An: Yes, I am still working on Last Sight, this is just something I wrote during English when I didn't have my story with me. I promise that I will get the next chapter finished asap, I just have a bit of writer's block, but all the wonderful reviews you guys give me help me over those hurdles! So, I hope you enjoy this while my brain takes another short little nap and my muse will be continued to poke until it wakes up. ^_^
Hitomi sat sleepily in class. Language class always made her feel very tired. It was probably one of the most boring classes in existence. The entire curriculum was the same information, year after endless year. She allowed her heavy lashes to fall. Why not sleep? She could pass the course with her eyes closed for Pete's sake.
She breathed in deeply, her mind beginning to float away. It floated up past the clouds, up past the sky, up past the moon and stars. Her mind wandered until it found itself back to grassy plains and forest hill where it felt safe. Gaea.
'Van!' her mind thought. It wanted to see him so badly, it began to float towards the Fanelian palace. The palace was completed, looking even prettier than before. She floated past familiar faces, like Merle, but they didn't seer her. Hitomi's mind was on Gaea, not her entire body, how could anybody possibly see her?
Merle was running down the corridors of the palace, towards a large set of doors. She shoved them open, her cat tail was fluffed up beyond large. "Van's gone!" she screeched, before the doors banged against the walls.
As the clattered in her dreams, someone knocked on the door of the classroom in reality. The sharp rap was enough so that Hitomi immediately woke up, almost slipping off her chair in the movement. She recovered and lay her head in her folded arms on the top of the desk with a worried expression.
'It was just a dream,' she reassured herself. She forced herself to smirk a little. 'Van couldn't be missing!'
The teacher answered the door and the student that was hidden by the wall handed him a note. The teacher grumbled -he positively hated being interrupted- and assessed the room. "Sit beside Yukari," he ordered before resuming his lesson.
Yukari sat behind Hitomi, and she nudged the later out of her thoughts. Her eyes had a familiar teasing light behind them, and Hitomi could tell that within a few seconds her best friend would need a bucket to catch all the drool. Obviously the new kid was male. "Yo, Hitomi," she said, nudging her again. This time it was suggestively instead of a poke to wake her up. "Look at the new guy!"
There was a collective gasp from the girls in the room, before they all leaned forward in their seats. Hitomi just stared. The new guy actually wore the school uniform well. The girls suddenly didn't mind wearing the short uniform skirt and the sweltering jacket if they could look at him all the time. He was a bit shorter for a teenage boy. Or, maybe he was tall and all the girls in the class were just tall for females their age. The class-mates of Hitomi didn't really care what height he was, all the knew was he was damn good-looking. He carried with him a kendo stick, a major hint at what his favourite sport was. Half the girls in the class decided to go see kendo more often.
He had brown eyes that were so intense and determined they seemed violent and frightening. His friends who knew him also knew that his eyes could appear so warm and full of love they could make a girl's knees go weak. He always tried to put a stern face forward, but it always eventually slipped. He was too much of a nice guy down in the bottom of his heart. The new guy had dark hair that fell into his eyes, almost completely hiding one of them. It created an aura of mystery around him, amplifying the one he'd created when he walked into the classroom, nameless and unknown. He walked calmly to his seat, kendo stick leaning against the desk where he sat it down. He stared up at the front, ignoring the giggling girls. Except, for the one girl who wasn't giggling.
Hitomi Kanzaki.
She turned around to face him, as he sat diagonally across from her. She looked at him like he wasn't quite real. 'Van?...'
Yukari saw it and arched an eyebrow in confusion. "Hitomi? Are you alright?"
'It can't be him!' she thought hastily. 'Van's back on Gaea. He just looks like Van. That's all! I'm imagining it! Oh no! My dream! What if it wasn't a dream, but a vision? No, it just couldn't possibly be my Van... Of course it isn't. Yes. I'm just imagining it because I miss Van and I really want to see him again, so my mind has fabricated this whole thing.'
Mr. Kawamoto held the chalk out at the front of the class. His eyes briefly scoured the students, scanning for a suitable target he could embarrass. His eyes fell upon the new student. What was his name again? Kawamoto looked at the note he'd been handed. He looked up in time to see the new student wink at Hitomi Kanzaki. Already trying to hit on girls? Oh, his ass was so cooked. "Van Fanel, could you please come up to the board and write this definition?"
If the wink hadn't pushed Hitomi over the top, the name certainly did. Van stood up and proceeded to the front, only to be upstaged by a heavy thump. The whole class stood up and leaned toward the source of the noise. It seemed Hitomi had fainted.
****
She woke up again in the nurses' office. The nurse didn't seem to be in, and there were no other patients, so it seemed she was all alone. Except for Van sitting on the edge of her cot. His mask had dropped, and his eyes were full of concern. "Are you okay?" he asked.
Hitomi raised her hand to brush his bangs, his cheek, and run her thumb over his lips. He was real. "I thought I'd never see you again. Now that you're here, I don't know what to say," her eyebrows knotted together in a calculating and confused expression. "But what are you dong here? Why are you here? And how did you get here?"
"C'mon Hitomi," Van smirked with a contempt-like gleam in his eye. "I couldn't let you be here by yourself. I couldn't stay on Gaea thinking that guys might be trying to hit on you considering how pretty you are and everything. And I came her by this." he pressed the pendant into Hitomi's hand as the contempt vanished from his eyes. Out came the sweet and caring Van that only Hitomi got to see -and Merle but she was unconscious at the time so it doesn't really count- and the look in his eyes made Hitomi fear that Van would start crying at any moment.
'Gods, how do I start?' Van pondered, staring at Hitomi's face. Her sunlight brown hair had grown an inch or two since they'd parted, but her green eyes still held that all-knowing and friendly attitude he so loved. He noticed her lips were slightly parted, making her breathing shallow. Van badly wanted to tell Hitomi how much he loved her, but he was too scared. "Hitomi..." he whispered.
She heard him and sat up, silencing him with a finger covering his lips. "Van, don't say anything. You don't need to say anything. I know," removing her finger she licked her lips, finding them dry. "Don't say anything. But know that I..."
"I do know," Van interrupted. "I knew the day you left. When you were leaving. I thought that you were maybe maybe.... ah.... going to kiss me, but we didn't. Kiss, I mean. For a long time, I was confused by that, but I always knew. I knew that even though you never said it, and we never acted upon it, I still knew exactly how you felt about me."
Both stared at each other a moment, and again it seemed like they might kiss, but at the last possible moment they blushed and stopped. Van and Hitomi settled for a warm embrace instead. They had wanted to hold each other for a long time, and it was amazing that everything from those months ago came rushing back to them. They had memorized the feel of the other's arms, the warm heat coming off the body, the softness, the spots that made each other feel comfortable, that Van was exercising completely and totally, running a hand up and down the small of Hitomi's back.
Van felt tears coming to his eyes, but he couldn't grasp where or what they were from. All he knew was he was holding the girl he loved and it made him so happy he felt like his heart was shredding to pieces. He also knew that Hitomi loved him back, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything about it. Not to ask if she had anybody chasing after her to make sure he would be able to stitch himself back to her side where he thought he belonged or to ask her how she had been doing both before and after she had passed out in the middle of class. Van couldn't even bring himself to kiss her, not even on the cheek. God, he was pathetic.
A single tear rolled down his cheek, splashing on Hitomi's shirt. She didn't seem to notice. Van tightened his grip, and lifted his head off her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said softly.
"For what?" she asked, confused. As far as she was concerned, Van had nothing to apologize for. Hitomi was not the least bit afraid to say so, leaning in close as if to convey the message that she wasn't hiding anything from him, and wanted him to open up as well, so they could become closer.
He looked down at her, and some masculine part of his mind that had not yet clicked, did so. He suddenly realized what everything meant; the way her face was upturned, the way Hitomi's eyes shone when they locked with his, the way her lips were parted, and the way she would moisten her lips with the tip of her tongue, even if he thought they looked fine as they were, the way she kept coming closer to him. She wanted him to kiss her.
This was all Van needed for the courage to do so. He had been terrified that Hitomi would slap him, hate him, or even tell him that he'd gotten the wrong idea and that she thought of him in the "big brother" sense because he kissed her. But now he saw the truth, and Hitomi saw it as well. They both wanted this.
They drew closer, their breaths mingling between them. Their lips began to part ever so slightly, and their eyes started to close. Colour spread across their cheeks as their lips tentatively touched, a mere feathery sensation. Van reached up to cup one side of Hitomi's face, urging her forward. Their kissed, meeting in a gentle kiss that tasted like raspberries and marshmallow, and smelled of wildflowers.
Van broke the embrace, pulling away. It was still his first kiss, and the feeling took his breath away. It was so sweet it made his heart shatter and tremble. So that was like kissing was like. Not only that, but kissing his one and only love, their first kiss. It was... interesting, to say the least. He looked at Hitomi, about to ask her exactly what she thought of it all -Van would like to know, as all men do, wether or not they are good kissers- but Hitomi beat him to speaking first.
"I love you."
He gaped at her a moment in response before it turned to a smile. "I love you too." Van's lips touched hers again in a quick kiss. And again. Then again. There seem to be no end. Obviously, kissing had not changed a thing at all.