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“Yoo-hoo, Kaede! Hey, hey, Kaede! Kaede, look over here!”
Really, just one time had been enough, but—Kaede lifts her head and turns to face Angie, fingers stilling on the piano keys in front of her. She can’t help a slightly chagrined smile. The other girl is standing in the door to Kaede’s lab, leaning heavily inside the room with her hands clutching the doorframe to keep her upright. When they make eye contact, Angie only smiles wider before bounding over and stopping at Kaede’s shoulder.
“Hi, Angie-san,” Kaede greets. She runs a hand through her hair. “Um, did you need something? I’m only about halfway through my piano practice, but if it’s urgent—”
“Yup yup! It’s super duper urgent! Kaede needs to come with Angie right now!” With that, Angie seizes Kaede’s arm and pulls her from the piano bench, dragging her in the direction of the door. Kaede trips over her own feet and sputters.
“W-Wait, Angie-san! Hey, come on!” Kaede huffs, digging her heels into the carpet. Angie reluctantly stops pulling and turns to face Kaede with wide, innocent blue eyes. “When you say urgent, do you mean that it’s really urgent? Or are you just agreeing to get me to come with you?” Knowing Angie, after all… it’s totally possible that her definition of urgent refers more to how bored she is than how much of an emergency she’s in.
Indeed, when Angie responds, it’s with a somehow even broader smile. “Both? Or perhaps neither?” Angie tilts her head to the side and flutters her eyelashes. “It is rare that Angie finds Kaede with free time! She’s a very very busy person, and it is no wonder when she is such a delightful child of God!”
Pfft. Yeah, right.
“But Angie requires her attention right now!” And once more, Angie begins pulling Kaede out of the lab. This time, Kaede doesn’t protest, but she does sigh as she casts a longing glance over her shoulder at her piano. So long… who knows when she’ll next get to play it. “You see, you see! Angie was struck with inspiration last night—God has given her a new painting to create! But it is not quite perfect yet. Angie requires Kaede’s assistance to finish it!”
Oh. Kaede rubs her neck with her free hand. “Well, geez… if it was something like that, why didn’t you just say so? I’m always happy to help you with your art, Angie-san.”
Angie glances over her shoulder, looking almost sly, but winks when Kaede makes eye contact with her. It’s such a normal, playful gesture, and yet it makes Kaede flush, huffing and averting her gaze. This girl…
“Of course, Angie knew as much!” Angie prattles on as she leads the way up the stairs. Her grip around Kaede’s arm hasn’t faltered even once. It’s… a little distracting, honestly. Angie is warm and her arms around Kaede’s are secure. Every time she turns, her elbow brushes against Kaede’s side and sends electric shocks through her system. She really needs to be more normal about this, but it’s just hard to focus with Angie so close to her. “Kaede is very, very helpful! But Angie required Kaede’s help so immediately that there was no time to explain in the lab!”
Kaede doesn’t think that logic really holds up; she’s pretty sure Angie is just happy that she can get Kaede to go places without explaining herself. Still, Kaede indulgently lets Angie drag her all the way down the hall to her lab and then pull her inside, whirling around and finally releasing Kaede’s arm in favour of locking the door. This, at least, Kaede understands. Angie is cheerful and outgoing but she can actually be a little shy about doing art in front of other people. Even just having Kaede here is a pretty big thing for her. It’s no wonder that she locks the door.
The moment Angie’s finished locking it, her hands return to Kaede, grasping her shoulders and steering over to where she has a massive easel—about half the size of Kaede—set up. She pushes Kaede down into a paint-splattered stool and then skips around in front of her easel, bending down for a paint palette and brush.
She must have been mid-painting when she came down to grab me, Kaede thinks, watching Angie mix a new shade, glancing between her palette and Kaede’s face. Her train of thought derails almost immediately, though, the longer she’s looking at Angie’s own features. In the worst of times, Angie is a bright, animated person. It’s rare to see her without a smile; even when she’s angry, she’s smiling, a dark and dangerous thing that looks more like a grimace than a true expression of happiness.
When she focuses on painting, though… her features relax, brows drawing together with focus and her eyes half-lidding. Her smile remains, but it softens, a more natural curve of her lip as she moves about her canvas, adding details with her tongue poking out of her mouth. She doesn’t say a word, nor does she look at Kaede for longer than seconds at a time, only pulling away from her easel to get a better look at it, fingers occasionally going up to frame Kaede with.
It is on one such occasion, when Angie is holding up both of her hands with an eye closed, that Kaede realises what she’s doing.
“Wait, are you painting me?” Kaede exclaims. Angie’s eyes suddenly focus, and her smile widens, though there’s something confused to it. Kaede flushes. “I-I mean—”
“Yes?” Angie interrupts, head tilting. “Of course…? Was that not obvious?”
Geez, when Angie asks her a question like that… “W-Well, you never said!” Kaede protests, looking away. “You got struck with inspiration last night… for a painting with me in it? Is it a painting of everyone in our class?”
Angie’s lip curls. “Would Kaede like to look?” She hops off her own stool and turns the canvas around. It’s practically unheard of. Kaede has sat in on a few of Angie’s painting sessions before, and it’s rare for the other girl to even respond while she’s painting, much less show an in-progress shot.
Thus, Kaede’s eyes are already widening, but she only really goes breathless when the easel has been turned around all the way and Kaede gets to see what Angie’s been working on.
The painting depicts Kaede from the waist up, hair blowing behind her, her eyes screwed shut and her mouth open, like she’s mid-laugh. Behind her, Angie has painted grass and dotted the canvas with differently coloured flowers, and a beaming yellow sun glows down on Kaede, tinting her hair, skin, and clothes a pleasant yellow. She’s dressed in a blue off-the-shoulder shirt and a shell bracelet that Angie gifted her. Immediately, the painting is familiar, if only because Kaede herself is in it, but it’s the bracelet that gives her pause.
“Angie-san,” Kaede starts. “This is… of our picnic last week, isn’t it?” She remembers it well. It had been Kaito’s idea, to get out in the park together and eat some good food outside. Everyone had been there, though, not just Kaede and Angie—and yet there isn’t even a trace of the others in the portrait. For some reason, that makes Kaede’s heart skip beats. “Have you been… thinking about it?”
“Hmmm. Not the picnic, no.” Angie turns the canvas back and wordlessly starts painting again, mixing a soft pink on her palette and leaning forward. “But about Kaede at the picnic? Yes.”
Kaede’s flush spreads onto her neck. “About… me?”
“Of course, of course!” Angie smiles at Kaede, her eyes darting over before returning to her work. “Kaede looked so very pretty that day in blue… she usually wears pink! Angie had to paint it.”
Oh, god. Kaede isn’t built for withstanding these levels of heat. She fans her face with both hands, heedless of the fact that it probably makes her a terrible model. If Angie notices or is bothered, she doesn’t say anything about it, eyes crinkling at the edges.
But… really? She’s been thinking about it for that long? Long enough to know she had to paint it at night? Kaede grabs her own cheeks and squishes them around in an attempt at dispelling some of the flush. It doesn’t make any sense… someone like Angie, thinking she looked pretty enough to…
“Aaaand, complete-o!” Angie chirps. She leaps off her stool and turns the canvas around again. “Angie made a few finishing touches, see?”
When Kaede looks up, she sees that Angie has painted a blush on the laughing Kaede in the painting, over her cheeks and nose, her exposed shoulders and fingertips. Kaede groans quietly and covers her face with her hands. This is awful. Maybe she was being completely genuine before, but Angie is definitely making fun of her right now… why did she agree to do this again? Even if she’d known this was going to happen, would she have been able to say no? It’s Angie, after all… sunshine-y, beautiful Angie, who has soft hands and bright eyes and who sometimes looks at Kaede like she hung the moon…
Those soft hands wrap around hers now, pulling them away from her face, and Kaede swallows, lifting her gaze. She didn’t hear Angie moving, but the other girl is standing right in front of her, eyes wide and inquisitive. She’s smiling, but it’s an oddly tender smile, a single eyebrow raised.
“Kaede is very cute when she blushes like this,” Angie says. “Angie wants to make her blush all the time! But…” One of her hands releases Kaede’s, deft fingertips skimming Kaede’s cheek as she tucks a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “Not if it’s too much, ya know?”
It’s… remarkably considerate from Angie, who at times seems to have an utter disregard towards the feelings and signals of those around her, which makes it all the more a shame that Kaede has no idea if it’s too much or not, or what that would even look like. She clears her throat, though, and shakes her head.
“Um. Thank you,” Kaede replies. “I mean—both for calling me c-cute, and for… you know, asking.” She huffs. This is so embarrassing. Angie’s face is so earnest, too, which means there’s no way that she could be doing it on purpose. At least not this intense. “But, Angie-san… I need to know…” She trails off, staring up into the clear blue of Angie’s eyes. The other girl gazes down at her indulgently, plush lips slightly parted, platinum blonde hair falling into her eyes. Kaede wants to reach up and brush it away.
God, why is she so distracting?
“When you say stuff about… how pretty I was that day, how you had to paint it… you just mean as an artist, right?” Kaede can’t help that her eyes and voice are a little pleading. Her heart pounds so hard that it’s almost painful. Despite her words, though, what she really wants is for the opposite, for… “It’s not… just because it was me?”
Angie’s head tilts to the side. “As an artist…?” She taps an index finger against her lips. Kaede tries not to stare at them. “Why would Kaede think so?”
That’s such a non-answer. “Well, because—because artists just like to paint beautiful things, right? It doesn’t actually mean…” She trails off again. She can’t verbalise it, can’t say aloud what she wants to be true lest Angie deny it. It’s stupid, maybe even a little naïve, but Kaede just can’t bring herself to ask directly. Doesn’t want to hear Angie say no.
“It doesn’t mean…?” Angie leans forward now, her hand creeping down to take Kaede’s chin. “It doesn’t mean what, this?”
With that, she tilts Kaede’s face upwards and connects their lips, eyes half-lidded but attentive the whole time. Kaede gasps into her mouth, breathless—breathless at the touch, the kiss, the shocking high definition that Angie’s eyes suddenly are. Her heart hammers against her ribcage and she freezes, her blood turning to ice, but when Angie starts to withdraw, she moves without thinking, grabbing the other girl by the hood of her jacket and pulling her back down to kiss her again.
Angie hums this time, closes her pretty eyes, and Kaede exhales through her nose as she does the same. Angie’s lips taste like coconut chapstick and they’re soft against Kaede’s mouth, like kissing a cloud. Warmth rushes through Kaede, all the way down to her toes, and when Angie leans closer, it only floods her further. She can barely breathe, barely think, can’t even process what’s around her; all she feels is Angie, Angie, Angie, kissing her, holding her chin, standing so close—
She only pulls back when she starts to get dizzy, and gasps for air once she has, her eyes flying open. Crap. Okay. Maybe she should have done that earlier, she just…
As Kaede’s eyes refocus, her gaze settles in on Angie again. The other girl is slightly flushed herself, eyes clouded, and her smile is utterly foreign to Kaede, a touch reddened from the kiss and… smitten, Kaede thinks is the best way she can describe it.
Her heart only skips more beats. Angie is smiling at her like that.
“Um.” Kaede clears her throat, laughs, anything to get the weird thickness out of her chest. “Yeah, uh. That. That’s what I meant.”
“Oh.” Angie giggles. “Well, then Kaede doesn’t need to worry! Angie painted her as a girl, not as an artist.” With that, she turns and skips over her stool again, bending down for her palette and brush and heading over to the sink as though nothing happened. She moves gracefully, humming as she does, her voice high and airy and melodic. Kaede cups her mouth with her hand as she listens, feeling her lips with her fingers. Angie just kissed her there…
And maybe she’ll do it again. Kaede watches the back of Angie’s head. She’s across the room, but Kaede can see the way she moves, how much giddier it seems than usual. Maybe Kaede is just seeing what she wants to see, or…
Maybe Angie is feeling this just as strongly as Kaede is, and later… Kaede can kiss her again. A grin fights its way onto her face at the thought, and she has to laugh, loud and bubbly as she turns back to look at the painting Angie did again, of Kaede through Angie’s eyes.
She really looks beautiful there. There’s no way she can actually look like that, right? But if Angie sees it…
Well, then maybe Kaede can believe it, too.