Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Call her stubborn (and maybe a little dramatic), but Nico honestly believes the universe has a personal vendetta against her.

Because really—what kind of cruel joke is it for a painter to be colorblind?

Sure, she manages well enough. Her art professors call her muted tones “intentional,” and galleries label her pieces “minimalist expressions of restraint,” but Nico knows better. It’s not restraint—it’s limitation. She’s painting the only world she knows.

A world without blue. Without warmth. Without sky.

And maybe that would’ve been fine—predictable, even—if not for Aria.

Aria, who walked into her studio one afternoon looking like she belonged in someone else’s dream, holding a drink she never finished and a notebook full of half-written lines. A poet, apparently. She’d come to write about “creative isolation,” whatever that meant.

“Your paintings feel like they’re trying to remember something,” Aria said after a long minute of staring.

Nico blinked at her. “That’s… oddly specific.”

Aria smiled, soft and knowing. “I write poetry. It comes with the job.”

Right. Of course she did. The words made sense—too much sense, actually—and they stuck with Nico for days after that, looping in her head whenever she stared at her unfinished canvases.

It wasn’t supposed to mean anything. Artists get comments all the time. But there was something about the way Aria said it—not like an observation, but like a confession she hadn’t meant to let slip.

After that, Aria kept coming back. Sometimes with coffee, sometimes with new poems, sometimes just to sit quietly in the corner while Nico worked. She claimed the silence helped her write better. Nico pretended to believe her.

But truthfully, the silence wasn’t silent anymore. It hummed differently when Aria was around—softer, warmer, almost colored.

Nico didn’t understand it, not really.

She just knew that when Aria was there, the grayscale world didn’t feel so suffocating.

And maybe that was dangerous.

Because if Aria kept showing up with that quiet smile and those ridiculous metaphors, Nico wasn’t sure she’d be able to pretend much longer—not about her art, not about her colorblindness, and definitely not about the way her chest felt every time the poet called her name.

———

The next time Aria showed up, she brought someone new with her—a friend from her literature class, Mina, who had an unfortunate habit of speaking in parentheses.

“This is Nico,” Aria introduced, grinning. “The painter I told you about.”

“The one who paints like she’s remembering a dream?” Mina asked, curious eyes darting to the canvases lined against the walls.

Nico froze mid-brushstroke. “You told her that?”

Aria shrugged, biting back a smile. “I might have quoted myself. You were inspiring material.”

Mina stayed for all of ten minutes before excusing herself to buy pastries downstairs, leaving a trail of polite apologies and the faint scent of vanilla behind her. Aria stayed, as always. She wandered around the studio, her fingers trailing lightly along paint-splattered tables and sketchbooks filled with graphite storms.

“Do you ever wish you could see it?” Aria asked quietly, stopping beside a half-finished landscape.

“See what?”

“The world the way I do.”

Nico’s hand stilled around her brush. “Every day.”

There was a pause—not heavy, but deliberate. Aria looked at her then, really looked at her, as if she was trying to memorize the grayscale reflection of her own question.

“I think you already do,” Aria murmured. “Just… in your own language.”

Nico didn’t know what to do with that.

So she did what she always did—looked away, pretended to mix paint, and let her silence say the things her voice couldn’t.

———

Their meetings became a kind of ritual.

Morning light, coffee cups, and poems traded for unfinished sketches.

Sometimes, Nico would find Aria already there, sitting cross-legged on the studio floor, reading from her notebook while the sunlight hit her hair like she belonged to a warmer world. Other times, Aria would help Nico rearrange canvases, humming a half-forgotten tune that clung to the air long after she left.

One afternoon, Aria appeared wearing a pale blue scarf. It wasn’t flashy—just soft, simple, threaded like morning sky.

“Do you like it?” she asked, catching Nico’s gaze lingering too long.

Nico nodded, hesitating. “I can’t… see it properly. But it looks like something peaceful.”

Aria smiled, and for the first time, her eyes softened like dawn. “It is. Blue’s always been my favorite. It feels like quiet courage.”

“Quiet courage?”

“Yeah,” she said, tugging at the edge of her scarf. “Like when you keep going even when the world forgets to glow.”

Nico said nothing, but she watched the way Aria’s fingers brushed the fabric, gentle and certain. She memorized that touch—the way blue, whatever it was, seemed to live there.

—

When Aria laughed, the room changed temperature. It was the kind of sound that found its way into Nico’s chest and stayed there. The barista downstairs noticed too. “You’re smiling more lately,” he teased one afternoon, handing Nico her usual order. “New muse?”

Nico scowled. “You talk too much, Jinyoung.”

He grinned. “And you blush too easily, Miss Painter.”

That day, she brought Aria her favorite drink—a caramel latte with just enough sweetness to make her wince the first time she tried it. Aria teased her for remembering. Nico shrugged, muttering something about “barista influence,” though her ears went pink when Aria’s fingers brushed hers as she took the cup.

Later, when Aria left, Jinyoung raised an eyebrow. “You ever notice her scarf’s always blue?”

Nico paused, her mind catching on that word again. “Is it?”

He nodded. “Different shades every time. Maybe you remind her of the sky.”

Nico laughed it off—but that night, she dreamt of soft skies she couldn’t see.

———

They started sharing quiet things. Nico would lend Aria her pencils when her pen ran out. Aria would bring Nico scraps of poems she couldn’t finish, asking which line sounded “more alive.” Sometimes, Nico would read them aloud just to see Aria smile, soft and embarrassed.

There were others too.

Jeongyeon, Nico’s classmate, who once walked in on them mid-laughter and stood frozen like she’d stepped into a painting. “Oh,” she said, blinking. “So this is what happiness looks like.”

Aria nearly choked on her coffee. Nico threw a paintbrush at her retreating figure.

Even the janitor, Mrs. Lee, started bringing them extra biscuits when she cleaned the hall. “You girls are always here,” she said once, smiling. “You make this place feel alive.”

And maybe she was right. Because the studio wasn’t just Nico’s anymore.

It was a shared space now—filled with poetry margins and laughter, with half-sung songs and the smell of old coffee and paint thinner. It felt... alive.

Sometimes, Aria would describe the colors for her. Not in simple words, but in feelings.

“Blue,” she’d say, tapping her pen against her notebook, “is the sigh you let out when something finally feels right. It’s peace. It’s softness that stays.”

Nico listened, quiet, eyes half-closed. “You talk about blue like it’s a person.”

“Maybe it is,” Aria said, smiling. “Maybe it’s the person we become when we stop being afraid.”

———

One evening, when the sky outside blurred into a soft storm, Aria read aloud a new poem—something about colors bleeding into one another, about drowning in blue. Her voice trembled on the last line, quiet but full.

Nico felt her throat tighten.

She wanted to ask what it felt like to drown in color.

She wanted to ask what blue really looked like.

Instead, she said, “You write like you’re bleeding.”

Aria looked up, startled. Then she smiled, small and sad.

“So do you.”

The silence after was gentle, unbroken.

Rain tapped against the windows, slow and rhythmic. Aria shifted closer, close enough for their knees to touch. The warmth of her shoulder against Nico’s felt like something fragile and infinite.

“You don’t need to see it,” Aria whispered. “You already make people feel it.”

Nico didn’t reply. She couldn’t. The words sank into her like light under skin—warm, undeserved, and terrifyingly real.

They stayed like that for a long while, not talking. Just breathing. Just being. Aria eventually leaned her head on Nico’s shoulder, eyes fluttering closed. Nico didn’t move. She couldn’t have, even if she wanted to.

For once, the world didn’t feel gray. It felt… soft.

———

Later, when Aria left, Nico sat alone in the quiet again. The hum was gone. The studio felt colder, emptier. The unfinished painting on her easel looked back at her like a question she didn’t know how to answer.

Her eyes wandered to the coffee cup Aria had left behind, still half full. Beside it lay the poem she’d read aloud, edges damp from the rain. The ink had bled a little, words smudged—but Nico could still make out one line near the center, the one Aria had written in smaller, trembling letters:

You are the color I’ve been trying to name.

Nico stared at it until the room blurred around her. Until the sound of rain became heartbeat. Until the gray around her felt like it might finally, finally break.

Maybe she was foolish for hoping.

Maybe she was cursed to live in grayscale forever.

But when she picked up her brush again, something shifted.

Not in her eyes—no miracle, no sudden flood of blue.

But in her hands. In the way they trembled. In the way the world suddenly felt possible.

She painted through the night, and when morning came, the canvas glowed—not with color, but with warmth.

If hope had a sound, it was Aria’s laughter.

If color had a heartbeat, it was the way her name lingered on Aria’s tongue.

And when the first light of dawn spilled across her studio, Nico swore—

for just a moment—

she saw blue.

Chapter Text

Nico never thought her studio could feel crowded.

It was just paint, canvases, and the usual hum of her air conditioner struggling for its life—until Aria started showing up with her notebooks and her strange habit of reading poetry out loud like a prayer she didn’t mean to say.

Now the space feels... full.

Not busy. Just alive.

---

The first time Aria shows up unannounced, Nico’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by unfinished canvases. There’s a streak of gray on her cheek and a coffee cup balancing dangerously on a paint jar.

“You look like you lost a fight with your own art,” Aria says, leaning by the doorframe.

Nico doesn’t look up. “I did. It’s personal now.”

Aria steps in, setting her bag down. “Then it’s good I brought backup.”

She pulls out a box of pastries—two croissants and something with enough sugar to kill a mortal. Nico blinks. “You bribed me with food?”

“I’m not bribing,” Aria says innocently. “I’m feeding inspiration.”

Nico hums. “Inspiration or me?”

Aria grins. “Same thing.”

---

They eat sitting on the floor, backs against the wall, surrounded by half-dried paint and sunlight pooling through the window. Aria starts reading from her notebook, and Nico listens—half because she likes the sound, half because it distracts her from the fact that Aria’s shoulder keeps brushing hers every time she turns a page.

Aria’s handwriting is a mess, her words messy too. Something about colors being “a language the heart still remembers.” Nico doesn’t interrupt. She never does.

When Aria finishes, Nico finally says, “You write like you’re trying to apologize to the sky.”

Aria tilts her head. “And you paint like you’re trying to forgive it.”

They both fall silent, and the world outside the window softens.

---

Their friendship—if that’s the word—grows in between moments like this. Quiet ones that stretch longer than they should, as if both are afraid to move and break the spell.

Soon, Aria’s things start appearing around Nico’s studio. A forgotten scarf. A notebook on the windowsill. A pen with teeth marks on the cap.

Nico pretends not to notice, but every time she cleans up, she leaves them exactly where Aria left them.

---

In class, it becomes a running joke.

Sana teases Nico mercilessly. “You know you’re basically living together, right? You’re just missing matching pajamas.”

Tzuyu laughs, “They already share an art supply drawer.”

“Domestic,” Mina hums, sipping her tea.

Nico groans. “We’re just friends.”

Sana smirks. “So are me and Tzuyu, and look how that’s going.”

Across the room, Tzuyu drops her paintbrush. “We’re not—!”

Sana just winks. “Yet.”

Aria laughs so hard she nearly chokes on her iced coffee. Nico doesn’t laugh—but she smiles.

---

Sometimes, when Nico’s working late, Aria stays. She’ll sit by the window, reading or humming softly while Nico paints.

It’s not unusual for her to fall asleep like that, her head resting on her arms, hair spilling over the table. Nico always pauses—brush midair—just to look.

She wonders how someone can make silence feel like warmth.

Once, Nico draped a blanket over her. Aria stirred slightly but didn’t wake, just murmured something about “blue dreams.” Nico didn’t sleep that night. She painted instead—shades she couldn’t name, emotions she didn’t understand.

The next morning, Aria saw the canvas and smiled.

“It feels like dawn,” she said softly.

“Maybe it is,” Nico replied.

---

One afternoon, during a particularly frustrating critique session, Aria found Nico sitting on the campus steps, glaring at the sky like it personally offended her.

“Rough day?” Aria asked, handing her a drink.

“My professor said my palette lacks ‘emotional depth,’” Nico said flatly. “Whatever that means.”

Aria considered. “Maybe they’re just jealous they can’t feel what you do.”

“Yeah, because nothing says emotional depth like fifty shades of gray,” Nico muttered.

Aria laughed, bumping her shoulder lightly. “You’re too hard on yourself.”

Nico sighed. “I just wish I could see it, you know? The blue everyone keeps talking about.”

Aria looked at her for a long moment, eyes soft. “You do. You just don’t call it that yet.”

---

Nico didn’t understand it then, but she did later—when Aria dragged her to the rooftop at 5 a.m. to “see the color of silence.”

“It’s freezing,” Nico grumbled, clutching her jacket.

“Art requires sacrifice,” Aria said solemnly, holding up a thermos. “Also, hot chocolate.”

They sat together, legs dangling over the edge, watching the sky shift from gray to something else—pale, quiet, alive.

“What color is that?” Nico asked.

Aria smiled. “It’s blue. The kind that doesn’t brag about being blue.”

Nico stared a little too long. “Huh.”

“What?” Aria asked.

“Nothing,” Nico said, voice small. “Just… didn’t know blue could look like this.”

“Like what?”

Nico hesitated. “Like peace.”

---

Later that morning, in painting class, Nico used a new shade. She didn’t label it. Didn’t tell anyone what it was. But when Aria saw it, her smile said she already knew.

Aria starts coming over more often after that night. Not because she says she will—but because she just... does.

Sometimes Nico will find her sitting on the floor by the easel, eating chips she clearly didn’t buy herself. Sometimes she’s asleep, head pillowed on her arms, sunlight spilling through the blinds and catching her hair like it’s trying to paint her instead.

And Nico never says it aloud, but her favorite part is when Aria hums softly while reading. Always the same tune—something wistful, like a half-remembered lullaby. It fills the studio, hums against the gray, and Nico swears it almost sounds blue.

“Do you ever get tired of writing about feelings?” Nico asks one afternoon, crouched over a half-dry canvas.

Aria looks up from her notebook. “Do you ever get tired of pretending you don’t have them?”

“Touché.”

“Poet privilege,” Aria says, smirking as she takes another sip from her iced coffee—blue straw, of course. “You paint your silence, I write mine.”

---

Their days start to fall into rhythm. A cup of Grape Sparkling drink for Nico (always), an overly sweet latte for Aria (Coffee bean hazelnut latte—she insists it exists). Nico paints. Aria writes. They don’t talk much about what they’re making, but somehow both seem to understand.

One time, Aria drags Nico to the campus courtyard for what she calls a “creative recharge.” It’s basically just them sitting on the grass while Aria reads poetry out loud and Nico sketches her sneakers.

Satzu is there too—Sana waving at them from under a tree, Tzuyu looking like she’d rather be anywhere else but secretly smiling when Sana steals her fries. Aria calls it “love in denial.” Nico calls it “mild chaos.”

“See? Everyone’s got their color,” Aria says, gesturing at them with her pen. “Sana’s like pink. Tzuyu’s maybe navy blue.”

“And me?”

Aria hums thoughtfully. “Gray—but not in a sad way. Like... the color of smoke before sunrise. Something that’s waiting to be blue.”

Nico looks away before she can respond.

---

There’s something about Aria that feels like a storm in slow motion—soft-spoken but heavy with meaning, like she’s constantly writing poetry in her head. She never says things directly, always wrapped in metaphor.

One night, when Nico’s painting late and the world’s quiet enough to hear her own breathing, Aria sits beside her and starts reading something new.

“‘You are not the lack of color,’” she reads, voice low. “‘You are the pause between light and hue, the silence before a name learns how to mean blue.’”

Nico blinks, brush still in hand. “That’s… you wrote that?”

“Maybe,” Aria says, smiling. “Maybe not.”

But Nico knows.

She doesn’t say it, but something in her chest aches with recognition—like Aria’s words have slipped through a locked door she didn’t know existed.

---

Weeks pass. The gray doesn’t fade overnight—but it starts to shift.

Nico finds herself experimenting. Adding shades she used to avoid, trusting Aria’s eyes when she points out what’s blue and what’s just pretending to be. Sometimes they argue about it.

“That’s not blue, that’s violet.”

“Art is subjective, Aria.”

“Color isn’t!”

“Tell that to Picasso.”

Aria gasps dramatically. “Oh my god, don’t ‘Picasso’ me, I swear I’ll write a sonnet about your arrogance.”

“You already did.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll write another.”

And then they laugh—loud, unguarded, the kind that shakes the dust off old walls.

---

When their art exhibit finally comes around, Nico almost backs out.

Too many people. Too much color. Too much truth.

But Aria’s hand finds hers—not in a romantic way, not exactly. Just firm, grounding. Like an anchor disguised as touch.

“You don’t have to see all the colors,” she whispers. “Just know they’re there.”

And for once, Nico believes her.

---

The night ends quietly. The city hums outside, while inside the gallery lights cast soft reflections across Nico’s newest piece—a painting made of strokes she can’t quite name, but Aria can.

“You… you captured it,” Aria whispers, eyes tracing the shapes. “I didn’t think it would feel like this.”

“Maybe you did,” Nico murmurs, trying not to smile too much but failing miserably.

They don’t say anything else. The silence between them feels different now—full, alive, like it’s holding its own weight.

Aria closes her notebook. Nico caps her paint. And the world hums in color.

Maybe—just maybe—two people who once spoke only in grayscale have found a language they didn’t need words for.

Because Aria taught her that blue isn’t just a color.

It’s the sound of warmth.

The shape of trust.

The weight of being seen.

And when Nico looks at her now, she realizes—the world was never truly colorless.

She’d just been waiting for someone to remind her what blue feels like, and maybe, in that reminder, she’s found herself.

Chapter Text

Nico never meant for her studio to turn into a halfway home for emotionally unstable creatives, but here she is—three months after the exhibit—sharing her workspace with a poet, a couple of stray art students, and a very judgmental cat named Picasso (Aria named him, obviously).

“Your cat hates me,” Aria complains, tossing a balled-up napkin at him.

“Picasso hates everyone equally,” Nico says without looking up from her canvas. “It’s his artistic integrity.”

“Wow. So he’s just like you.”

“Excuse me?”

Aria smirks. “Grumpy, talented, misunderstood. Probably colorblind too.”

“Get out of my studio.”

“Make me.”

They stare each other down for exactly six seconds before both of them break into laughter. Picasso meows, unimpressed, and stalks off to sit on Nico’s half-finished painting. Again.

---

Days in the studio have taken on a rhythm that’s too easy, too natural.

Nico paints. Aria writes. Sana and Tzuyu sometimes stop by for “moral support,” which usually means eating Aria’s snacks and judging Nico’s playlist.

“Why is every song so depressing?” Sana groans one afternoon.

“It’s ambient,” Nico says.

“It’s funeral music.”

“Exactly.”

Tzuyu, quiet as ever, takes a sip of her bubble tea and mutters, “Aria’s playlist is worse.”

Aria gasps. “Excuse me! Mine has taste. It has range.”

“Yeah,” Nico says. “Emotional damage counts as range now?”

Aria chucks a crumpled page at her. It misses. They both laugh anyway.

---

Sometimes, though, the laughter softens into quiet—like the world’s exhaled.

Nico finds herself watching Aria more than she should. The way her nose scrunches when she’s thinking too hard. The way her fingers twitch mid-sentence when she’s searching for the right word. The way she always, always underlines the word blue in every poem.

“You’re doing that thing again,” Aria says one evening, not looking up from her notebook.

“What thing?”

“The staring thing. Like I’m a particularly complicated still life.”

“You’re more of an abstract concept.”

“Wow,” Aria deadpans. “Flattered.”

“I mean it. You don’t sit still. You move like you’re thinking in metaphors.”

“That’s… actually kind of sweet.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

Aria grins. “Too late.”

---

When graduation season rolls around, everything feels like it’s shifting again.

The studio smells like turpentine and cheap instant coffee. The walls are lined with canvases—some gray, some blue, all a little bit hers.

Aria’s poems are tacked on the wall too, scattered between them like whispers caught mid-breath.

They start working on something together—a project neither of them names. Aria writes lines. Nico paints what she hears. Sometimes they overlap by accident; sometimes they don’t.

It doesn’t matter. It’s all connected somehow.

---

“You ever think about what’s next?” Aria asks one night, lying on the studio floor with her head near Nico’s knee. The ceiling fan hums lazily above them.

“All the time,” Nico says. “Then I stop before I spiral.”

“Valid.”

“What about you?”

Aria twirls her pen between her fingers. “Maybe grad school. Maybe travel. Maybe I’ll write a book called ‘How to Annoy a Painter in 100 Days.’”

“Bestseller material.”

“Obviously. I’d dedicate it to you.”

“I’d sue.”

“Even better promo.”

They laugh again, but it fades softer this time—like something lingering in the air that neither wants to name.

---

It’s late when the lights finally go out. The only glow comes from the city outside, painting them both in muted silver.

Aria’s voice breaks the silence, small and steady. “You know, when I first met you, you looked like someone who’d given up on wonder.”

“That’s rude.”

“It’s true.”

Nico turns to look at her. “And now?”

Aria smiles, just a little. “Now you look like someone who found it again.”

Nico wants to laugh it off, wants to make a joke—but she can’t. Because something in her chest feels too full, too warm, too alive.

She looks at her latest painting—a skyline drenched in dusky gray and the faintest, trembling blue. And she knows it’s not perfect. But it’s honest.

For the first time, she doesn’t care if the world calls it minimalist, restrained, or whatever fancy word they’ll use next.

Because she finally sees it.

And when she glances back at Aria—who’s still there, sitting cross-legged on the floor, hair tangled, pen smudges on her fingers, eyes reflecting every shade of the sky—Nico realizes something quietly, devastatingly simple.

Maybe blue isn’t something she has to see.

Maybe it’s something she feels.

And maybe, if she’s lucky, she’ll keep finding it—in paint, in laughter, in the poet who showed her how to look up again.

---

That night, before they lock up, Aria tacks a small note beside the door.

In her looping handwriting, it says:

“You taught me how to see silence.

I taught you how to name color.

And somewhere between the two,

we made the world breathe again.”

Nico stands there for a long time, reading it over and over, until the words blur. Then she smiles—soft, small, infinite.

Because maybe they never needed a label for what this was.

Maybe it was enough that she finally saw blue—and it felt like home.

——

The note stayed up on the wall longer than it probably should’ve.

Jihyo pointed it out first. “You know that’s curling at the edges, right?”

Nico didn’t look up from her easel. “It’s fine.”

“You’re sentimental,” Jeongyeon said from the doorway, half-grinning. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”

“I’m not sentimental.”

“Right,” Jihyo muttered. “And I’m not addicted to caffeine.”

Aria’s handwriting was still neat despite the days. She’d left town for a short writing retreat—something about a poetry seminar that promised “inspiration through disconnection.” Nico pretended she wasn’t counting the days.

The studio was quieter without her. Not empty, exactly. Just less… vivid.

The others filled the space sometimes. Mina dropped by between dance rehearsals, curled up in the corner to nap. Sana brought snacks that no one asked for. Tzuyu sat cross-legged on the floor, editing photos with that patient focus only she had.

It should have felt full. But Nico caught herself glancing toward Aria’s chair more often than she liked.

---

When Aria came back, she didn’t text first—she just walked in, sunlight following her like it owed her something.

“You look alive,” Nico said, half-surprised, half-relieved.

“I saw the ocean,” Aria replied simply, dropping her bag by the door. “It was… blue.”

Nico snorted. “Show-off.”

Aria laughed, that same soft, unguarded sound that made the whole room feel a little bigger. She pulled a folded page from her notebook and stuck it beside her old note. It read:

“The sea hums in color. You’d like it.”

“Would I?” Nico asked.

“You would.”

---

Their days found a new rhythm after that—less like routine, more like gravity.

They started spending mornings outside the studio. Coffee first, always. Aria liked hers with too much cream; Nico drank hers black and insisted she wasn’t being dramatic about it.

They’d walk through campus together, sometimes stopping by the art courtyard. Aria would read snippets of her poems out loud, half-mocking herself. Nico would listen, half-mocking her back.

One afternoon, Aria dragged her to the campus garden.

“Field trip,” she said.

“Do I look like a five-year-old?”

“Only on the inside. Now come on.”

They sat under a tree, the kind that dropped petals like confetti whenever the wind shifted. Aria was scribbling something in her notebook; Nico was pretending not to stare.

“You ever think about painting outside?” Aria asked suddenly.

“Too many variables,” Nico replied. “Wind, bugs, people who think it’s okay to comment.”

Aria grinned. “So, fear of nature.”

“Fear of unsolicited critique.”

“Same thing, really.”

They laughed, but Nico did take out her sketchbook, eventually. The light was softer out here, the air different. When she glanced down later, she realized she’d drawn not just the tree but Aria’s shadow beside it.

---

Evenings returned them to the studio.

Sometimes it was full—Satzu arguing playfully over whose art elective was worse, Sana claiming “emotional support girlfriend privileges” whenever Tzuyu scowled. Sometimes it was just Nico and Aria, the hum of the fan and the low thrum of music filling the silence.

They’d share snacks, trade commentary on each other’s work. Aria’s poems got more color in them; Nico’s paintings, more space to breathe.

“I think you’re rubbing off on me,” Aria said one night, flipping through her pages.

“Tragic.”

“No, seriously. I keep describing things in color. Even feelings. Even…” She trailed off, glancing up, cheeks pink. “Even people.”

Nico smiled without looking away from her palette. “Guess I’m contagious.”

Aria rolled her eyes but smiled back.

---

On days when the work felt heavy, they’d take walks around the block. There was a small noodle shop two streets down—cheap, loud, always smelling like comfort.

Jeongyeon found them there once and teased them for being “an old married couple,” to which Aria replied with a deadpan, “we’re just codependent, thanks.”

Nico nearly choked on her soup.

“See?” Jeongyeon grinned. “Domestic.”

“Get out,” Nico said, but she was laughing too hard for it to sound convincing.

---

Weeks folded into each other like that—slowly, quietly.

Nico noticed small things she hadn’t before: how Aria’s presence steadied the air, how laughter came easier now, how the shades in her paintings were shifting without her permission.

One afternoon, when sunlight cut through the studio window just right, Nico finally saw it—a faint streak of blue across her newest canvas. Barely there, trembling between gray and light.

It wasn’t perfect. But it was real.

And when Aria leaned over her shoulder, resting her chin lightly there, Nico didn’t flinch.

“Blue,” Aria whispered.

“Yeah.”

“You finally found it.”

Nico shook her head, a small smile tugging at her mouth. “Maybe it found me.”

Aria didn’t answer, just stayed there a moment longer, the two of them breathing in rhythm, the studio quiet except for the steady beat of certainty.

Outside, the city kept moving, but inside, it felt like time had slowed—like the whole world had finally, gently, learned how to breathe blue.

Chapter Text

The week after Nico found blue, the world didn’t suddenly become magical. The sky didn’t hum, birds didn’t sing in perfect harmony, and her paintings didn’t glow. Life just… went on. Which, somehow, made it worse.

Because now she knew it existed.

Blue. The color Aria loved so much. The one she’d spent so long trying to understand—to see.

And maybe that was the problem: once you’ve glimpsed something that real, you can’t unsee it. You start wanting more.

---

They spent more time together, though neither said it out loud. Mornings started with coffee and slow walks. Afternoons bled into lazy hours in the studio, the hum of fans and music filling the pauses between words. Aria would read her poems aloud, and Nico would listen, pretending her heart wasn’t syncing to the rhythm.

Sometimes they’d sit outside near the fountain after class. Aria would tilt her head up to the sky, eyes half-closed, and say things like,

“The light feels softer today—like the sun’s decided to be gentle.”

And Nico would smile and reply, “Cool. I see… less glare than usual.”

Aria would laugh. Nico would too. But underneath it, there was something that didn’t laugh back.

---

It started with small moments.

Like that day at the garden, when Aria knelt to take a photo of fallen petals. “It’s wild how pink just glows in the shade,” she said. Nico stood beside her, hands in her pockets, trying to imagine it.

She nodded anyway. “Yeah. Must be nice.”

Or when Aria gave feedback on her painting one evening, leaning close to trace the faint streaks on the canvas. “You’ve got so much feeling in your work,” she murmured. “Even if it’s muted.”

Muted. The word stuck.

Nico laughed it off. “Story of my life.”

But that night, when she packed her brushes, her fingers shook.

Because what if muted wasn’t poetic?

What if it was something you got tired of?

---

That fear began to creep in—quiet at first, then louder, until it started coloring everything she touched.

Aria’s love for color became something Nico both adored and dreaded.

The way Aria talked about shades like they were alive—cobalt, indigo, cerulean—it used to fascinate her. Now, sometimes, it hurt.

She started wondering how long it would take before Aria realized she was stuck with someone who couldn’t see what she loved most.

How long before “beautiful” stopped being enough to describe a world Nico couldn’t fully enter.

How long before Aria wanted someone who saw blue without trying.

---

“Why are you weird lately?” Jihyo asked one afternoon, as they lounged under a tree near the quad.

“I’m not weird.”

“You’re deflecting.”

“I’m deflecting creatively,” Nico said, sipping from her drink. “It’s called character growth.”

Jihyo gave her a look. “You’ve been pulling away from Aria.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“With what?”

“Emotional regulation.”

Jeongyeon appeared beside them, deadpan. “So, avoidance?”

Nico groaned. “Oh my god, can we not psychoanalyze me during daylight hours?”

“Then talk to her,” Jihyo said, soft but firm.

Nico looked away. The sky was painfully bright—too bright for someone who saw in shades. “I don’t think she’d understand.”

“She always understands.”

“Yeah,” Nico murmured, “and maybe that’s the problem.”

---

Back at the studio, Nico found herself watching Aria more often than she should.

The way she moved—like everything she touched had a pulse. The way she’d hum quietly when she wrote. The way she’d smile at her own words, as if she could already see the color they’d become.

Aria made life look radiant.

Nico painted in grayscale and prayed it was enough.

So she did what she did best: she made jokes.

When Aria said, “You’ve been quiet lately,”

Nico answered, “Saving my words for my therapist.”

When Aria teased, “You still don’t like blue?”

Nico grinned. “Jealous of all the attention it’s getting.”

Everyone laughed—including Aria—but Nico’s smile felt more like a shield each time.

---

Then came the poem.

Aria had left it on her easel one evening, folded neatly, no signature needed. Just her handwriting and a faint coffee ring in the corner.

“For the one who swears she can’t see blue—

maybe it’s not about seeing.

maybe it’s about feeling it anyway.

maybe color is patient.

maybe love is, too.”

 

Nico read it three times before setting it down.

Then twice more, because it hurt less when she didn’t breathe between lines.

It should’ve helped. It should’ve been enough.

But it only made the ache sharper—because how do you hold something that kind and not feel unworthy of it?

---

The next day, she avoided her.

Said she had a deadline. A headache. A million excuses stacked neatly between them.

Aria knocked once, asked if she wanted coffee, and Nico mumbled through the door, “Later.”

That night, she painted until her hands cramped.

The canvas stayed empty longer than usual.

Then she brushed gray after gray until it blurred into something that might’ve been blue if she looked hard enough.

She laughed to herself—bitter and small. “Almost,” she whispered. “Always almost.”

Outside, she could hear Aria and the others laughing in the hallway. Sana telling some ridiculous story, Tzuyu groaning in mock despair, Aria’s voice bright and certain above them all.

Nico closed her eyes and listened—not to the words, but to the sound of color she still couldn’t see.

---

Later, Jihyo texted her: You okay? You’ve been missing from the group hangouts.

Nico replied: Just tired.

Then deleted it. Rewrote: Just busy.

Deleted that too.

Finally, she sent: Just gray.

Jihyo sent back a single emoji—🌧️—and said nothing else.

---

By the end of the week, the studio felt colder. Aria still smiled at her, still spoke softly, still laughed the same way—but Nico couldn’t meet her eyes for long.

Because in Aria’s gaze, she saw everything

she wasn’t sure she deserved: patience, light, color.

And for the first time, Nico wished she hadn’t found blue.

Because now, she couldn’t stop missing it.

Chapter Text

The rain had been falling for days, soft and insistent, like the world was trying to wash everything clean. Nico kept finding traces of Aria everywhere—in the corners of her sketchbook, in the hum of the studio fan, in the lingering scent of coffee. And with every reminder, her heart ached, heavy with words she hadn’t yet found the courage to say.

Nico spent the first morning after their last shared afternoon staring at a blank canvas, her brush hovering like a nervous hand at a concert. She had drawn Aria before, once, in a hasty sketch during a rooftop sunrise, but now the sketchbook felt too small, too tame, too inadequate to hold the weight of what she felt. She scribbled a note, awkwardly folded it, and set it beside the sketch:

“Wait for me. I need a moment to understand all the colors you’ve shown me.

PS. Forgive my trembling ink; it’s my first time speaking like this. maybe it’s clumsy, but it’s for you."

She imagined Aria picking it up, eyebrows furrowing, then smiling softly as she read it. That alone made Nico’s chest both swell and ache. She muttered under her breath, “Hopefully, she doesn’t think I’ve gone completely insane.”

---

The first few days were careful dances. Nico watched the clock for the exact moment Aria would leave her poems outside the studio door. Each note—always different, sometimes folded, sometimes rolled—contained lines that seemed to speak directly to her hesitation:

"Even shadows stretch toward the light. Don’t rush yourself, but don’t hide from it either."

"Some colors wait to be named. Some hearts wait to be understood. Patiently, always patiently."

 

Nico read them over and over, memorizing the loops in Aria’s handwriting like a secret rhythm, letting the words seep into the gray corners of her own mind. When Dahyun barged in mid-morning with a bag of “emergency cookies” (because apparently emotional crises required baked goods), Nico tried to keep her composure.

“Are you okay, or are you just staring at your desk like a brooding cloud?” Dahyun asked, dumping the cookies in front of her.

“I’m fine,” Nico mumbled, though her pencil smudged across the paper with more intent than she meant. “Just… thinking about… clouds.”

Chaeyoung raised an eyebrow. “Right. Clouds. Not the poetry that’s slowly eating your soul.”

Nico snorted despite herself. “Sure. Clouds.”

The humor was fleeting, but it kept her tethered to some sense of normalcy.

---

By the middle of the first week, Nico was obsessively reading Aria’s notes. One morning she found a poem carefully tucked under her favorite mug:

"Patience is not absence. Patience is a quiet heartbeat that refuses to be ignored. Your heart is louder than you think."

Nico reread it three times, tracing the letters with trembling fingers. She could almost feel Aria there, humming softly in the margins. Her own notebook sat on the desk, blank and intimidating, waiting for a response she wasn’t sure she could write.

She tried, really did. She wrote fragments that she scrapped, pages that stayed empty, lines that felt like lies. Every time she failed, she looked at the note again and felt the pull in her chest—an ache that wasn’t quite pain, but wasn’t quite comfort either.

---

By the second week, Nico’s restlessness grew. She wandered the campus without purpose, imagining Aria in every hallway, every window, every corner. She even caught herself drafting poems silently in her head while pretending to take notes in class. Every time she saw a splash of blue—on a notebook cover, a scarf someone wore, a poster advertising a concert—her stomach flipped. It wasn’t Aria, but it made her ache as though it were.

Interactions with Dahyun and Chaeyoung helped, even if minimally. Dahyun was dramatic as always. “You’re too quiet,” she said one afternoon, tossing a cookie at Nico’s head. “Your brain is obviously fermenting like old cheese.”

Chaeyoung chuckled. “Or maybe it’s just growing feelings she refuses to articulate.”

Nico groaned, ducking the cookie. “It’s… complicated,” she muttered, though part of her was laughing despite herself.

Even in these moments, the yearning remained beneath the surface, a quiet tugging in her chest that no cookie—or sarcastic comment—could entirely ease.

---

By the third week, Nico’s longing was constant, though slightly tempered by the humor that Dahyun and Chaeyoung inadvertently provided. Each poem Aria left became a small lifeline:

"I see you, even when you hide. Your silence is not empty; it’s full of echoes waiting for someone to hear them."

She folded it carefully, pressed it to her chest, and let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Humor wasn’t entirely gone; she imagined Aria rolling her eyes at how melodramatic Nico must look while reading it. The mental image made her smirk—a tiny, fragile thread of amusement amid the yearning.

---

The fourth week brought exhaustion layered with desire. Nico stayed up late, working on sketches of impossible light and half-formed shapes, tracing shadows and lines that reminded her of Aria’s posture, her hands, the curve of her smile. She scribbled fragments of poems in the margins of her sketchbook, attempting her own language of feeling.

Aria’s poems continued to arrive. One morning, folded in the corner of her workspace, was a piece that simply read:

"Your absence is not emptiness. It is the space where colors wait for your gaze."

Nico stared at the note for minutes, tracing the ink with her fingertip. She wanted to run to Aria right then, to tell her everything, but a part of her hesitated. The risk of speaking aloud her feelings—of giving voice to the ache that had grown with each passing day—felt enormous.

---

By the fifth week, Nico could no longer deny the truth. The poems, the quiet gestures, the stolen moments—everything had accumulated into an unbearable weight, a gravity that pulled her toward Aria.

She waited until the rain was falling again, heavier than before, and without thinking she grabbed her coat, shoved her sketchbook and the folded note into her bag, and ran. The campus paths were slick, water soaking her shoes, but she barely noticed. All she could think about was Aria, waiting somewhere with that soft, knowing smile that made the gray of her world shimmer with something almost like light.

She burst into the café where Aria was reading quietly, the notebook open in front of her, the world outside blurred by rain. Aria looked up, startled.

“Nico?” she said, a small laugh in her voice. “You look like you’ve been chased by—”

“Don’t,” Nico interrupted, voice breaking. She sank into the seat across from her, clutching the sketchbook tightly. “Just… don’t say anything yet.”

Aria tilted her head, eyes wide but patient. “Okay.”

And then Nico began, words tumbling out like water she had been holding back for weeks.

“I don’t… I can’t… I’ve tried to think about it logically, but logic doesn’t make sense when it comes to you. Every day, every poem, every… every little thing you do, it’s like—like you paint the world in a way I can’t see, but I feel. And I’ve been trying to… to make sense of it, to understand my own feelings, but they’re too big, too stubborn, too… too you. I don’t know how to… how to tell you that you’ve become my color, Aria. That I wake up thinking about the way your laugh curves the air, how your hair catches light like you’re carrying your own sunrise. And I know this sounds insane, I know I’m rambling like a fool, but I need you to know… I love you. I’ve loved you this whole time, and I’ve been too afraid to say it because I thought maybe… maybe I didn’t deserve the colors you’ve brought to me, maybe I was too gray. But I can’t… I can’t anymore. I need you to know. I need you to hear it. I—”

Her voice cracked. She swallowed, shaking, and the café felt impossibly small. Outside, rain continued to drum against the windows, but inside it was just the two of them, hearts laid bare.

Aria blinked, eyes glistening, and then she reached across the table, taking Nico’s hands in her own. “Nico....” she whispered, voice trembling like a secret melody. “I’ve been waiting. For your words. For you. I love you too. Always have. Always will.”

Nico’s breath caught. She laughed, choked, cried—all at once, a strange, overwhelming mess of relief and wonder. The words she had rehearsed for weeks fell away, replaced by the sheer, suffocating beauty of being seen, truly seen.

And when their foreheads touched, when their hands intertwined, when the world outside became nothing but rain and hum and the quiet thrum of life, Nico realized: this—this moment—was every color she had ever failed to see.

Her heart, once heavy with doubt and yearning, now glowed with an almost unbearable warmth. She didn’t need to name the colors, didn’t need to understand them. All she needed was Aria, the one who made her feel light, full, alive.

They sat there for hours, holding hands, whispering fragments of confessions, and laughing softly at their own melodrama. The rain fell, insistent and cleansing, but inside the café, nothing could touch them.

Nico’s sketchbook lay open, a new poem forming across the pages:

"Love is not something to see. It is something to feel. It is the color we find in another, the warmth that refuses to fade. And in you, Aria, I have found every hue I ever dreamed of."

Aria kissed her then, soft, slow, and all-encompassing. Nico clutched her, trembling, laughing, crying, and finally letting herself be utterly, completely human.

And in that moment, as the rain finally softened to a drizzle outside, Nico understood: this was home. This was color. This was love, overwhelming and gentle and entirely, impossibly real.