Asphyxiation

I Can Sketch You a Million Times and Never Capture Your Likeness - 1

With each stroke of charcoal against paper, Noboru thought: beautiful. It was such a simple thought to have; a compliment that echoed endlessly in his mind as the image formed before him. There, with charcoal too harsh around the lines of his subject's eyes, was a sketch featuring the downcast face of his classmate.

A rough sketch; nothing more, but still Noboru couldn't help but think: beautiful.

He lifted his eyes off the page of his sketchbook, and set them on his live subject. Y/n L/n was sitting before an easel, foot tapping restlessly against the bottom leg of his stool. The canvas in front of him was blank. The poor (h/c) boy looked lost — and completely unaware that he was the subject of Noboru's every sketch; his every thought, his every —

Noboru quite liked art class. He had very steady hands; his paintings and sketches both featured perfect, concise strokes. He always received compliments, always received the teacher's highest praise, and always did he have an excuse to sketch whoever he wanted to.

It wasn't strange to sketch a classmate. It was a little odd to fill his entire sketchbook with one single subject. But then again, if Noboru could never quite get Y/n right, then it was only appropriate he keep trying, wasn't it?

It all began so simply.

Noboru was an artist; he lived to create masterpieces; to put together perfection. For practice, he had sketched a lot of subjects: other classmates, birds, trees, anything really. But Y/n L/n... There was something about the (h/c) boy that Noboru couldn't quite get right. There was something that couldn't be captured on a page, or in words. Something about the look in his (e/c) eyes, or the angle of his head, where one shift of a shadow could change his expression from content to sad; from laughter to heartache; from smiling to frowning.

Y/n L/n was a peculiar subject — and a most frustrating one. Noboru couldn't let him go; not until he captured him perfectly. Noboru could not stand imperfection.

But there it was again. Y/n shifted, angling his head more towards Noboru's direction and the lost expression he wore shifted into one of intense focus. The (h/c) boy finally brought his brush to his canvas and painted the first line: harsh, black, and like a stab right through the canvas's snow-white center.

It seemed almost violent. Noboru glanced down at his nearly finished sketch and sighed. He flipped to a fresh page and began anew. His attention lingered too long around Y/n's expressive (e/c) eyes and the curve of his mouth. He blended the charcoal with a finger, rubbing it down to shade the faint imprint of Y/n's Adam's apple, the jut of his clavicle, and the dark shadow of his chest right before his shirt collar.

Something about it seemed... intimate. Noboru trailed his fingers almost longingly along his sketch. The Y/n in his imagination always seemed darker than the (h/c) boy sitting not two rows away from him.

"Still sketching?" Mr. Ota, their teacher for advanced art class, interrupted Noboru's thoughts. The older man always wore a kind look, as if it were permanently fixed by the lines of his face. Noboru had drawn him once and got bored, discarding his sketch without a second thought.

Noboru gave a brittle smile, "Unfortunately. I can't seem to... capture it — not the way I want to."

"Ah." Mr. Ota nodded, adding his own sagely advice: "Sometimes we artists become too caught up in the image we have in our heads. We want everything to be perfect; mind to pen to paper. In trying to do so, we tend to forget that reality itself is built on imperfections. You must forgive your flaws and move onto your canvas. Remember your piece is due in two weeks."

Noboru exhaled, "Right."

With an encouraging pat on the boy's shoulder, Mr. Ota moved on, doing his usual rounds around the classroom.

Noboru watched him for a moment before he set his eyes back on his sketch. It was waiting for him. He looked up —

Noboru sighed. Y/n had changed again. The (h/c) boy was making careful brushstrokes around the first, simulating the look of cracked glass almost, and his expression was no longer focused. It seemed...

Well, Noboru couldn't quite tell.

That was the crux of the problem: Noboru could never quite tell what Y/n was thinking.

"This looks nothing like the sketch you turned into me yesterday."

Noboru looked up in time to see Mr. Ota stop by Y/n's canvas.

The (h/c) boy didn't look bothered in the least by the man's observation. "Do I ever follow through on what I sketch?" It would've been snarky had Y/n's tone not been inflectionless. But Y/n said it almost like he was disappointed in his habit of not painting what he sketched as well.

Mr. Ota didn't seem to have much of a reply to that, shaking his head and saying something too low for Noboru's ears to catch. The teacher moved on after a moment.

Y/n didn't resume work on his canvas. Instead, the (h/c) boy seemed all at once unmotivated.

"What are you going to paint then?" A girl named Kana leaned over to ask Y/n (she was sitting right beside him; her own canvas was barely worked on: a pencil outline of a city's skyline). "If not what your sketch depicted?"

"I don't know," Y/n muttered, not even sparing the girl a glance.

Kana edged closer, nudging her shoulder with Y/n's — the charcoal stick in Noboru's hand snapped in half.

"Come on," Kana's voice barely made it past the sudden onset ringing taking place in Noboru's ears. "You must have some idea."

"No, really I..." Y/n's voice was buried beneath the blood rushing through Noboru's head.

No. What Noboru hated most of all was not imperfection. What he hated most of all was imperfection touching his perfect subject, daring to mar it before he had the chance to capture it. That was something he simply could not allow.