Watch Me Watching You - Snapshots (Carter)

[Nanami Yuuki]

Friday, October 19th
Student Lounge, 3:44 PM

For lack of anything better to do, Nanami was watching the rain fall. No one wanted to sit near a window anyway when it rained, so she had ended up being the one who did. These past few months were already beginning to take their toll on her; she assumed that this was what it felt to slowly lose your mind.

At first there had been that conviction that she had to keep herself isolated, she didn't want anything to do with this place and its people. But gradually, the true reason she didn't want to communicate with others was beginning to emerge, when talking was so dangerous, she had given up on it altogether. Now she only talked rarely, when it was absolutely necessary, and she ended up using as few words as possible.

It was a nightmare. She wasn't that person; it irked her to be so trapped.

But at least, something of her old self remained. She couldn't tell when it started, but before she knew it, it got to her. "It" being that boy, of course. The prince with the golden hair that made her heart beat faster and her face flush whenever he walked into a room. He was here now, that was why she was here. She wasn't really watching the rain; she was actually watching his reflection in the window. And pouting.

He was older than her and she didn't know his name. She didn't know what his power was; she didn't know what he was really like. She did know that there was a twin brother, but after the initial shock of seeing two of him (at first she wondered if perhaps that was his power), she had successfully managed to tell them apart. It was something in the vibe they gave out, or maybe their expression. Either way, he was him, and the twin was the twin.

Needless to say, he had never spoken to her and did not know that she existed. That was the sole characteristic of every single crush Nanami had ever had. It was always as far-fetched and unrealistic as a dream. She never expected it to become a reality. She wasn't exactly smart, but she was versed enough in life to understand that you couldn't really love someone that you never spoke to.

She loved him anyway, and every time she saw him, she hoped to God that he wasn't a mind-reader.

[Carter Chevalier]

It was the first time he had noticed her.

Carter often met with people in the student lounge. It had a pool table, and he liked that. The cleanly dressed boy with the perfect hair and amused grin perched himself against the line of the wood. Cue in hand, he'd thrown his head back in a laugh at something that was said. In a flourished movement he turned on a heel, tossing and catching the pool cue more towards its base. He held it much like a sword, swinging it idly over the top of the game to point towards the recipient of the match.

"Fencing is harder than it looks," He contested, "Dom just likes to cheat."

Picking up the chalk, he brought the cue back to his person and dusted off the tip a few times. He turned to the side to flick the excess away when he saw someone;

Staring at the window? Watching the cool lines run down the cooler glass? Perhaps she was upset about the rain as so many were. Water made the ground less durable and Carter liked it more when it had its strength. The slightest inclination in those seconds asked him what he wanted to do; he could drop his turn, forfeit the game and ask her if she was upset about something.

But it was hit shot.

The blonde boy turns his back on her again after those precious seconds, intent on winning the game he had struck up with his opponent. He did so hate to lose.

[Nanami Yuuki]

He was laughing and playing with his friends, his smile made her heart jerk about inside her chest. Even though only a few meters separated between them, he was farther away than Antarctica.

She rested the tips of her fingers against the glass when something strange happened. Was it her imagination, or was he looking directly at her? For a long moment, she looked right into his eyes - no, not his eyes, the pale reflection of his eyes. But it almost felt real, so much so that a shiver ran up her spine. She tried to examine his face, as if she could gauge what his soul was like through this peculiar glimpse.

Then suddenly something in his expression suggested that he really was looking at her and that perhaps he was about to approach. Nana’s body, for a moment, when rigid with apprehension. But just as soon, he turned away, she felt relief spiced with with a touch of regret. She took this moment to turn her gaze from the window and watch his back. If he noticed her, if she had just been caught, it was too dangerous, so she got up and left.

---

The next Monday,
In the Cafeteria, 12:07 PM

The Cafeteria was so crowded that she even had had to share a table with two younger students that she didn’t know (she didn’t know the older ones or the ones that were her age either). There were dozens of students up and about, plenty of them not content with simply eating their lunch in peace and many more pouring in through the doors and queuing to take food.

And she knew she had it bad, she had it really bad, when she lifted her gaze at precisely the same moment he walked in. As always, he was looking wonderful today and that squeezed her heart making it hard to breathe. But she couldn’t risk to look at him for very long, and quickly turned back to her food. It was as if he had some magnetic force that pulled her attention to him. She sneaked another glance, and then a moment later another. She pretended she was watching the room, searching for someone while in fact all she wanted was to look at him again. Just once more, and once more, and once more...

[Carter Chevalier]

Carter walked in, but never on his own. Instinctively at the sight of other people, he tossed a hand up the line of his hair to ensure it looked right as he moved in tandem with his twin brother Dominique. The boys have always looked the same. Their differences are clear too. The mole on Carter's chin is the best indication, but most people overlook it because their attitudes are so defined.

The room was crowded but there was always room for the Chevalier twins.

He didn't realise that the same girl he'd seen that day was in the room. He also didn't realise that the path he chose to walk to the lunch line had him pass right by her.

"Je ne comprends pas ce que son problème était," Carter explained something in great detail to his brother as he passed, "Il aurait voulu rester plus longtemps!" Whatever it was, it made his twin brother Dom chuckle to himself as they joined the line.

[Nanami Yuuki]

The sound of his voice, it had to be his voice, reached her ears as he passed by her so close she could have reached out and touched him. Was that French? Was he French? Could he have been more perfect? She had named him. Now, in her mind, his name was Pierre. Right, that sounded like a French cat more than anything else, but it was either that or Jonas, and he didn’t quite seem like a Jonas.

The farther he drew away, the easier it was to look at him. She rested her chin in the palm of her hand, her elbow on the table and doted after him. Even if he’d look this way, he’d probably never know she was looking at him.

The scrape of chairs nearby momentarily forced her to look away as both the younger students got up. One of them sent her a dark glance before leaving. Oh right, Nanami had ignored that girl when she tried to talk to her. She was reminded once more that she didn’t really have a reason to interact with people here.

When she looked up again, Pierre was out of her sight. Maybe he had moved to a part of the room which she couldn’t see, or maybe someone else was blocking the view. She sighed and looked down, pushing food across her plate with her fork. Now that he was gone everything had become so unbearably boring.

[Carter Chevalier]

Carter and Dominique waited impatiently in the line. Dom felt the impatience more so than Carter, but the older twin stood and tried to calm the slightly younger twin down with whatever stories he could quickly think of. They step up in line and all that, grabbing trays of lunch before bursting back out of the line again and standing with the dilemma of where they might sit.

Dominique took the lead and started walking towards a table that just grew more vacant with the departure of two younger students.

He sits on the same side as the girl, Carter sits on the other side but they are perched as far away as possible. Dom's abrasive behaviour forces him to send a curious glance her way before ignoring her completely. Carter doesn't look at all.

"Uncle Seb said mom's still upset about the Wedgewood china." Carter said as he snerked, stabbing at his salad with his fork and laughing. "You think after three years and a beach house in Barcelona that she'd be over some ridiculous wedding plates."

[Nanami Yuuki]

Half a second later, the scrape of chairs next to her made her freeze completely. It did not occur to her, it had not occurred to her that out of all the tables in the Cafeteria at this hour, this mostly vacant one would hold the most attraction. Her head jerked up as if the sound had physically hit her, she looked up at The Twin and the Twin appeared to look her up and down.

And cancel her as someone irrelevant. She wasn’t insulted, for some reason, she had found The Twin irrelevant a long time ago - so there! She turned back to her own plate and her own corner of the table without looking at Pierre.

No, that’s not right. Pointedly not looking at someone was almost as bad as staring. Without turning her head, she allowed her eyes to travel over him. He wasn’t giving out any sign of having noticed she was there at all. In his world, she didn’t exist.

Thank God.

Relieved, she exhaled and gingerly stabbed a single pea with her fork, carefully bringing it to her mouth. No one was watching her, she was so close to him, but still safe.

He opened his mouth and spoke in perfect American English. Pierre, as it turned out, wasn’t Pierre at all. But it was too late to change his name now. She allowed herself to look at him once more, it was perfectly normal to look at the people who sit next to you in lunch.

Though when she looked back at her plate, she made a mistake. A terrible mistake that made her want to run up to her room and roll on the floor with embarrassment. She pushed her hair behind her ear. How stupid! If he saw her, if he had chosen exactly that moment to look at her, it would be a dead giveaway.

Retreat! She pushed back from the table and lifted her tray, careful to place her feet exactly where they needed to be and not bump into anyone. The last thing she needed was to stumble and make a grand spectacle of herself.

[Carter Chevalier]

It was a shame, but the Twin blondes had entered a conversation so deep (and yet somehow, hilarious) that they gave no indication of venturing out. Not even when their table guest got up and left. They didn't notice.

---

Wednesday, October 28th
Courtyard, 4:02 PM

Something very unnatural occurrence was about to happen. Or perhaps not as unnatural as he assumed.

Carter bursts out of the Gymnasium doors in a flourished rage. His hair was disheveled; a remnant of wearing the mask he left in his locker. His breathing was heavy, his muscles tense and shining beneath the sun to indicate the presence of sweat or water on his form. He was still wearing the majority of his fencing equipment, at least from the waist down. He'd left his jacket with the mask and sword in the locker room. His entire chest remained exposed to the sun.

He was known to get upset sometimes after sparring with his brother, because his brother liked to cheat or duel unfairly. But for now, he was storming with furious steps towards the nearby grass.

[Nanami Yuuki]

…The nearby grass upon which Nanami Yuuki was sitting, basking in sunlight and trying to do her math homework with very little success. Why couldn't she have been born only a little bit smart?

That thought was disturbed by the steaming, sweating presence that suddenly came charging forward. One did not have to be a meta-human to notice when one is about to be trampled down by something. That is a natural human instinct.

Not something, someone. Nanami was so startled that she practically leapt to her feet, and stood there frozen with round eyes like a firghtened deer. In Freak School, things could get rather dangerous; she did not want to be around when that happened. And if she was, Nanami had resolved to be at least standing on her feet and ready to shout.

But then, she realized who it was.

Pierre, who was actually, by now, a God in Nanami's world. He was looking Godlier than ever today: wild, angry, disheveled. A different face to a person she had been watching for quite some time. But it was his bare chest that was most disconcerting. To see so much of his flawless skin was shocking. Her heart gave a great jolt inside her chest, her face grew hot and red, her eyes became misty.

It was too much, she couldn't take it. A little piece of sense in her head told her that the best course of action was to run away, but the rest of her just wanted to stare and perhaps drool. The result was that she took a wrong step and fell backwards onto the grass, a little squeak escaping her throat.

She blinked up at his looming form, her heart racing.

[Carter Chevalier]

At first he didn't notice that there was anyone there. The boy could move the world like he owned it, so he always assumed people would follow suit. The nearby stretch of grass started to quiver as he came closer, as if each step sent ripples through the Earth that built to his eventual path of destruction.

The girl jumped up, and he sort of flagged her in his system as being in the way. A wave of his hand practically commanded her to move, but in her fear she must have fallen.

Was it the growing shake of the ground beneath the feet that knocked her? The boy wanted to lift the entire world from underneath their feet and toss it as far as his ability would let him. Who gave a fuck about the damage of the school's property? He was enraged. He blinked into the situation, eyes becoming clear as he finally took in the fact that she was... Cowering? Frozen in fear?

The ground stopped shaking.

He extended his hand to her to help her stand.

[Nanami Yuuki]

Pierre wasn't being a person right now, he was being an avalanche, or what do you call an avalanche that's not exactly running downhill? A stampede?

It really didn't matter, as the earth shifted angrily beneath her body, the tremors sending jolts up her spine, a great natural catastrophe called Pierre was about to hit her. He was behaving mountainous; to him she was nothing but another speck of dust in his path, his wrath leaving him blind. She knew, at least, that he wasn't angry at her.

And she was surprised to realize, for the first time, that she wasn't afraid at all. That was, perhaps, the greatest advantage of her power, she could stop him whenever she liked. All she had to do was yell a command loud enough over the noise of the earth.

But he was going to stop anyway. She was sure of it. Pierre wouldn't just randomly hurt people, he would stop.

He was going to stop. Wasn't he going to stop? He had to stop!

She filled her lungs with air, enough to scream as loudly as she could –

-he stopped. Silence fell.

He stood right over her. Her eyes moved up, from his feet to his face. He offered her his hand She couldn't quite explain why, but even though he had been bent on destroying all that was in his path, including her, a moment ago, he was somehow now more magnificent than he had been all the other times she had seen him.

Blink.

Caught up in the magic of the moment, she looked up into his eyes and took his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet. She had nothing to lose because this was obviously a dream and probably she'd be waking up from it any moment now. And besides, his hand was warm.

[Carter Chevalier]

Carter felt like his hand had been extended for an eternity, when in reality it was just one blink. He knew that people were staring; he'd shaken the Earth, of course they were staring. It was important to keep his cool demeanour despite how ridiculous his brother's behaviour was. Cheating in a sport like that was not something Carter could handle well. Finally she took his hand and he gently lifted her from the ground with the strength in just one arm. It was a controlled lift, not jarring or abrasive as one might have expected.

The anger and frustration on his face had somehow melted away. He had initially moved to catch around her waist with his other arm, but the skin on the back of his hand revealed a bleeding laceration so he promptly pulled back once it had been in view.

Dom had cut him, the bastard.

"I apologise." Carter said quietly, now feeling bad that he had frightened her in such a way. She had caught him at a bad moment and he wanted to apologise for that. It was just the way he had been brought up. Despite it all, he was still holding onto her hand. Though he didn't realise that yet.

[Nanami Yuuki]

Nanami was finding it very difficult to breathe. She hoped against hope that her flushed cheeks would be attributed to the chill in the air and the excitement of what happened a moment ago. The whole situation felt utterly unreal and at the same time, the warmth of his fingers enveloping hers was almost painfully real.

He apologized, but her mind had been wiped clean by the encounter and she couldn't understand why he was sorry. Now that she was looking right at him, and not in a roundabout way like she had done for the past several weeks, it was dreadfully difficult to look away.

She couldn't speak though; she couldn't accept or reject his apology. Her throat had closed up completely. It was the sight of blood on his arm, the red contradicting sharply with his pale skin; that shocked her enough to make a sound.

"Y..you're hurt!" her voice was soft and a little hoarse from misuse; this was probably the first time she had spoken out loud today. Her other hand, the one that was no resting comfortably in his, flew up to his injured arm as if it were the most natural thing for her to do. She tilted her head to the side and looked at his wound, acting as if the sight of blood didn't make her knees turn to butter.

[Carter Chevalier]

"Hn?" Carter allowed the sound to escape him, confused by what she had said. His mind was a blur; the anger and frustration that he had been feeling had boiled away at his senses and left him clueless to all that had happened aside from the scuffle between he and his twin. Had he punched him? He couldn't remember anymore.

Looking down to his hand, things were clearer.

"Tips off." He said aloud, though he was making a confirmation to himself. Carter looked to her again when he realised just how concerned she was over the cut. "It's fine," He said to try and reassure her, "I was just being foolish. Did I scare you?"