drip from his eyes as he turned to look at Nagisa. He watched as he pulled his hand back from the nightstand, holding a small black box in his hand. It was worth more than five of Nagisa's paintings.
"W-Will you? Will you marry me?" Nagisa asked carefully. Rei felt his heart come to a stop, just like all those years ago, in that freshman English class when he first heard the blonde's upbeat tone. Nagisa watched Rei, looking into his eyes and seeing that same glow in the purple irises that made his brain just completely fall apart, overloading because he could see everything. All the love he feels, felt and will feel. He could see how happy he would be if he had a future with this man.
Before he could even open the box, Rei answered. "Yes. Yes, Nagisa." He smiled, tears flowing freely now as he brought Nagisa's lips to his. "I thought you'd never ask."
To this day, Rei still couldn't come up with a word that could accurately describe Nagisa. No word powerful enough to tell the world how beautiful Nagisa was, how much he meant to the blue haired freshman all those years back, silently begging for the gorgeous blonde to notice him and to be honest with him.
He'd managed to get a little closer, publishing a series of novels about the beautiful artist and the man that fell for him and hasn't gotten up since.
And, Nagisa hadn't yet managed to portray Rei in his art. He could get the little pieces, enough to catch the eye...But nothing was ever complete, nothing was even close to enough to show how Nagisa really felt about the flawless, blue haired teen with his nose buried between the pages of his notebook back in that English classroom.
There was a collection of paintings in a gallery, some churches with a white archway, covered in white flowers and blue ribbons, some of a person in the distance, who was beautiful, but so far away, the painting darkening the further from the person it got, as if they were the light source in the dark world.
The most popular painting was one that had taken Nagisa five years to paint. A short, blonde teenage boy looking across a classroom at a blue haired boy, a look of longing manipulating his features, a hand hanging loosely at his side with a sketch held between two fingers. A sketch of the blue haired boy with a frustrated scribble covering most of the paper.
Nagisa and Rei could never find the right words to describe the other, but the closest word so far was...
Perfect.