The rainbow seekers guide to seeking rainbows

Will

It was a lilac afternoon, Will thought.

Lilac was a nice colour. It was relaxing. Like lavender, but lavender days were usually days off when he could just lounge around in a chair. Lilac was more...drowsy. Sleepy. Tired. No, that wasn't the right word - leisurely? Fatigued?

Will didn't know.

He looked over at the door with its faint aura of mint green. For Will, doors and windows were all shades of green. His own was a nice peppermint - comfortable yet fresh, a welcoming yet bright colour. The doors to other people's homes were more of a grass green - sometimes, Will even felt like he could smell the scent of a freshly-cut lawn. People he didn't like had marsh-green, muddy green doorways and windows.

And Nico?

Nico, Will remembered, had invited him over to his place a week after their first date - that movie date had only been a fortnight ago, he now realised. The front door had been nothing remarkable, at least not to a bystander - but to Will, it had an aura of forest green swirling around it - the deep, dark green of the depths of a forest, the colour of trees whose secrets nobody knew, the colour of withdrawal and mystery.

When had he turned to face Nico, Will realised that the boy himself had smears of this very same green streaking the air around him. But, on Nico, there was another colour that accompanied this green. Hidden around the edges of the green was a warm sunset orange - a colour that Will associated with openness. Welcome. It was that orange that you saw over the horizon just before the sun disappeared, the orange that made an appearance in both dawn and dusk photography.

Will had long noticed that his subconscious, his synaesthesia, often picked up on things the rest of his senses had missed.

Nico had decided to take a nap, his prone form spread out on the sofa, black hair a mess. His aura was different when he was asleep. It was softer somehow. Normally, it was filled with sharp, cutting blues and greys, the green streaked within, the orange almost hidden, but when the boy was asleep, lovely clouds of pink, yellow and red emerged in puffs, slowly dissipating into the air. Every exhalation brought a new little warm cloud, a new study in colour.

Then, all of a sudden, Will saw a dagger of dark, night sky purple - an almost impossible violet - cut through the sunset clouds, and Nico's eyes flew open. Just like that, he was awake.

Will wondered what the dagger was.

Nico gasped frantically, as if he was breathless. Which was odd. There wasn't any way he could've bee exerting himself in his sleep. Unless...

"Nico? You good?"

He turned his head, his dark brown eyes meeting Will's own. "Yeah. I'm great." His breathing steadied slowly. "I'm fine."

Will nodded, not entirely believing the black-haired boy, but not wanting to push the issue too far. So he stood up and leant over Nico, giving him a quick peck on his light olive skin. "Awesome."

The corner of Nico's mouth twitched slightly. "What time is it?"

A quick glance at a gold-rimmed clock told him that it was about midday. "Time for you to go work that shift. Don't want to have my drink provider get fired. Especially when he works at a place called 'the Little Duck'."

Gosh, it was so hard to make Nico smile, but when he did, his aura emitted a soft, golden light from behind the cold greys and blues. Every joke was worth it when Will saw the soft, upward curve of his boyfriend's lips as he smiled.

One of the first things Will had learnt about Nico was that the latter rarely smiled. Will mentally filed away this memory.

The smile slowly faded as Nico stood up and searched for his clothes, before finding them neatly folded next to him. "Thanks," he said in a quiet voice.