Chapter Text
Chapter 10: The Concept of Kissing
“This is ridiculous. I mean, what kind of assignment is this?”
Ren’s eyes followed Nagisa, who was currently pacing back and forth in his bedroom, as he lounged on the bed growing terribly bored.
“Seriously!” Nagisa continued to rant, holding a script in his hand and waving it whenever he was trying to make a point. “Why would Korosensei even assign us this scene in the first place?” He turned to Ren, his current frown growing into more of a pout. “Aaaand we have to perform it in front of the class!”
Rising only to lean back on his elbows, Ren tilted his head. “Are you done yet?”
“And another thing--” Nagisa returned to pacing.
“I thought I was called here to help you with homework?” Ren raised an annoyed eyebrow. “Not listen to your grievances about acting out a simple Shakespeare scene--”
“Simple? Nothing about this scene is simple!”
Ren finally sat up completely. “You have been given a gift of a scene. It’s one of the best ones in the entire play, I don’t see why you’re so upset?”
“Because! I have to…Karma is my scene partner! It’s…I don’t know…weird?”
“Is it weird?” Ren inquired suggestively. “Or are you the one making it weird?”
He expected Nagisa to come back with some flustered response but was disappointed when he was met with a script to the face.
“Okay, okay.” He put his hands up defensively. “I get it.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do, Nagisa.” Ren said, lacing his voice in a sugary tone and standing. He placed his arm around Nagisa’s shoulders and pulled him in conspiratorially. “I graciously accept the role of your acting mentor.”
Another swat of the script to his face.
“Enough goofing around!” Nagisa said, unweaving himself from Ren’s grasp. “What am I going to do?”
“Perform it, just like everyone else in your class is going to have to do?” Ren replied casually.
Nagisa flopped on the bed, face first into his pillow with a resounding groan of defeat. “Don’t remind me.” His muffled voice barely audible.
“What’s the big deal? Surely someone else got a worse role in a scene than you did?” Ren offered. “This one’s easy. It’s romantic!” He shot Nagisa a look of realization, attempting to hide his snickering. “Then again, if your recent performance with me is any indication, romance does not come easily to you.”
Nagisa sat up and chucked a pillow at him, and the high-pitched yelp from Ren would normally have tempted him to laugh, but he was not in the mood.
“Yes, I am aware that you think I’m a total loser, or whatever…and you’re right!” Nagisa huffed and slid over to sit at the edge of the bed. “I’ve never had a boyfriend before or ever even been on a date, I honestly hadn’t even given it much thought until recently…”
Ren, picking himself up off the ground, chucked the pillow back to its place on the bed before sitting next to Nagisa. Normally, other people’s trivial lives didn’t terribly interest him but for some reason…this boy, Ren found himself being drawn into listening just a little more than usual.
“I’m no good at poetry, or knowing what to say…” Nagisa continued. “And now I have to pretend like I do, not just for you but now I have to pretend to know what I’m talking about so I can perform some incredibly romantic scene…with my best friend of all people!”
Tutting his tongue, Ren gave him a mischievous look. “Y’know…most people tend to bring up these insecurities about romance when they’re feeling some type of way about a certain someone, hmm?” He leaned in and poked Nagisa’s cheek. “You’re not falling for me, are you?”
Nagisa rolled his eyes, swatting Ren’s hand away. “Not in a million years.”
“Ouch.” Ren smirked. “Your red-headed devil of a best friend wouldn’t happen to be involved in these feelings then?”
“Wh-What? Karma? No.” Nagisa shook his head. “Absolutely not, no, no way!”
“Okay, you answered that a little too quickly for me to believe you.”
“It’s not like it would matter anyway.” Nagisa shrugged. “Even if that was the case…that would never happen.”
“Why not?” Ren raised a brow. “He’s totally into you.”
Nagisa laughed. “No, he’s not!”
“Without a doubt.” He raised a hand to swear by. “I thought he was going to fight me that one day after school, or that one time we were both tutoring you.”
“Technically, Karma was tutoring me. You just happened to be there.”
Ren shrugged.
“Besides, he’s always trying to start fights.”
“Yeah, it looked like he was ready for a different kind of fight.” Ren smirked, then his eyes suddenly widened. “Don’t move! Stay right there!”
“What are you doing?” Nagisa asked, taken aback by the abrupt outburst.
He pulled out his phone and took a picture of his hand next to Nagisa’s on the bed, the beams of late afternoon sunlight angled perfectly. Ren laced his pinkie with Nagisa’s, as if promising something.
“There.” He immediately pulled his hand away and began to edit the photo. “That’s going on Insta. The lighting was perfect. In fact, that’s worthy of the grid.”
Nagisa scowled, annoyed at the complete derailing of the conversation. They let a heavy quiet fall between them for a few moments while Ren tapped away on his phone.
“Can I ask you something?” Nagisa asked, breaking the silence. He stared at the ground, deep in his thoughts.
“Sure.”
There was another pause, like something being puzzled over in Nagisa’s brain.
“What is it like to kiss someone?”
Ren frowned but let a subdued laugh escape his lips. “You’re actually asking me that?” Then another smirk appeared, along with his usual air of mischief. “I thought you were dubbed the best kisser in class 3-E?”
Nagisa shot him a look. “That wasn’t…that was just to test our skills. That doesn’t really count.”
“And I thought having a tentacled monster for a teacher was strange, but a kissing contest? I can’t see why that matters in learning to be an assassin or…whatever it is you guys do up on that desolate hilltop.”
Nagisa fought to refocus him. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Well…you put your lips together and--”
“I know how to kiss. What I mean is…what is it like to kiss someone who you actually…have feelings for?”
Ren’s face softened a bit in surprise. “Oh…you’ve never kissed someone you liked?”
Nagisa shrugged. “Aside from the skill test in 3-E, the only other time was when a girl named Chiyo kissed me during recess in elementary school, but I’m not sure that counts either?”
“It was a girl?” Ren snickered. “No wonder you didn’t like it.”
Nagisa gave an exasperated sigh. “I’m being serious.” He looked away, down at the floor again, watching the shadows of the trees outside dance across the rug of his bedroom. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to but…you are trying so hard to get Gakushu jealous so that he’ll take you back. You obviously have deep feelings for him so…what is it like to kiss him?”
Ren swallowed, and he cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Kissing Gakushu…” He started, letting a hand wander to the back of his head as if to rub a metaphorical pain in his neck. “When you kiss someone you have feelings for…” Ren’s eyes grew distant, remembering something that made him start to genuinely smile. “It’s everything. I mean, sappy romance dramas make it seem cheesy or cinematic but it’s true, kissing is great…kissing the one person you can’t stop thinking about?” Ren’s smile grew. “It’s not just the kiss though…”
“Isn’t that the only part?”
He scoffed in faux offense. “You really are clueless, aren’t you?” Ren raised his hands and stood up to make his point. “There’s a build up to it, a sort of dance, if you will.”
Nagisa frowned. “I am starting to regret asking you.”
“Do you want me to explain or not?”
Gesturing for him to continue, Nagisa was not expecting to be pulled onto his feet. Ren slung an arm around his shoulder again, as if taking him under a metaphorical wing. “You start with the stolen glances, catching each other’s eyes because you can’t stop finding one another no matter how many people are in the room.” He turned Nagisa to face him, brushing a strand of blue hair behind Nagisa’s ear. “You begin to notice all the little things about them, their hair and the way it naturally parts a certain way or even the way they rest the tip of their pencil on their lips when thinking.”
Nagisa no longer shyd away from Ren’s touch, but began to listen rather intently. A feeling of longing began to haunt him, the thought of Karma and how Nagisa observed him. He knew the way Karma parted his hair, the small mannerisms when he was thinking--especially when he was plotting something. A curious thought kept intruding into the limited space of Nagisa’s mind…did Karma know these things about Nagisa too?
Ren moved on, taking Nagisa’s hand in his. “A touch of a hand, finding places where they seem to fit perfectly on one another and when you look at them…” He put a hand on Nagisa’s waist, just at the slight curve there. “There's this…I don’t know, electric force that crackles in the air between you and it demands to be ignored no longer.”
Nagisa wondered what it would be like to hold Karma’s hand like this, fingers entwined together. The idea made his stomach do backflips and his knees felt a little weak. He was starting to get lost in his own head, he hadn’t realized how much Ren had leaned in towards him.
“You lean in, and there’s a feeling of butterflies in your stomach but also this calming presence beckoning you to close that unyieldingly obvious gap.” Ren’s hand moved from Nagisa’s waist, up to gently touch his cheek. His voice barely above a whisper now. “You kiss and it feels like fireworks…”
Nagisa blinked at him and Ren’s half-lidded eyes suddenly widened. Ren pulled away and chuckled, poking Nagisa in the chest. “It's one of the most intimate and human things you can do on this planet. And when you finally pull away it’s… ” He stepped back and spread his arms out, flopping backward onto Nagisa’s bed. Ren looked up at the ceiling, observing the glow in the dark stars stuck there. “…it’s like seeing stars.”
Putting his hands on his hips, Nagisa frowned. “You don’t actually see stars though, it’s just a metaphor.”
“How would you know?” Ren chided. “Maybe you should try it.”
There was another pause.
“I can’t.”
Ren straightened up, titling his head inquisitively. “Why--oh. Right.”
Nagisa shrugged, sitting back down on the bed next to him. “Even on the slim chance that Karma would ever like me back…I can’t very well go around kissing other boys while we are still in this arrangement.”
“Yeah.” Ren grimaced slightly. “Apologies for that.” A smug expression crossed Ren’s face. “So you admit it then, you do like him.”
“No, I didn’t say that!” Nagisa scoffed.
“Yes, you did! Just now! You said ‘on the slim chance that Karma would ever like you back’ implies that you do like him!”
“I-I…” Nagisa sputtered. “I-It doesn’t matter.”
Ren watched Nagisa for a moment, amused by the blush on his cheeks over the subject. His blue hair seemed to glow in the rays of late afternoon sun, there always seemed to be a hair out of place but it suited him somehow. He hadn’t noticed it before, but Nagisa was actually rather…attractive--you know, if you like that shy, quiet type of thing.
“You know, I think it does matter.” Ren said, causing Nagisa to look at him in surprise. “You don’t need to put yourself down because you fear rejection. You’re not unlikeable, you know. And who knows, maybe you're actually Karma’s type?”
“Oh…thanks, I guess.” Nagisa responded, shaking his head slightly. Then he let out a laugh, the sound so easy as it cascaded into the air between them. For some reason, it made Ren smile. Nagisa looked at him, this time without a roll of his eyes or a scowl.
Nagisa looked…almost ethereal, just then. The window light backlighting him, and Ren felt a strange sense of electricity in the room. He wondered what could be causing him to feel that way.
Huh, weird…