The Color of You

By: TG

Summary: "Hey Kazuya? What do I sound like to you?"
"Right now? You're –warm. Rich. Like burnished bronze. Like the sun setting in early autumn. Like eternity."
Disclaimer: I don't own daiya.
Warnings: kinda weird. implied sex at the very beginning. mentions of death (minor character)
AN: Please see the note at the bottom! Written for no prompt in particular for Misawa Week.
Enjoy!

Eijun sighs, satisfied, face pressed against his naked shoulder. The sweat is cooling on their skin, their breathing slowly returning to normal. The sound of Eijun's pleasure is soft and solid, like the hand resting on Kazuya's heart.

"Hey Kazuya?"

"Hm?"

Eijun is silent for a moment, fingers drawing lazy nonsensical patterns on his chest. Kazuya's spare hand presses against the back of Eijun's skull, guides him up for a lazy kiss that steals the breath from his lungs.

"What do I sound like to you?"

Kazuya's breath stutters out. Only one person has ever asked him that question before.

"Right now? You're –warm. Rich. Like burnished bronze. Like the sun setting in early autumn. Like eternity."

The first time Kazuya realizes he is different is in his third year of primary school, during music class. His teacher pops an old, well-worn tape into the boom box and asks the children to close their eyes and think of a word to describe the sounds that flowed out from the speakers. When it is his turn to add a descriptor to the pool of words collected on the chalkboard at the front of the classroom, he writes 'blue' in shaky childish handwriting (though really, it is much more complicated than that –different shades of blue swirling and melding into each other, creamy whiteness darting in and out, making him feel like he's flying through open sky). His classmates snicker and his teacher frowns, and when asked about it, Kazuya just shrugs. He feels their gazes heavy on his shoulders as he walks back to his seat, and knows he's done something wrong, but doesn't know what. The subject never comes up again, though the colors remain.

The song is Beethoven's Symphony No. 9: II. He listens to it for hours, eyes closed.

It will be several years yet before he discovers that there's a name for his condition. The word is warm in his ears, yellows and reds, sparkling. Synesthesia.

The day his mother is put in the ground is the day the colors wink and die out. The realization that he's losing both of them is terrifying –it means he will have to walk the earth alone, no more colors to splash against the backdrop of a noisy world and no more mother to hold his hand through the darkness.

He spends hours crying alone in his room after the funeral, trying to bring back the sound of her voice –beautiful golds when her tone was warm, sharp electric blue when she was upset, deep, rich purple when she laughed –but the colors don't return for her.

He thinks maybe it's because she's gone where he cannot follow, so he listens to Beethoven again…nothing. Eventually he stops listening, because the disappointment is too heavy for him to carry.

Kazuya tries to convince himself that it's better this way. He tries to tell himself he's always hated the colors that make him different, make him a target for others' cruelty, but –but.

("Kazuya, what do I sound like to you?" His mother asks one day.

"Hm…kind of a pink-ish orange, maybe. Like leaves during autumn. Like –like happiness.")

He mourns his losses and moves on.

The colors return when he finds baseball, but they are subdued compared to the sharp brightness of before. Still, he grasps for them, chases after them like his mitt chasing after the ball. It's nice to see the dull red of the metal bat making contact with the ball, even though it should have been bright and ringing. He hasn't realized how much he's missed the colors, how grey and dreary his world has been, until now.

When he meets a loud-mouthed middle schooler named Sawamura Eijun, everything changes, and he nearly blinds himself with the color that explodes into the air around him. Sawamura is loud and obnoxious and kind of an idiot, but his voice is warm and bright, reflecting around him like a lighthouse flickering off of dark water. Kazuya desperately tries not to anchor himself to it, manages somehow to hold himself back to a few taps to the chest and an arm slung around a sun-kissed neck.

"Let's slay the monster together, partner," he says, and delights in the burst of green swirls that come on the heels of the indignant squawk that follows.

AN: This fic was very self-indulgent haha. I might be exploring this idea more in the future.

For those who are curious, synesthesia can be described as an involuntary neurological thing where one sense gets crossed with another sense. For example, in this fic, when Kazuya hears sounds, he involuntarily projects colors into the world around. I have several types, including musiccolor, but I don't project so I guess I kept that kind of vague because I didn't want to get it wrong? Other types I have include: graphemecolor, OLP, mirror-touch, misophonia, and pain/emotionscolor (all associating). Each person experiences synesthesia differently –for some it can be a very positive experience, but for others it can make life difficult or even cause pain or sensory overload. Syn can also come and go with age and other things like medication, alcohol, drugs, depression, illness, etc.

I'm certainly not any kind of expert on syn, but if you have any questions on the subject I'll be happy to answer! Just hit me up at wingspike on tumblr ^_^

Anyway, thank you for reading!