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i.
It feels like whenever Rei looks over his shoulder, he’s being stared at, and the person responsible is never making any attempt whatsoever to be subtle about it. Rather, it’s like they’re making every effort to be completely, blatantly obvious, as if they were hoping that burning their gaze into the back of Rei’s neck – he can actually feel it, like it’s someone’s touch, and it’s starting to freak him out – will silently catch his attention. Which it does. And it’s really annoying.
The first few times, he thought little of it; the others at the swim club would often stare at him with varying degrees of exasperation and it was a look he was entirely used to (though it still inspired a deep despair in the pit of his stomach), so he didn’t question the gaze he kept finding on his back (if he did, the answer would have been “Rei has a nice butt!” so it was probably for the best). In class, he could glance over and see the same gaze resting on him, but his concentration mostly filtered it out – there simply wasn’t room to recognise the pattern between algebraic formula and phrases of English (I have a pencil, not I am a pencil).
The next few times, he thinks a little more of it. Rather, he’s forced to notice it, because it never goes away. On the train, there it is. Running the last stretch to school, there it is. At the club, there it is. In class, there it is. Even at the track club before he becomes an official member of the swim club, there it is. He can’t escape it, and it lingers on the back of his neck like a caress, sending a ticklish shiver down his spine.
He turns his head during a math class and there it is, smiling at him, almost hopeful. His usual reaction is to turn his head away, to get on with his work, but this time he pauses, narrowing his eyes, trying to sum up the reasoning behind this incessant staring.
What? He mouths silently, sharply.
Nagisa seems startled, but then his expression breaks open like dawn, and he’s beaming in a way that makes Rei sink back into his chair – his face is strangely warm – with the feeling that he’s just opened Pandora’s Box.
ii.
Rei has long since been awake, staring at the ceiling, for once without his usual morning vigour. Everyone has off days, he consoles himself, though the inelegance of his lethargy makes him even more miserable.
His phone vibrates twice on the side table, and he turns his head to look at it, half-heartedly reaching out for it – and his glasses – and bringing it back to himself on the bed. Unfolding his glasses and pushing them onto his face, he flips his phone open and thumbs the keypad. He can’t even bring himself to be irritated that someone would contact him at such a ridiculous time.
The message pops up on the screen, obnoxious and demanding, just like the sender (whose name he doesn’t even need to read to know the identity of).
Rei-chyaaan! It’s really nice out! Are you going to run to school today? I’m gonna come too, ok! (￣▽+￣*)┌
Toes curling for reasons he can absolutely not attribute any kind of sane reasoning to, Rei rolls onto his side and curls into himself, trying to carefully sort his thoughts into order only to lose what he had picked out into a whirlwind of incoherence. You’re being silly, he tells himself. You’re being incredibly silly, and need to stop. Before he can consider thumbing over the ‘reply’ option though, his phone vibrates again, and his brow furrows.
Oh, and g’morning! (｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡
Kicking his sheets into the air, Rei squirms, catching the material as it billows back down and throwing it to the floor only to follow it in a tumble. When the sudden clutch of madness leaves him, he breathes, glasses askew and hair a mess.
Just ignore it. If you ignore it he sometimes goes away. Nothing good ever comes from encouraging him, Rei tells himself, but his thumbs had already moved and hit the send button and he stares at his phone in horror.
Good morning.
He snaps his phone shut and throws it onto his bed, rolling himself into his discarded sheets in an effort to hide himself. Squinting his eyes shut in the muffled cocoon, he still hears his phone vibrate mere seconds later.
Somehow, it feels a lot less like an off day than it did five minutes ago.
iii.
The week where Rei is on cleaning duty. He hates the feel of chalk residue on his hands when he’s handled the board eraser.
“Why are you here?”
At the train stop, there’s no other students there. They’ve already gone home.
“Because I was waiting for you!”
Turns his head. Adjusts his glasses for something to do with his hands. Clears his throat, and tries to give a reply that implies that it wasn’t necessary. Instead all that comes out is
“Oh.”
iv.
Why he agreed to go out on a busy Saturday afternoon, Rei will never know. He puts a large portion of it down to Nagisa not ever taking no for an answer.
“Gou! Gou!”
His hand is being grasped and his arm yanked from its socket before he even realises what is happening, but it doesn’t actually surprise him by this point. Rei is getting used to being dragged after Nagisa on whatever has his attention at that precise moment. Despite the initial rough pull, Nagisa’s grip on him is always firm but gentle, and Rei realised some time ago with an abject horror that he didn’t really mind it. He does mind being pulled around wherever Nagisa wants to go, but he doesn’t necessarily mind how it’s being done.
This is one thing he will never be able to apply logic to.
“Gou!”
They come to an abrupt stop and he bumps into Nagisa’s shoulder. His hand is still being clasped onto with no seeming possibility of release in the near future. Awkwardly, Rei reaches up to push his glasses up his nose, avoiding eye contact.
“Nagisa,” she begins, wide eyes then trailing to the right. “Rei…”
“Ah, are you on a date?” Nagisa seems to sparkle with the question, lighting up further when Gou blushes a colour to rival her (and her date’s) hair. “Shopping dates are fun, right? We’re on one too!”
Thrusting Rei’s hand into the air as if it were a trophy, Nagisa crows with delight, and young mothers passing by with their children smile quietly to themselves. Rei swears he hears someone laugh, and he has never wanted to die more than in this moment.
“Nagisa, please will you st—-”
“But Rei is a terrible girlfriend, he won’t let me buy him anything!”
“Nagisa!”
Gou laughs despite herself when Rei wrenches his hand free with an angry squawk, her embarrassment dissipating amid the silliness. Nagisa looks pleased with himself for having simultaneously amused Gou and humiliated Rei, and Gou’s date just looks quietly bewildered by the whole scenario.
Later, when they’ve long since waved goodbye, Rei buys Nagisa ice-cream, just to be contrary, only for Nagisa to tell him that maybe he’s a good girlfriend after all.
v.
Nagisa kisses Rei first, and Rei thinks it’s a joke at his expense.
He touches his cheek like it’s been burnt (the way his face is heating up it might as well have been), and chokes out an angry sound without thinking if he can be heard.
“What are you doing, Nagisa?!”
One upperclassman has only just tried to start coaxing the other upperclassman out of the pool, (with the help of their manager, who makes no difference but likes to think she is helping), so they’ll be at the very least another fifteen minutes before they appear in the locker room.
“Aw, I missed.”
“What do you mean ‘I missed’!?” Rei can feel his voice rising in volume and pitch, and a feeling he can’t explain with a dictionary definition is rumbling through him like thunder.
“Well, you’re tall and you moved, so I missed.”
“That isn’t funny!”
“It isn’t supposed to be!” Nagisa pouts and reaches both hands out to grasp one of Rei’s, catching him before he can run away. “Let me try again, Rei.”
“If you’re trying to mock me, stop it!” Rei snaps without thinking, face aflame, head starting to swim. It feels like something out of a bad dream. It doesn’t feel real. Like everything is happening very far away and it doesn’t really have anything to do with him.
The room goes very quiet, and Rei becomes acutely aware of the pace of his heart – it should have slowed down to resting rate long ago, he thinks dumbly.
“You think I’m making fun of you, Rei?”
Nagisa’s face seems to be making an odd expression. There’s traces of hurt, and Rei doesn’t know how to apply that to the disappointment on the rest of his face.
“Aren’t … you?”
“I’ll prove it!”
This time he doesn’t move, and this time a soft warmth finds his lips, pressing firmly against them, demanding, looking for a response. When Nagisa pulls back, and Rei follows him without thought, he realises he’d been giving one. He jolts upright, colour renewing in a burning rush on his face, which isn’t helped by Nagisa’s laugh bubbling up quietly between them.
“So Rei is serious too, huh?”
Small hands find Rei’s face, and he swallows.
“I was only—-”
He’s kissed again, and he loses his breath somewhere in between, eyes flickering shut. So this is the meaning of that fluttering in his stomach, the heat on the back of his neck, the growing acceptance and even expectance of Nagisa’s touch.
Rei kisses him back, clumsily, and when his breath shudders he realises he’s trembling, and he can’t pin it to just being cold. The touch of a thumb on the corner of his lips, a whisper brushing against them, and Rei obeys and opens his mouth, gasping inwardly when Nagisa’s tongue slips in and finds his own. It’s shallow and brief and like some kind of overly intimate ‘nice to meet you’, but it makes Rei’s head spin all the same, and his breath escapes him in a rush when the other pulls away from him.
His eyes crack open, his senses returning to him with a sweep of embarrassment, and Nagisa’s wicked little smile and lidded eyes tell him the blonde already knows what reaction will come with the question he’s about to ask.
“Rei,” he murmurs, grin spreading, “be my girlfriend for real.”