Breathe
Beneath this overhang of rock, the storm is muted. The sand is dark and damp and Rei's skin is white and beautiful against it, but Nagisa is cold and numb and shaking and he can no longer tell if the wetness on his cheeks is from the sea or from the storm or from the tributaries in his own eyes. Because lips are on lips and hands are clutching hands but nothing is how it should have been.
When he pulls away to pump Rei's chest his sobs are loud and ugly and Rei would have hated this but for once Nagisa doesn't care, Rei is beautiful and terrifyingly still and oh god, come on Rei please don't die! I know you can do it, just breathe! He counts the pumps like a machine and then his mouth is on Rei's again, tears trembling on his eyelashes. Come on, Rei, breathe! For me! He laces their cold cold fingers together, and the only sound is his own desperate heartbeat, as if by pounding fiercely enough it could somehow find a way to beat for two.
Too much time passes. Nagisa's arms ache from pumping and his chest burns. He sits back, and despite the tears that are still streaming incessantly down his face a sudden, bizarre urge to laugh spirals up from the pit of his gut.
"I'm sorry, Rei," he says, his voice too high, too bright, too unreal in the deafening silence. "This isn't how I imagined our first kiss would go at all."
Nagisa's smile crumbles, and he hides its ruins in his hands.
