Archive of Our Own ^beta

Caspar [13:53]

Lin dont forget to grab ur books at my dorm later!!!

Linhardt absently types out a nondescript yeah in response and stuffs his phone back in his pocket. The university campus is absurdly large, like some sprawling labyrinth Linhardt just has to get used to navigating while he studies here. Honestly, with how big the place is, they should just have some sort of in-campus taxi system…

Ugh. Before that, Linhardt should probably decide on a major first. He’d gone with chemistry, his father’s choice, for now, but it’s only the beginning of the school year and Linhardt’s already tired of it. Interesting though some lessons may be, most days he doesn’t have the motivation to get out of bed and attend any of his lectures. At this rate, he may go through all his free cuts before half the semester has even finished…

He yawns. Or maybe these are thoughts for another day; he’d only woken up from his nap in that lecture hall so he could continue it somewhere more comfortable, like his room—

He doesn’t notice the person in front of him before it’s too late—with a surprised yelp, Linhardt crashes straight into some other student hard enough to fall flat on his behind. “Ow, sheesh,” Linhardt grumbles, rubbing his lower back. Both of their textbooks are scattered all across the corridor floor, along with several sheets of loose paper and what he thinks might be an umbrella that Linhardt figures belong to the other person. “Seriously—”

How did you not notice me in a hallway this narrow, he wants to ask, but then he looks up and straight into not the person’s eyes, but the lens of their reflective glasses.

“I-I’m so sorry!” the student exclaims, snapping Linhardt out of his surprised confusion (or confused surprise, as it may be). “Are you alright? You’re not hurt, are you?”

“Ah,” Linhardt says, eloquently, “I… I’m fine. I’m sorry too—”

“No, no, don’t apologize,” the student reassures, already getting up to scoop their various belongings up into their arms. Not only is it how they move, fingers stretched and spread out as far as they can go and clearly groping around the floor, but it’s also how he realizes what he’d mistaken for an umbrella earlier is, in fact, a cane. Through his whirlwind of thoughts, Linhardt concludes that yes, this student—this fellow freshman, actually, if Linhardt is looking at their textbooks right—is blind.

Blind. Linhardt runs that word through his head again, and he’s so distracted that he doesn’t even notice when the other student is handing his own textbooks over. “Here,” they say, smiling; “these are yours, right?”

Linhardt blinks. “How did you…”

“They feel different,” the student explains, if one can even call that an explanation. “Are you sure you’re alright…? Can you stand? Oh, no, I didn’t hurt you, did I? I’m so sorry!”

“I’m fine, seriously,” Linhardt repeats, but he takes the student’s proffered hand anyway. His palm comes away smudged with what looks like pencil lead and a hint of green paint. An art student? That would explain all the papers. “Uh, thanks,” he says, accepting the books; a quick scan tells him that they’re all accounted for. How did they do that? “I wasn’t paying attention either, so I’m sor—”

“I told you, don’t apologize!” they insist, smiling that little smile again. Linhardt blinks several times—despite their hair, which is something like a mix between a bowlcut and a particularly shaggy pageboy style, he has to admit that smile is doing strange things to his heart. “I hope you’re alright. Anyway, I’ll get going now—bye!”

And they hurry off down the corridor, cane clacking against the floor, the stack of books and papers wobbling dangerously in their arms.

“Huh,” Linhardt mutters. A blind art student… He vaguely wonders what their art looks like, but decides he doesn’t really care either way. Now that the ruckus has died down, though, he’s more tired and in need of a nap than ever—Caspar won’t mind if Linhardt takes a little while longer to get to his dorm, will he?

That’s it, then, Linhardt thinks, on the way back to his own room; bumped into someone with an awful haircut but a cute smile today, no big deal. Not like we’ll see each other again.

So, when Linhardt wakes up from a refreshing six-hour nap and heads to Caspar’s dorm on the other end of the floor, of course the person who opens the door for him is the same art student from earlier. “Hi there,” they greet, that annoyingly-adorable smile on their face again. “Friend of Caspar’s, right?”

Linhardt, for all his extensive vocabulary, can only manage, “I-It’s you.”

Despite having their eyes covered, they look clearly confused, frowning slightly. In an unexpectedly cheery voice, they ask, “Have we met? I’m not very good with faces.”

“Lin!” Caspar calls from inside. “Come in already! What’re you just standing there for?”

“You’re the one from earlier,” Linhardt says, expertly tuning Caspar out. “We bumped into each other, at the corridors…”

Their face lights up in recognition. “Oh! That’s why you sound familiar. Well, um, don’t let me keep you—Caspar’s right, come in. Raphael brought pizza, if you’d like some.”

One sniff and Linhardt already knows it’s the kind with pepperoni. A shame—he’d woken up from that nap rather hungry and looking forward to eating something that isn’t, you know, pepperoni. Otherwise known as the devil’s food. “Thanks,” Linhardt says, instead of voicing all of that aloud to a near-complete stranger, and steps in. Aside from Caspar, someone else is seated on the edge of his bed—Linhardt assumes that must be Raphael. “Uh, hey. What’s with the crowd?”

“This is Raphael!” Caspar declares. Raphael uses the hand that isn’t holding a pizza slice to wave at Linhardt. “He’s an old friend from middle school! And this is Raph’s best friend, Ignatz!”

“Ignatz,” Linhardt repeats, just to test out how the name feels on his tongue.

Ignatz inclines his head with a smile. “You’re Linhardt, huh? It’s nice to meet you. Well, meet you again, anyway.” He rubs the back of his neck with a sheepish little laugh. “I’m sorry again about earlier!”

“For, like, the third time, I’m alright.” Linhardt picks at his nails, glad that this nervous telling habit of his isn’t visible for once. He hurries over to Caspar’s bed and takes his chem textbooks from him, glad to have something else to do with his hands. “Uh, Raphael, right? You study here too?”

It’s an amazingly stupid question, but Raphael doesn’t seem to care. “Sure do! Culinary arts. I ran into Caspar a while ago ‘cause we were both checking out the gym.” He grins over at Ignatz, who looks busy rolling a pizza slice up for easier eating. Linhardt has to keep himself from nodding approvingly—Caspar never understands why eating pizza that way is just better. “You met Ignatz a while ago?”

“Uh, we… met, sure.”

“Ran into,” Ignatz corrects, sounding amused. “We ran into each other too, though more literally than you probably meant. I wasn’t paying attention and the corridor was narrow, so…”

“Haha,” Linhardt says, so awkward it kind of hurts, “yeah.”

He busies himself with grabbing a pizza slice and picking all the pepperoni off of it, but he doesn’t miss the curious look Caspar sends his way.

Linhardt quickly learns that Ignatz likes following a schedule. And no, this is not because Linhardt stalks him—it’s just very easy to notice. Also, their best friends both use the gym.

It’s a few days, maybe a week, after their initial meeting; Linhardt walks with Caspar to the gym, then gets himself some milk tea at a nearby store while idly planning what to do next. (It seems sort of rude to place a milk tea shop and a gym so close to each other. How are people tired from exercising supposed to just turn a blind eye to all that sugar?) Then Linhardt almost trips on himself, because Ignatz is there, sitting by himself at one of those tables-for-two at the milk tea place and scribbling away.

Linhardt weighs his options as fast as he can: approach Ignatz, or… don’t approach Ignatz. The answer seems pretty straightforward, but then Linhardt doesn’t want to screw up and surprise the guy if he suddenly calls out to him, because what if his arm jolts and he makes a mistake with whatever he’s working on? It occurs to Linhardt that he has never worried about this sort of thing with literally anyone else in his life before, and that realization is more frightening than anything.

In the end, he settles on making his steps deliberately loud, and thankfully Ignatz looks up, or at least lifts his head up from what Linhardt can now see is his sketchbook. “Hey,” Linhardt greets, blandly.

“Oh! Linhardt, right?” Ignatz smiles. Linhardt’s mostly surprised he recognizes his voice and remembers his name, considering Linhardt is terrible at both of those. “You’re here too?”

“I went with Caspar to the gym. Is Raphael there too?”

“Yeah. You should sit down! The chair across me is still there, right?” Ignatz laughs softly. His cane is on the floor and leaning against his thigh. “Or did it get taken away by some big friend group already?”

Linhardt frowns, pulling the chair out so its legs scrape audibly against the floor. “Nope, definitely still here. People seriously do that to you? That’s asshole behavior. And you know it is, because I’m saying it.”

Ignatz just shrugs. There’s a smudge of paint on his cheek, and the pads of his fingers are nearly black from what might be charcoal. “I don’t really mind. You get used to it.”

Linhardt can’t imagine ever getting used to asshole behavior. If anyone did that to him or Caspar, he’d spit in their drink and make absolutely sure to publicly humiliate them at least twice in two different locations. “What are you drawing?” he asks instead, peering at the sketchbook. From upside-down, though, he can’t really make out many details.

“Oh, d-don’t look, please,” Ignatz says, hastily flipping to the next page.

“Hmm? Why?” Linhardt pouts.

“I’m not done yet.” He fiddles with the stick of charcoal in his hand, before setting it down and reaching for his own cup of milk tea, which is significantly smaller than Linhardt’s. “It’s not that interesting anyway. Um, what are you studying, Linhardt? I don’t think you mentioned it the other day.”

Linhardt frowns. “Chem for pre-med. But that is not interesting, and I mean that with all my heart. I swear I have never been less interested in a science. You’re an art major, right? Tell me about it.”

Ignatz worries on his lower lip. “I-I haven’t really done much yet…”

“Okay, then tell me about art.” Linhardt shrugs. “Or you can keep working and I’ll sit here and daydream. Either’s good.” In all truth, he wants to know how Ignatz draws while blind, but asking that right away seems too rude, even for Linhardt, rudeness incarnate.

There’s a significant pause, where Ignatz doesn’t answer and Linhardt tries not to think about why before Ignatz, very slowly, says, “You’re probably wondering how I draw if I can’t see, right?”

“That…” Linhardt blinks, once again contemplating between lying and telling the truth, before deciding honesty might help out for once in here. “I was certainly thinking it, yes.”

“I thought so,” Ignatz says, his lips curving up in a little smile. It’s different from his usual ones, though—while no less genuine, this one seems distracted, thoughtful, as if he’s remembering something from the past. “I wasn’t born like this. I was in a car accident when I was in elementary school, and that blinded me. Retinal detachment. Most of what I draw—” He makes a vague sweeping gesture at his sketchbook—“is based off my memories of sight.”

He pauses, then scratches his cheek sheepishly, charcoal smudging on his face. “Well, it sounds nice when I put it like that,” he says, laughing softly, “but in the end, I still can’t see. So my art’s really abstract. I think it might just look like a bunch of colors mixed together and not much else.”

“Th—I’m sure that’s not true,” Linhardt argues, not sure why he’s even arguing. He hasn’t even seen Ignatz’s art enough to make much of a deduction about it. “I mean… art’s art. Are you planning to take it up professionally?”

Ignatz ducks his head self-consciously. “Hopefully,” he allows. “But I don’t know yet. My parents always wanted me to take up business like them, but…” He shrugs, and leaves it at that.

Linhardt doesn’t miss the casual usage of the past tense, but he supposes that’s a story for another day. “Well—” He yawns. Right, maybe he should just take a nap here, now that there’s someone else here with him. “Do you mind if I… close my eyes for a little bit? I didn’t get enough sleep earlier…”

“You’re sleeping here?” Ignatz asks.

“Wake me up when you have to leave,” Linhardt responds, then lays his head atop his crossed arms on the table and lets himself slip into sleep.

Ignatz does not wake him up—when Linhardt eventually stirs awake, blinking blearily at the blob of blue standing above him, it’s because Caspar can’t keep his voice down. “You stayed with him all this time?” Caspar exclaims, incredulous. “Man, you should’ve just ditched Lin!”

“That’s—Should you really be telling me that?”

“I mean, he didn’t even bring anything with him, except maybe a few dollars, so it’s not like he would’ve lost anything if he got robbed.” Caspar nudges Linhardt’s shoulder, which Linhardt supposes is his cue to groan and sit up, stretching the kinks out of his joints. “Mornin’, Lin! Well, it’s sunset now, but you know what I mean.”

Linhardt stares at Ignatz, sitting across the table and now sketching something with a pencil. “I… told you to wake me up.”

“If I had to leave, yes,” Ignatz says, turning ever so slightly to face Linhardt more directly. “I didn’t, though. Also, I’d feel bad. You looked like you really needed the rest. Sounded, I mean,” he corrects himself.

Caspar shoots Linhardt a look that Linhardt pointedly does not return. “But…”

“Don’t worry about it.” Ignatz smiles. “If you ever need to nap here again, I’m here every other day, okay? Anyway, I should get going—the storekeeper kept trying to get us to leave. See you around, you two!”

And he gets up, expertly tucking all his papers and other assorted materials into his bag, and leaves the milk tea shop with his cane moving in front of him.

Caspar allows Linhardt exactly one second of silence before immediately rounding on him, as the law dictates one must do when they see their best friend staring starstruck after someone new. “So,” Caspar starts, which is never a good start coming from him, “Ignatz, huh.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Linhardt immediately responds.

“Like hell you don’t!” Caspar helps pull Linhardt off his seat; the only reason Linhardt stands up at all is because he really wants dinner now. “Are you sure, though? He doesn’t really look like the type to go for a fling.”

Linhardt briefly considers continuing to deny it, then decides Caspar, for all his troubles with math, is terribly intelligent when it comes to matters of emotion. If only Linhardt were so lucky. “Before that,” he mutters, “does he even like men? How on earth am I supposed to find that out?” It was fairly easy with his previous flings and one-night-stands. All he had to do was arrange his hair a certain way, or tilt his head at a certain angle, or unbutton his collar at a certain level, but… well…

He realizes, with a terrible start, that his looks are not going to be the deciding factor in this relationship for once; no, Linhardt has to actually charm someone with his personality. The thought is so horrifying that he stops walking, staring blankly ahead of him.

Caspar’s eyes widen, as if he’s just figured out the same thing. “No way. Holy shit! You have to get him to really like you, Lin. None of that seduction stuff. You gotta actually talk.”

“That implies I didn’t talk to my previous… partners.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you didn’t,” Caspar points out. “It was just sex-sex-sex and then okay, we’re done here, bye! And you kicked ‘em out the next morning.” He frowns and crosses his arms. “Not to worry you, but I think Raphael would actually, like, kill you if you did that.”

Linhardt vaguely remembers Raphael’s arm muscles and overall size and supposes Caspar is far from incorrect. “So? What do you suggest?” he asks, half-sarcastically as he continues walking down the street back to campus. Caspar hurries to follow. “My personality is hardly my charm point. In fact, I think it’s one of the last things anyone is going to want me for…”

“Don’t be silly!” Caspar shouts. “I’ve got an idea already. You two are getting along well anyway, right?”

“We spoke for five minutes and then I fell asleep,” Linhardt says, which he realizes is a very apt way to describe his interactions with pretty much everyone he’s ever met.

Caspar nods. “See? Not so bad. For your standards, that is. Just you wait—it’s my turn to help you out with this sorta stuff, Lin!”

Ignatz does, indeed, visit the milk tea place every other day—coincidentally the same time Caspar goes to the gym. Linhardt isn’t sure whether to take this as a sign from God or if Caspar had just deliberately set it up this way.

Still, even if Ignatz’s smile makes Linhardt’s chest do all sorts of exercises and Ignatz’s laugh has Linhardt’s stomach performing extreme sports, talking to him is easy in a way Linhardt isn’t used to at all. When Linhardt has to speak with others, he knows he’s not supposed to say certain things, and he knows he’s supposed to keep his rudeness in check, but he simply can’t be bothered to expend the effort in doing so. He sounds like a terrible person when put that way, but it’s like how he can’t bring himself to get off the bed sometimes—he just can’t, and people end up thinking he can, but doesn’t want to.

With Ignatz, though, Linhardt wants to say the right things, and he actually takes the time to think over his words first before saying them aloud, a privilege only Caspar really gets, and that’s only once in a blue moon. Dealing with emotions like these is so bothersome, Linhardt wonders if it’s more trouble than it’s worth, but those thoughts always evaporate into thin air whenever Ignatz says his name like it’s something to be savored.

Like now, when Linhardt should really be paying attention to what he’s saying rather than observing how Ignatz’s hands look when they move across his sketchbook. “Linhardt,” Ignatz says, softly as ever, “can I, um. Uh. Can I… get your opinion on something?”

Linhardt blinks. “Sure. Is it an artwork?”

“Yeah. Um—i-it’s not that great,” Ignatz stammers, setting his pencil down as he flips through the pages of the book. Out of politeness—yes, he’s surprised too—Linhardt had kept from looking too closely at any of the drawings, but right now he catches rapid glimpses of several different works. Most of them are certainly nothing but splashes of color across the paper, as far as Linhardt can tell, but then again he’s no artist. “I just wanted someone’s opinion before I hand it in for class. Someone who can see, anyway.”

He doesn’t hand his sketchbook over, simply presenting the page instead; Linhardt leans across the table for a closer look, squinting at the illustration. “What does it look like?” Ignatz asks, voice getting smaller and shyer by the second.

“Mm…” It’s certainly abstract, that much Linhardt can tell. He’s seen Ignatz use watercolor most often, but this one seems to have used something more similar to oil pastels instead, based off the texture. Absently Linhardt reaches out and runs his fingers down where the colors are clumped together tightest, a somehow chaotic mix of reds and oranges and browns, and draws back to look at the color staining his fingertips. “Like a mess,” he finally decides. “Not artistically, I mean. Just… it was made to look like a mess, right?”

Ignatz beams, which is too much brightness for Linhardt to take. “Yes! Was it obvious? Um, it’s not too much or something, right? Or like I’m trying too hard? Or like I didn’t do enough? Or—”

“It’s good,” Linhardt interrupts, else Ignatz probably would have gone on forever. “My opinion isn’t worth much, though. I’m the farthest thing an art student can get.”

“Maybe,” Ignatz says, the tension leaving his shoulders a little, “but I wanted to hear what you’d say anyway, Linhardt.”

How am I even supposed to respond to that, Linhardt thinks, not for the first time. How does he say such things and then expect me to not spontaneously combust before him? I am going to tear all my beautiful hair out. “What’s it about anyway? Or what were you trying to show?”

Ignatz is quiet for a little while, setting his sketchbook back on the table. He doesn’t look at it, because, well, he can’t, but he faces down at the paper anyway, his fingers tracing the same spot Linhardt had touched earlier. “I told you I was blinded in a car accident, right?” he asks. “My parents and older brother were there with me. They died. All I can remember about the incident is that the car was orange.” He pauses. “Sometimes I wonder who got off easier.”

“O… Oh.” Linhardt looks down, where color has smeared across his palms. The streak of red makes it look disconcertingly similar to blood, and he has to stop that train of thought there before he gets sick. “I’m sorry,” he offers, but his words sound empty, considering they’re several years too late.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I didn’t tell you that expecting condolences,” Ignatz says, shaking his head with a little smile. “It’s just that our assignment was to create something out of an incident that shook us up in the past. I chose this, obviously. I mean, I didn’t have a lot of choices.”

“Your self-deprecating jokes are truly something else,” Linhardt notes.

Ignatz shrugs. “I try. Anyway, yeah, this is… what it’s supposed to be.” He sighs, flipping his sketchbook back to the page he’d been working on. “It’s a little sad, that something like… well, something like that is my last memory of sight.”

Linhardt supposes that’s his cue to say something appropriately encouraging, but before he can even struggle to come up with a reply, Caspar comes barreling through the doors as he always does at this time of the day… wait, is it 5pm already? Linhardt swears the afternoons become shorter and shorter with each conversation he has with Ignatz. “Lin! Ignatz!” Caspar calls, above the din of the other customers. “Let’s get goin’!”

“Alright, alright.” Caspar had promised to buy sweet buns for dessert later tonight, and even Ignatz can’t keep Linhardt away from those. He stands up, pushing his chair behind him, and says, “See you, Ig—”

“Actually,” Caspar cuts in, grinning wickedly, “you should come with us, Ignatz!”

“What? Me?” Ignatz exclaims, as if there’s anyone else in the milk tea place named Ignatz. “Um—sure, but why? Aren’t you just walking back to the dorms?”

“Well, Raph said he had to go somewhere real quick, and that he’ll just meet you at my room,” Caspar explains. He would sound far more convincing if he didn’t send Linhardt meaningful looks and waggling eyebrows every two words. “Sooo, just wait at mine! Lin will be there too, so it’s not like you’ll be bored or anything.”

Ignatz still looks unsure, but he says, “Alright, then,” and gathers his things up in his arms.

Predictably enough, as soon as the three of them arrive at Caspar’s dorm, Caspar himself immediately steps out of the room and declares, “Okay, I’ll go buy dinner! You two have fun! Bye!” And then, in an undertone to Linhardt that Linhardt is absolutely certain Ignatz hears, “Don’t use my bed!”

“You little—” is all Linhardt gets out before Caspar is slamming the door in his face.

For a very long while, silence reigns. Linhardt, as silently as possible, turns around to see Ignatz perched atop Caspar’s bed, well-worn bag placed atop his lap. “Aha,” Linhardt says, slightly hysterically. “So, er, well. Caspar. Funny little man.”

“Should I really just be waiting here?” Ignatz asks, sounding both amused and concerned. “Or is this some sort of prank…? Is ‘dinner’ a code word for something?”

“No, I’m fairly sure dinner means dinner,” Linhardt says—he’s confident about that, at least. When it comes to food, Caspar is never one to lie. “Might as well get comfortable, though,” he sighs, flopping onto the bed beside Ignatz but dutifully keeping a respectful distance away from him. “Hopefully Caspar gets back soon… I am terribly hungry.”

Ignatz stretches his arms, flexes his fingers, and retrieves his sketchbook from his bag once more. “I guess I’ll get back to work, then,” he mumbles, rubbing his nose and smearing gray pencil streaks across the tip. Linhardt has to resist the urge to scrub it off.

“What are you working on?”

“Our other assignment was a portrait.” Ignatz flips to a clean page, looking distracted the whole while. “I thought of just sketching Raphael, since I’ve known him since we were kids, but… even if I know he’s, like, nineteen now, I can’t help but still remember his face when he was nine. But then I don’t really know how anyone else looks like…”

He trails off, and the silence is so ridiculously meaningful that Linhardt’s sure this is no coincidence. “Then,” Linhardt says, swallowing back the stutter that had very nearly slipped out, “do you want to… draw me? Or something?”

How is that his eloquence seems to always magically vanish whenever he has to talk to Ignatz? It’s utterly unfair.

“You?” Ignatz’s grip on his paintbrush falters. “Are you sure about that? You probably won’t like how you’ll come out, I’m telling you now.”

“You don’t know that,” Linhardt says. “Besides, you know I like your art. Even if I don’t always understand it, I like it.”

Ignatz is quiet at that, fiddling with the paintbrush in his hand. By now Linhardt knows him well enough to know that this doesn’t necessarily mean he’d said something wrong—Ignatz just likes taking his time to respond, and Linhardt can’t deny wishing everyone had the patience for that. “How can you say that?” Ignatz finally asks. “Isn’t it all just colors to you? And… random things? I can’t see how you can like something without fully understanding it.”

“How do I say this,” Linhardt murmurs aloud. “As far as I can tell, artworks are like people. Many can be similar but not the same. Sometimes these people experience things only they can experience, and I’ll never be able to understand it from their point of view.” He pauses. Maybe he can drop a very subtle hint right here? “But I can still accept that part of them, and like them all the same.”

Forget subtle—Linhardt had dropped that ‘hint’ like an atomic bomb. In the brief silence that follows, he closes his eyes and wishes for death, vaguely imagining walking up the steps to Heaven and shouting, God, I’m coming up!

“That’s…” Ignatz swallows, facing down, his cheeks distinctly pink. “That’s really nice of you, Linhardt.”

“Of course,” Linhardt replies, glad Ignatz can’t see how his own face is an unflattering shade of embarrassed red. “I am the epitome of niceness. Niceness incarnate. Anyway, should I describe myself for you? For the portrait?”

“I didn’t even agree to drawing you yet.”

“You will now.”

“So pushy,” Ignatz chuckles. “But, no, no in-depth descriptions. Colors are all I need, really. But you’ll have to be okay with me touching you a little.”

Linhardt almost chokes on his saliva; thankfully, he manages to pull himself together as quietly and quickly as possible. “Touching me?”

“You know, to get a feel for how you might look like.” There’s that little blush on Ignatz’s face again. Linhardt is starting to think that specific shade of pink is going to be his new favorite color. “U-Unless you’d rather not, of course. I totally understand! I—”

“No! No,” Linhardt says, “you can… of course you can, er. Touch me. As much as you like.” Does he sound desperate? He definitely sounds desperate. Linhardt hopes there isn’t some sort of security camera or recording device installed anywhere in this room, because if this ever gets out to Caspar or any of their other friends, Linhardt might simply take the easier option of crawling into a hole and dying to save himself the embarrassment.

Ignatz smiles, looking a little more relaxed now. “Okay! Great, thank you so much. This is why I can really only ask friends for portraits—this sort of stuff would weird complete strangers out… okay, so, please stay still for a little bit.”

By ‘touch,’ Linhardt had sort of assumed it wouldn’t be more than a few fingers to judge the length of his hair or something like that. He isn’t at all expecting Ignatz to suddenly cup his cheeks in both of his hands, and Linhardt is so startled that he nearly kicks the both of them off the bed. Miraculously enough he manages to stay mostly still, though he doesn’t quite suppress the surprised gasp in time. “Sorry, sorry!” Ignatz frets, letting go immediately. “Is it weird? We can stop, if you like!”

“No, I’m… fine,” Linhardt manages, again. He has a feeling he’s going to be saying this a lot in the next few minutes. “That just caught me off-guard, but I’m fine. And Ignatz, you have got to stop apologizing, or else people are going to walk all over you.”

“Bit too late for that, I’m afraid,” Ignatz muses, sounding perfectly unbothered. Carefully he places his hands upon Linhardt’s face again, and only when Linhardt mumbles an affirmation does Ignatz start… well, touching him.

Linhardt has vague childhood memories of molding Play-Doh into various shapes before, while Caspar took more entertainment into crushing the clay and pounding it into submission. The way Ignatz moves his hands reminds Linhardt a little of the slow, cautious motions Linhardt’s own hands had undergone to make sure his tiny clay creations were precise: he rubs his thumbs against Linhardt’s cheeks, traces the length of his nose and the line of his jaw, measures his hair and even cards his fingers through the long green strands. “Close your eyes?” Ignatz requests, and Linhardt does so in order for Ignatz to very gently rub his eyelids as well. “What color?”

“Blue,” Linhardt answers, his voice coming out far more shaken than he’d intended. “M… My hair is green.”

“I like your hair.” Ignatz smiles. Linhardt’s no artist, but when he gets the sudden urge to grab a pencil and paper and draw that smile into permanence, he wonders if art might be transferable through osmosis or something. “It feels nice. Your skin is so soft, too. Are you tan?”

“Pale. I try not to go out much.”

“I should’ve known.” Ignatz’s hands trail down to his throat, and Linhardt does his hardest to suppress the shudder that crawls up his spine. Rather unfortunately, Linhardt had gone with one of his many high-necked blouses today, and Ignatz’s fingers only brush against his skin for the shortest of moments before meeting fabric. “Are you wearing… white?”

“Yes,” Linhardt answers, surprised. “How did you know?”

“Oh, I didn’t. Lucky guess.” Ignatz touches his shoulders, his arms, all the way down to the very tips of his fingers. Linhardt can definitely say this isn’t how he had imagined they would hold hands. “You know,” Ignatz murmurs, “I don’t think I need to see to know you’re… really pretty, Linhardt.”

Whatever words Linhardt tries to say get all clogged up in his throat, like there are too many of them at once and he can’t decide which to get out first. Ignatz doesn’t seem to mind the lack of a response, his hands making their way back up—arms, shoulders, throat, chin… and stopping right above his lips.

The calm quiet turns to electrified silence almost instantly. Linhardt can’t bring himself to breathe. Ignatz’s expression is inscrutable. His fingers—the cleaner ones, thankfully—rub against Linhardt’s lower lip in a manner that tells Linhardt this is almost certainly not him studying up for a class assignment, but Linhardt is the last person to stop him right now. He leans just slightly forward instead, in silent permission, and yes, he’s sure Ignatz’s breath hitched just now.

They’re close, much closer than the table in the milk tea place usually allows. Linhardt tries not to swallow, because Ignatz will definitely feel it. If Linhardt moves just a bit closer… if Ignatz moves just a bit closer…

His fingers twitch, and—

Blam. “Hey, I’m back!” Caspar calls, followed by the rustling of plastic bags. “I got fried chicken and those sweet buns from—”

He falls silent. Ignatz jerks away from Linhardt’s face so quickly, he’s sure he heard his arm crack just now, but it’s too late—Caspar had definitely seen his hand on Linhardt’s mouth. And even if he hadn’t, Linhardt doesn’t scoot away from Ignatz fast enough to pretend the respectable distance from earlier had been there the whole while.

“Oh,” Caspar says. “Wow. Huh. Okay. Alright.” And then, without further ado, Caspar turns on his heel and leaves the room, shouting, “Don’t let me interrupt!”

Linhardt leaps off the bed, which is the most intense form of physical exertion he’s participated in all month, and grabs Caspar’s arm before he can close the room door behind him. “What are you talking about?” he forces out, dragging Caspar back inside. “You weren’t interrupting anything. Now what was that about fried chicken? Sweet buns? Please, do go on!”

“Lin!” Caspar whines. “Why do you sound like you’re about to murder me? Here, take the food, just spare my arm!”

“I—” Ignatz stands up from the bed as well, looking thoroughly frazzled. “I-I should get going too. I’ll just—text Raph about whatever he wanted to see me for—” He gathers his materials back in his arms, not even bothering to stuff them in his bag, and is squeaking out a “bye” and sprinting out the room with his cane before Linhardt can even think of calling him back.

Linhardt stares forlornly at the fried chicken bucket. “Why would you just barge in like that.”

“I’m sorry!” Caspar says, sounding genuinely apologetic. “I swear, halfway through I totally forget I was trying to set you two up and just kept thinking about dinner. Uh, but that thing back there… what was going on anyway? Were you two about to actually do something? That’s pretty fast, for a guy like Ignatz.”

“I don’t know either. Things just sort of… turned out far from what I expected.” Linhardt sighs, settling back down on the bed. “You know what? I’ll worry about it another day. For now, can you get me a sweet bun?”

“Hey, chicken first, or you’ll upset your stomach.”

“Can’t upset it more than I already am…”

Thankfully, Ignatz seems to have forgotten all about the incident by the time they see each other again—that, or he’s just pretending it hadn’t happened at all to save both him and Linhardt the embarrassment. On one hand, Linhardt’s glad he hadn’t lost a friend; on the other, he almost wishes they could continue where they’d left off, because surely neither of them were finished with that.

Ignatz doesn’t mention the portrait again, so Linhardt doesn’t either—he always seems to be working on something else whenever they’re at the milk tea place together anyway, though that may be because he doesn’t want to let Linhardt see the final product yet. Either way, after everything, Linhardt can’t deny being more than a little curious how his portrait might turn out, but just in case the conversation somehow swings back to the Incident, he refrains from bringing it up as well.

He’s overthinking, isn’t he? He is. Linhardt has never bothered to overthink—or even think over—his words with someone before, and it’s driving him crazy.

Caspar also doesn’t make any more attempts at setting them up, though he does text whenever he’s done with gym, just in case he barges in on them again. (Linhardt decides he can’t be bothered to explain that they’re hardly going to engage in anything more than talking in a crowded milk tea place.)

Embarrassingly enough, though, Linhardt is starting to look forward to these semi-daily conversations almost as much as he looks forward to flopping into bed at the end of the day. It’s something about Ignatz, he thinks, that makes living feel like it isn’t as hard as the past nineteen years of Linhardt’s life—it’s his smile, maybe, or his laugh, or the way he speaks to Linhardt like there’s nothing he wants to do more. It sounds cheesy and cliché when Linhardt puts it that way, but he’s had zero experience with emotions past physical attraction—his only other frame of reference is terrible romance novels he read when he was in middle school.

Right. He stares down at his palms, thinking back to when Ignatz had held them in a context that Linhardt cannot, for the life of him, describe as romantic in any sense of the word. His first real crush on someone outside of flings, and that someone happens to be someone who he can’t try to charm with his looks. Linhardt sighs and buries his face in his hands. He had been fine with staying single—why did he have to literally walk into Ignatz that day?

The bell above the double doors chime in that moment, and Linhardt looks up just in time to see Ignatz heading inside the milk tea shop. Until now, Linhardt’s not entirely sure how he gets around with only the cane, but the path inside the shop must be familiar enough that Ignatz hardly hesitates anymore when he seats himself in front of Linhardt. “Hey.”

“Linhardt!” Ignatz yelps. Today he’s donned a long worn coat that looks two sizes too big for him, which really only makes him look more scrawny and scraggly than usual. “You’re early! I’m usually the first one here.”

“Yeah, well, I was bored,” Linhardt says, which is, in his opinion, quite close to the real reason of ‘I was excited.’

Ignatz beams. “Then I can show you this! Look—I got your portrait back from my professor. It’s a pretty okay grade, really, but what do you think? I tried a different style for you!”

Too stunned to respond properly, Linhardt just manages an “oh” before Ignatz hands over the paper. And, while Linhardt’s idea of a portrait involved a human face, this one is honestly a lot better than anything he could have expected. The green brush strokes are bold and broad enough that Linhardt can see the lines of individual bristles, and it takes him a moment to realize this part must be his hair. It reminds him of blades of grass or leaves of trees, the verdance of spring, and the swirls of blue that must be his eyes look like crystal clear ponds dotted with reflections of sunlight.

“It’s… beautiful,” Linhardt breathes. “It doesn’t look anything like me.”

“Wh-What?”

“I mean—you made me look so much better,” Linhardt hastens to correct at Ignatz’s worried expression. “This is… I don’t know what to say. Certainly it makes me look too good to be true.”

Ignatz ducks his head, laughing softly. “But you are.”

Linhardt turns to face him so fast, his neck nearly cracks. “What?”

“You are,” Ignatz repeats, somehow managing to sound both shy and insistent. “You… You like talking to me, and you don’t make fun of who I am, and—I don’t know, it’s just… being with you is easy. And—And even if you don’t always understand me, and I don’t always understand you,” he babbles, now blushing to the tips of his ears, “we still accept each other, and… like each other.”

Linhardt has to very carefully set the portrait on the table, lest he grip it too hard and rip straight through the material. “That…” He clears his throat. “That was, ahem. Very nice of you.”

Is that all you have to say!? his mind screams at him. Linhardt wishes he could say no, but as it turns out, he’s run clean out of words.

Ignatz squirms uncomfortably for the next few seconds before stammering out, “D-Did you not understand what I said?”

“We like each other?” Linhardt cautiously ventures.

“I—Yes, but more than just that—”

“We like each other,” Linhardt concludes.

Ignatz sighs, but there’s a fond, amused little smile on his lips. “Okay. Yeah. Yes. That… That’s what I mean.” A pause. “Wait, you like me. Like… back.”

“That is what I said, yes.”

“You’re not…” Ignatz’s voice softens. “You’re not lying, are you?”

Linhardt wants to grab this table and throw it upon whoever had made Ignatz think confessions like these could be lies. “Of course not,” Linhardt sighs instead, leaning across the table even if Ignatz can’t see him. “Trust me, I have been disgustingly obvious for the past few months. I think letting you touch me that day was as blatant as I could get.”

Once again, Ignatz’s flush threatens to take over his entire face. “T-That was—I wasn’t trying to make a move on you or anything! Well, at first, that is… I didn’t realize your lips would be that soft…”

“You can certainly realize that again,” Linhardt suggests. “Right now would be great.”

“We’re in public,” Ignatz says, sounding scandalized.

“I don’t see the problem there,” Linhardt responds, but his phone chooses that minute to buzz with an impatient notification. He sighs as he fishes it out of his pocket, already half-expecting the email about the rescheduled class. “Alright, we’ll have to reschedule your realization,” he relents, to Ignatz’s sigh of relief. “I have to get going, I have a class in, what, half an hour? This professor is wrong in the head, I swear.”

“Okay.” Ignatz smiles, and without the initial alarm from earlier, he looks… well, radiant is certainly one word Linhardt could use. “Um… can we talk after? Just to, you know. Make things clear.”

Linhardt’s not sure what things need to be cleared, but he reaches across the table and brushes his hand against Ignatz, who startles a little but doesn’t retreat. “Sure. Just text me to wake me up from my post-class nap.”

He can hardly focus the entire lecture, with how his heart bounces around in his chest and how he can’t keep the dopey smile off his face, and his professor calls him out on his inattention twice, but Linhardt doesn’t even care. He doodles random things in the margins of his textbooks, which he hasn’t done since middle school, and actually lifts his feet when he walks instead of dragging them across the floor like usual. Linhardt knows Ignatz has a class afterwards, though, so he takes his time in his dorm room and takes his promised post-class nap—even the euphoria from earlier can’t change his typical drowsiness.

Unexpectedly enough, he’s awoken around half an hour later by a loud rapping on the door that doesn’t sound anything like his roommate. “Who is it?” he calls, voice scratchy from sleep.

“Linhardt, right?” a vaguely-familiar voice responds. “It’s me, Raphael! Can I come in?”

Raphael? What would he be doing here? Linhardt wraps himself up in his blanket, reluctantly slides off the bed, and unlocks the door. Raphael steps in with a cheery grin that only serves to further unsettle Linhardt. “Hey,” Linhardt greets warily. “Need something?”

“Oh, nah, just wanted to talk.” Raphael’s smile stays in place, but Linhardt can feel himself getting more and more nervous. “So! I heard about you and Ignatz!”

Ah. “Ah.”

Raphael’s grin widens. “Congratulations.”

“T… Thank you.” Is it just Linhardt, or is he getting lightheaded?

“But you two didn’t really talk yet, right? ‘Cause you had a class or something? No problem, no problem.” Raphael sits himself down at the edge of Linhardt’s roommate’s bed, which creaks audibly under his weight. This, at least, means he is no longer towering over Linhardt with a smile not unlike that of a horror movie monster. “So, Linhardt!”

“Y… Yes.” If Raphael says his name one more time, Linhardt is just going to assume there’s some sort of curse out there that requires saying the target’s name at least three times.

“Well—can I ask something?” Raphael frowns, and Linhardt feels himself relaxing a little. The smile had been seriously creepy. “When you said you liked him… did he ask if it was some sort of joke, or a lie?”

Linhardt sighs and crosses his arms. “Yes. He did. I… assume something happened in the past to make him think that way? Most people certainly wouldn’t think a confession is a lie.”

“He was bullied a lot.” Raphael leans back slightly, looking up at the ceiling. “Even before the accident, he was just… too nice, y’know? So a lot of people stepped on him. Metaphorically and literally. And then after the accident, he was just even nicer. Some kids just took his blindness as an opportunity to play even more pranks on him.”

Linhardt feels his lips twist into a scowl. “That’s terrible, even for children.”

“Yep. One time some boy did what you thought—y’know, confessed to him as a joke. I won’t bother with the details,” Raphael says, rubbing his knuckles in quite the telling manner, “but it stayed with him a long while. Well, it’s still staying with him, it looks like. So, yeah. This isn’t really something he hides, but it isn’t really something he talks about much either. I figured I should let you know before anything else, Linhardt.”

There his name is again. Linhardt dearly hopes the curse isn’t about to take effect anytime soon. Perhaps he’ll go ask Hubert for advice on curse-breaking. “I… I see. Thank you. But I don’t have any intention of pranking him like this. Do I really seem the type?”

Raphael laughs, loud and unrestrained; the dorm beside them probably hears him. “Nah, you look like a decent guy! ‘Sides, Caspar wouldn’t be best friends with an asshole! I just wanted to make sure that’s all clear, yeah?” He grins once more, and Linhardt feels a shiver run down his spine. “My family’s had guardianship of Ignatz since elementary school. So if you ever do anything to hurt him…”

He trails off there, but Linhardt can feel the threat emanating from the ellipsis. He swallows nervously and nods, not quite trusting his voice to stay steady. Raphael beams. “All understood? Great! Alright, I gotta get going, this discount voucher expires today. Good talk, Linhardt!”

Was that four times now? Linhardt lies back down on his bed and sighs as soon as Raphael closes the door behind him. He’s sure the guy means well, but did he have to sound like the entire conversation was a thin veil for “If you even so much as make Ignatz slightly frown I am going to break your spine in half and fashion it into a bedframe?”

He’s not sure how long he stays like that, but Linhardt eventually dozes off at some point (as usual), because he stirs awake when someone knocks on the door once more. “Linhardt?”

This voice is significantly more familiar. “Come in, door’s open.”

Ignatz steps in with all the cautiousness of a deer ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. “Um… hi. Uh, Raph said he talked to you? About what?”

“That was nothing,” Linhardt says near-automatically. He sits up from the bed, though Ignatz can’t see him and probably wouldn’t care anyway, and arranges himself slightly more presentably. “Sit down? Caspar’s coming over later for dinner, so we can all share.”

“Oh! That’d be great.” Despite his cane, Ignatz still walks a little slower in here than he does in the milk tea place, steps slow and deliberate until he touches the edge of the bed and sits down with a sigh of relief. “So, um. Linhardt.”

Linhardt’s not sure how long he could have taken of Raphael using his name, but with Ignatz, it’s all Linhardt wants to hear. “Ignatz.”

“That—” Ignatz fumbles with the hem of his baggy sweater for a moment. “What you said earlier… you mean it, right? You really do?”

“I said quite a few things earlier,” Linhardt allows, “but I did mean all of it. I’m not a fan of lying when I don’t need to.”

Ignatz ducks his head again with a laugh, and only now does it occur to Linhardt that it must be because he’s hiding his face when he smiles—how many times had Ignatz let this habit slip in front of Linhardt? Or other people, for that matter? Had someone else insulted him in the past, and now he doesn’t like showing people his laugh? “That’s… That’s good,” he says, cutting off Linhardt’s increasingly violent thoughts. “I was worried… well, never mind. It’s just, well. I’m not exactly boyfriend material, I guess.”

“And what makes you say that?”

“Well… I’m blind?” Ignatz points out, like this is something to even consider.

Linhardt raises his eyebrows. “And?”

“Uh,” Ignatz says, clearly not having expected that, “I can’t… I can’t see.”

“Yes, I know that. That is usually what blindness entails.” Linhardt sighs and softens his voice. “Maybe that would’ve surprised me if I were only learning about it now, but I’ve known about it since we met. Either way, it doesn’t change my mind about you, alright? This isn’t a joke or a prank or something for me to pass the time with. Shall I prove it to you?”

Ignatz, who had opened his mouth earlier, snaps it shut hard enough that Linhardt hopes his teeth don’t crack. Then, after a bit of sputtering Linhardt patiently waits out, he manages, “P-Prove it?”

“Gladly.” Linhardt slowly lays his palm atop Ignatz’s hand, keeping his touch light—like before, Ignatz jolts in surprise, but doesn’t pull away. “May I touch you, Ignatz?”

Ignatz’s face colors that lovely shade of pink Linhardt is slowly growing more and more obsessed with. “Y-Yes. Please.”

Linhardt doesn’t think he’s quite as gentle as Ignatz was that day, but he tries to emulate how his hands had felt anyway, when they had cupped his cheeks and ran down his hair. Ignatz visibly shivers when Linhardt touches his elbows; his sweater keeps them from any actual skin contact, but Linhardt understands all the same. He himself has to keep from surging forward and making this whole touching thing a lot less innocent. “Ignatz. Do you know what you look like?”

Ignatz shakes his head slowly. “It’s been a long while since I saw my reflection. And… well, I don’t really want to know, honestly. There’s no point.”

“No point?” Linhardt frowns. His hands travel up Ignatz’s arms to his shoulders and then to his neck, where he presses down ever so slightly against his collarbone. Ignatz catches his lower lip between his teeth in clear suppression of a sound he would have made otherwise. “Of course there’s a point. You told me you didn’t need to see me to know I was pretty, didn’t you?”

“T… That’s different,” Ignatz weakly protests. “You know how I look like. I’m—”

“Beautiful,” Linhardt finishes for him, and Ignatz shuts his mouth once again in clear surprise. He lets his nails drag lightly down the sensitive skin at the side of Ignatz’s throat for a moment, relishing in the soft sigh Ignatz lets out, before moving on to his face, pressing his warm palms to his warmer cheeks, and Linhardt rubs his thumb against the bridge of Ignatz’s nose. “What color are your eyes?”

“They’re a sort of… mahogany? But, uh, my eyes themselves look… strange now,” he mumbles. “The scarring from the accident deprives them of the color black, so…”

Linhardt touches the rim of Ignatz’s glasses. “Do you mind if I look? I won’t pressure you.”

Ignatz visibly stiffens, and, not for the first time, Linhardt desperately wishes he knows the people who had made Ignatz so insecure about his disability, of all things, as if it’s something he can control. “I don’t mind,” he says, voice small, “but they might creep you out, so…”

Wordlessly, Linhardt lifts his reflective glasses and takes them off for him—he’s seen the milky white eyes of blind people before, usually from the Internet and such, but Ignatz’s retain the aforementioned mahogany color. He hums thoughtfully—he can see how this can ‘creep out’ some insensitive children, but for him, they only make him think of the bark of an oak tree or the plumage of a maya bird. Nature. Calmness.

“You have beautiful eyes,” Linhardt tells him, tone matter-of-fact, and slips his glasses back over his face. He could stare into Ignatz’s eyes all day, but he knows Ignatz is more comfortable with the glasses.

For a moment, Ignatz is unresponsive, and immediately Linhardt wonders if he’s already done something wrong or overstepped a boundary, before Ignatz suddenly wraps his arms around Linhardt’s middle and buries himself in a hug, face pressed against Linhardt’s chest. Linhardt nearly expires from shock. “W-What—?”

“S-Sorry,” Ignatz mumbles, voice muffled against Linhardt’s shirt. “Just—do you not like hugs?”

“Oh, no, I…” Linhardt blinks. He’s been hugged before, but only ever by Caspar, who never expects him to reciprocate. What is he supposed to do now? Use one arm? Or even two? The concept is enough to make Linhardt want to scream out of fear of the unknown. “It’s fine. Are you alright?”

Ignatz straightens, the tip of his nose tinted a telling red. “I’m okay, I’m okay, I just… No one’s ever told me that before.” He smiles, shakily. “I wish I could see you. I want to tell you your eyes are beautiful too.”

“You don’t need to see them to be able to say that,” Linhardt tells him. It’s only now that he realizes he missed a spot earlier—he brings his hands back up to Ignatz’s face, smiling lightly at the little squeak that gets him, and presses his finger against Ignatz’s lips, dry and bitten warm. “Anyway. I distinctly remember rescheduling your… realization about my mouth to right now. And good for you, we’re not in public anymore.”

Ignatz smiles against his hand. “I guess we aren’t.”

He reaches up, takes Linhardt’s hand in his to interlace their fingers together, and leans in without hesitating once.