Things Unseen

Teaser: "There was always something very special about how he looked at me. Perhaps it was because I knew that when he looked at me, there was nothing there."

Inspiration: This short little story is my fight against my writers block. I was hoping it could help me get something done on the others I'm working on...

Rating: T

Warnings:
-Short!
-Randomness
-Un-beta'd…

Main Pairing: Raphael "Elle" / Brayden "Bray"

Minor Pairings:
-(past)Elle/Marcus

Setting: A random high school, and then a random college :P

POV: Raphael –or Elle, as he calls her– takes responsibility for telling the whole story.

Summary: Raphael reflects on her relationship with her best friend and finds that it's still evolving…

Additional ANs: Bray is surprisingly functional, despite his small handicap. I haven't researched it, so I pretty much BS'd his functionality, but bear with it ^^

Word Count: 1163 words

There was always something very special about how he looked at me.

Perhaps it was because I knew that when he looked at me, there was nothing there.

It's not the same as going to high school and having all of those preppy kids clad in their Abercrombie look right past you, as though you don't exist. No, this is much deeper, much more intense.

When Brayden –Bray for short– looks at you, there really is nothing there. It's not his prerogative: it's his perspective. Bray was born blind, so the truth is, no matter what you think his golden brown eyes might see, there is nothing there.

When I met him, it was a refreshing change. I was seventeen going on thirty, body mature and blossoming while my emotions were lagging behind. My breasts were larger than my petite frame should have handled, but I'd grown used to the stares and back pain that came with them. My wavy auburn hair reached down to my butt, but it was usually bundled up in a bun or a pony-tail. Although I was a junior in high school, I'd never dated and I'd never been kissed. It had seemed for a few brief months that both of those statuses were going to change, but the relationship had gone nowhere because Marcus had panicked and backed out, claiming he wasn't sure that he loved me.

I'd been crying, so angry at myself for loving someone who didn't even know if he loved me back. Although it was against the school policies, I'd holed myself up in an unsupervised computer lab at lunch, determined that I wouldn't let him see me cry. I had been staring at the ground, trying to push back my tears and manage to get through the rest of the school day.

"Are you alright?" It was a soft voice, a tender baritone voice fresh from changing.

My head jerked up, my sobs stunned into submission as he approached me. "Y-yeah."

Despite my answer, the tall boy made his way to me.

I'd seen him around the school, being as it was such a small one. He had black hair that twisted into curl-spirals and fell just beneath his shoulder blades and stunning golden eyes. He wasn't into any of the sports, but his body was fit enough he could do any of them. I'd never really been introduced, so I didn't even know his name.

"Really?" he asked as he crouched in front of me. "You've been crying." He caught the tear streaking down my cheek with one finger.

The reason that stuck out in my mind at that point was that I'd never allowed anyone to see my tears before, so no one had ever done that before. However, then he looked at me with those warm-but-empty eyes and I realized he couldn't even see me.

"I'm Brayden," he told me softly, "and I'll be your Knight in Shining Armor today." He drew me forward gently with the least invasive hug I'd ever received.

I leaned into him. "I'm Raphael," I told him, sniffing. "Thank you."

Like it was perfectly normal, he placed a kiss on my temple. "It's not a problem." He held me like that until the tears stopped, and then he brushed his lips against my cheek. "Whoever he is, he's not worth your tears," he told me, then helped me to my feet before he disappeared into the sea of students.

I made it my mission to find him the next day, but I shouldn't have bothered. He was waiting for me when I got to my locker.

"Hey, beautiful," he greeted. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah, I am. Thank you."

He waved off my thanks. "It's nothing, Elle. That's what friends are for."

We were inseparable after that, like two magnets of opposite polarity. There was no problem we didn't share with each other, no question either of us left unasked. For a blind boy, he always saw so much more than most people our age. And no matter what, he always looked at me when I talked to him and when he talked to me, even though we both knew he couldn't see my face.

That's just how we've been for three years now: the rest of junior year in high school, our senior year, and our freshmen year in college. We've had our ups and downs, but we've always gotten through them.

Our Art History lecture had just ended a few minutes ago, and as we descended the staircase, we both realized it was pouring outside.

My hand slid instinctively in his as we opened the door and walked out onto the quad. Our dorm rooms were actually on the same floor, so it wasn't that odd of us to walk back to Sheppard Dorm Complex together.

The rain pounded on down on my face, but I found it refreshing. I'd always liked the rain, even as a small child. The feel of it against my skin reminded me I was alive, even when I felt dead inside. I spent a lot of my middle school and high school years walking in rainstorms alone, pondering my life and making some of the most important decisions of my life.

"Hey, Elle?"

I looked up at him, his voice pulling me out of my thoughts. "Yeah?" I asked, realizing we'd stopped moving and that I had taken at least one step more from the strain on our joined hands. I took a step backward.

His other hand gently traced my brow, then drifted down to my cheekbones before sliding down to my jaw line. It was a familiar and intimate gesture, his way of trying to "see me".

Then he leaned over and kissed me, his lips hungry and searching over mine. This should have been absolutely insane to me; my best friend was kissing me like he wanted to devour me. There was no time to think about any of it: my hands instinctually slid back to tangle in wet black silken strands and cup the back of his head to maintain the contact, like I'd been waiting for this moment, for this rain, for this kiss.

He drew back slowly.

My lips felt tender and I brought our joined hands up to touch them, to see.

"I wish I could see you this way, Elle." There was something in the way he said it, perhaps a certain wistfulness in his tone, that told made me think that this might just be his deepest, most secret wish.

I reached for him and tugged his lips down to mine. "There are some things in life that must go unseen," I whispered, "but that doesn't mean you can't feel them."

There was always something very special about how he looked at me.

Perhaps it was because when he looked at me, there was nothing there. Perhaps it was because he was trying so desperately to see me there.

I hope this was interesting. I'm actually pretty proud of how well this turned out.

Please R&R :)

~Sins~