Being a university student in life where literally all you see is color is really hard. I mean, it's so loud, there's so many colors to deal with when it's loud like that. And they aren't even pretty, because when there's so many of them they all smoosh together and make ugly brown and gray colors and it's nasty, being in crowds is nasty.

Okay wait, let me introduce myself a little bit first. My name is Brannon and I'm very special on the inside. People say that God puts a lot of effort into special people, but I think he may have put a little bit too much into me. I have this thing, it's called synesthesia, and it's basically what I just described to you. There's a lot of different types of synesthesia, but I have the kind where you see color when you hear things. Different sounds of different volumes and pitches have different colors, and the same sounds made by different things can have different colors.
I just overused the word different, I should have looked for synonyms for different before I started doing this. Oh well. But anyway, synesthesia might sound real cool to you, but it's hell for me. When I was younger I used to have panic attacks over it, especially in school, and because I literally could not function in such crowded hallways my mom started homeschooling me, which made everything better because her voice is my favorite (it's the color of roses and honey).

After homeschooling (and a few courses at the community college to seal my mother-given diploma), I gathered enough money and courage (and a little bit of Valium) to brave real college at a real campus that provided real diplomas that lead to real jobs. I want a real job about as much as I want to eat 70 cheesecakes, and if you know me you know that is a lot. 

The campus  grounds were a bit easier to handle than the outside of high school, because there were only a few people walking along in pairs or small groups, colored sparks flashing in my view as they walked past. I rarely listened to the words that people spoke, especially if they were strangers, and instead focused on the colors that they brought with them. I made friends with many people simply based on the color of their sounds, especially this one girl I dated whose voice was the color of limes. I hoped that tactic would work here, and I also hoped that if I told anyone they wouldn't think I was crazy like they did in middle school.

When I got to my dorm with all my bags in tow, I saw that they had those cute little nameplates on them that the matron updates as people switch around or graduate, which was really cool because I hadn't met my dorm mate nor heard anything about him. What wasn't cool was that his name was painfully foreign and I couldn't pronounce a single bit of it. 

I knocked on the door, and when I was met with no response, I dug out my dorm keys and unlocked it instead. Sure enough, nobody was here, but there were bags and a sheet on the top bunk of the bed so I figured he'd already moved in for the year. He was probably out doing cool things, like catching up with old friends or getting food. While he was gone, I decided to get settled on the bottom bunk, because apparently that's where I was staying, and I also decided to figure out how I was going to pronounce his name when I finally met him.

When he finally walked in, a rush of gold and blue (which were typical colors made by people moving quickly), I was laying on my back, fingers looped through the holes in the frame that held the top bunk up, still mulling over how to say his name. When he greeted me, I squinted because of the unfamiliar colors- pastel pink, the same color as his hair, and then hot pink as he laughed. I'd never met a guy whose voice was pink- most of the time, it was girls who had such feminine colors. I dunno, I guess it was just the pitch of their voices. I listened to his voice as he talked about where he'd been (getting food, which was the latter of my two guesses), and I was displeased to find that it was actually pretty... normal. Not girly or anything.

He extended his hand to me once he realized that I wasn't responding to his rant about McDonald's, and introduced himself as Kaname Soto (I was extremely pleased to find out that I had figured out how to pronounce his name somewhat correctly). I told him my name as well, and he seemed to take that as friendship, so he immediately offered me one of his hamburgers. I'm not the kind of guy to turn down free food, so of course I said yes and unwrapped the greasy burger, grateful to get free food from my dormmate so soon.

Within 20 minutes of downing the hamburger and seeing Kaname going about his normal business, I quickly learned that this man was very very loud. He sung everywhere he went, banged into things, hit his head on the bed every time he climbed up the ladder, clicked his tongue and snapped his fingers and laughed, laughed, laughed. Kaname loved to laugh. Though I grew a bit annoyed at the constant onslaught of pink, sometimes punctuated with blues and greens, once I closed my eyes everything dulled out a bit. I only realized how tired I was after I closed them, and within no time I was asleep. 

Of course, I'm not the kind of guy who goes to sleep in the middle of the day and sleeps the whole night, so I woke up at around 2 AM to Kaname, still awake, sprawled out in the middle of the floor with his laptop. Still half asleep, I rolled onto my side as quietly as I could (though it still smeared purple across my vision) and watched Kaname do whatever it was he was doing.

He was close enough to me so that I could see what was on his laptop screen, and had his back to me (more like feet and butt) so that he didn't know I was watching him. I've learned the most about people through watching their online adventures, so I figured it was time to get to know the man I'd be living with for roughly 2 years (unless he graduated before me). I wasn't quite sure what I expected, but for him to be watching TV shows on his computer at 2 in the morning wasn't exactly it. After he switched to the next episode, I learned that the name of this show was Supernatural, and that a lot of weird but amusing things were happening inside of those headphones he was wearing, because every so often he let out one of those pink laughs.

Sometimes he threw a look over his shoulder, and I immediately closed my eyes every time so that he wouldn't know I was watching him, because he might stop laughing and smiling and playing with his hair if he knew I was awake. I got really interested in the show by accident, and ended up announcing my consciousness by flopping into the floor and sliding up beside him.

He looked at me and grinned when my shoulder bumped his. "I knew you were awaaaake," he said in a sing-song voice that made me want to punch him. "But like, were you watching me or something? Are you already trying to stalk me?" He laughed after that, like he was some kind of comedic genius, and I was even angrier at myself for blushing.

"I was investigating, obviously." I said, the orange of my own voice mixing with the pink of his laughter. "You can find out a lot about a man by watching the shows he likes."

"True, true!" Kaname said, with another one of those laughs that I was growing to like as well. "Supernatural is a really cool show, my little sister got me hooked on it the last time I was home."

"The last time?" I asked, slightly curious.

"Yeah! I live here- well not like here here, but in America- but the rest of my family lives in Japan still," he explained slowly, "and sometimes I go back home to visit them. Home is where your heart is, and my heart sure isn't here." He made a pointed gesture around him, sticking his lip out in a melodramatic pout. He talked way too fast for his own good, and the layers of pink it provided was almost enough to drown out his words. Pretty soon, everything in this room was going to be tinged pink, and then I'd have trouble figuring out if my underwear was still white or if it'd been thrown in with some girl clothes.

We spent the rest of the night talking about our families and our school lives up until that moment and all our favorite shows and foods and drinks, and I figured that tonight was not the night to mention the colors.

2: Chapter 2

We all moved in that weekend, so classes didn't start until Monday, which meant Kaname and I had an entire day to kill before we had to start doing lame class things.

Under normal circumstances I would have tried to stay as far away from Kaname as possible, because he was, as previously mentioned, very loud and energetic, and that's just not the kind of person I like to be around. But sadly these were not normal circumstances, and I knew I had to learn to tolerate him and all that offensive pink. 

I would have expected him to leave the dorm and go do things with his other friends or whatever, but at the same time I expected him to stay in and play on his laptop all day also. He actually did a slight mix of these two things, waking me up early to ask me what I wanted for breakfast, and then going to get it. He then threw a McGriddle at me and laid in the floor with his laptop on his stomach. I rolled into the floor, propped my head up with my pillow, and we watched Supernatural for the better part of the morning.

When the clock on his computer said it was past 1 in the afternoon, he paused the show, looked over at me, and asked, "Do you want some lunch?"

So I did what any educated person does and replied with, "I dunno, do you want some lunch?"

He laughed at that, so I guess it was a nice move. "I'm kinda hungry, yeah. When we get back we can watch something else, or we could listen to music! I could show you all my favorite bands."

I was apprehensive about the music part but even more so at the 'we' that he used. "Wait, we? As in, I'm going too?"

"Well, I guess you don't have to, but you don't wanna be known as that weird guy who doesn't leave his dorm, do you?" He asked, closing his laptop and setting it aside. "I sure don't."

I sighed and consented, putting on some actual pants while he combed his hair in the bathroom. I didn't put any effort into anything else, so while we were walking down the hall Kaname suddenly grabbed my shoulder to stop me and took a comb out of his pocket. Just as I was about to ask what he was doing, he started combing my hair, which was both a little weird and reminded me of my mom, so in the end it just made me smile. Once he was satisfied, I mussed up my hair a bit to get it out of the perfect side part he'd put it in. I just really don't like perfect hair, to be honest, and I wasn't about to let Kaname force his side parts onto me. Come to think of it, he doesn't even wear his hair in a side part, so why did he part my hair? That's so lame, he's so lame.

Okay, back on topic. So we walked to the little deli on campus, and I had meant to buy our sandwiches as thanks for the burger last night and the McGriddles this morning, but I forgot to get my wallet off of the dresser. Thus I ended up in debt to him again, and I reasoned that I'd have to take him out to eat at some fast food place that I could afford later in the day. 

To my great satisfaction, there was no one else in the deli except for the people who worked there, so it was relatively quiet and left me with only puffs of pink as Kaname moved around and straightened his hair and clothes and all that other dumb stuff he does. Once we got our sandwiches, we decided to not stay in the deli, and instead we walked around the campus. He talked a mile a minute, and I was slowly growing accustomed to all of that stupid pink, and eventually I learned to like it. I'd learned to be so quiet to keep from adding to the pain of all the other colors that were in my view, but Kaname laughed so much that I couldn't keep myself from laughing with him.

Something strange (and kind of fun) about my synesthesia is that my name is a different color depending on who says it. I guess it's because people say my name with different feelings about me, like my mom loves me to death whereas my brother is kind of contemptuous, so it's a different color when my brother says it than when my mom says it. I dunno, that didn't make sense. But when Kaname said my name, it was a warm pink different from the other pinks that I'd grown to associate with him. It reminded me of my mother's primary color, and I realized that I started smiling just because of him saying my name. It was so familiar, and I loved it, and I wanted him to say it more, mostly just because I missed my mom.

Sadly my voice colors never variated because my voice always sounded the same on the inside of my head, so nothing was different when I said his name. But it still seemed special. I dunno, I'm just the weird kid who sees sounds.

But anyway, once we got back to the dorm he decided that we were indeed going to listen to music. I was a bit terrified, as music usually brought on a bright onslaught of color, but he started out with something smooth and soft in a presumably Asian language that only brought dim yellow and green, which was pleasant to listen to in the music area. Once I told him that I liked it, he showed me a bunch of other songs that were similar to it, and then showed me some more poppy stuff that gave off pink almost as bright as the ones that were attached to him. The voice of the bubbly girl singing was almost the same color as Kaname's voice, and it was a bit strange. But the way he got into the song, bouncing around and clapping his hands, was almost cute, if not a bit annoying. 

Okay, let's be real, it was really annoying. Too much pink for one man, too much. 

But okay. After a while, he asked me what kind of music I liked, so I showed him the only things that I really did listen to- music box covers and classical music. He seemed a little shocked by this, and I wondered if now would be a good time to mention the synesthesia, because that was the only reason I listened to this kind of music- the colors were very light and pretty and manageable. Kaname liked most of the music box covers I showed him, which were mostly covers of popular rock and pop songs, and then he showed me some of his own, except they were covers of weird Japanese stuff.

I picked out my favorites of his weird Japanese stuff and listened to them more while he napped later that day, and decided firmly that I liked the song Lynne, because all the colors were dark red and blue and gold and it worked so nicely. And then I decided firmly that I liked having Kaname Soto as my dormmate, even though he was loud in the worst ways.

3: Chapter 3

The day classes begun, Kaname got sick, and I felt kind of bad for leaving him all alone in the dorm. Though I didn't really mean to, I ended up thinking about him the entire day, and in turn got distracted during a lecture, and thus forgot about 80 percent of what the lecture was about. 
Even though I forgot everything I learned about ancient world powers and their modern counterparts within 10 minutes of hearing about it, I didn't forget to pick up some medicine for Kaname's stomach. It was the same color pink as his voice, which made me smile, and I was still smiling when I opened the dorm door.

Kaname, who had been laying in the middle of the floor in the fetal position, uncurled and groaned, crawling towards me and laying his head on the top of one of my shoes. This alarmed me greatly, and I ended up dropping the Pepto, which hit the floor with a loud brown bang, which alarmed me further, and in the end I fell over. Yep. Brannon Hicks fell down because of Pepto Bismol.

When I fell down, Kaname looked over at me, and to be honest he looked like Death itself. His expression changed as a smile lit up his face, and he started laughing, which made me start laughing, and then we were both a big giggly mess in the floor. We ended up curling up together while I told him about my day, and informed him how terrible our English teacher was. 

After I was done talking we just kind of, stayed there, for a really long time, and he laid his head on my stomach. I was about to tell him that I needed to pee when I realized that he had fallen asleep, and I did what I usually did when my little sister fell asleep on me- I remained.
Kaname didn't wake up for another couple hours, and by then my left leg (which I had bent at the knee) was so asleep it was almost dead. When he woke up, he sat up really suddenly, which scared the crap out of me, and then proceeded to flap his hands.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry I didn't mean to fall asleep, oh my god!!" He said loudly, causing a bunch of pink sparks that I hadn't seen all day (and that I kind of missed), and then he had to stand up very quickly and run to the bathroom. I got up to check on him, of course, and ended up falling back down because my left knee buckled. So I decided to stay there. All I heard from the bathroom were dry heaves, so I figured he was okay. I kind of rolled the Pepto towards the bathroom, and I heard exclamations of surprise before he yelled a big thanks, which caused me to flinch.
Once he was done, he came back out of the bathroom and laid back in the floor beside me. Since I had ended up laying on my stomach, I looked over my shoulder at him, and he settled his head in the small of my back.

I started laughing, not even awkward laughter, and said, "What are you gonna do if I fart?"

Kaname looked confused for a moment, then snorted and started laughing. This was the loudest laughter I'd heard from him thus far, and it made me smile. After he caught his breath, he moved his head up to my shoulders, which was a little bit awkward. It was really weird having someone breathing that close to my ears, and it made little white and blue spots scatter across my vision. Had it been anyone else, and if he hadn't been sick, I would have shoved him off, because I would have been super uncomfortable and I would have probably cried.
Okay I'm exaggerating, I wouldn't cry. But I would have been super uncomfortable. I decided after that I needed to set boundaries, but it was mostly just "don't lay on me for like 5 hours ever again, because it freaks me out".

(As a side note, when I told him the above boundary, he laughed, but then proceeded to respect it.) (That sadly did not stop him from laying on me, but at least it wasn't for 5 hours.)

 

The following day, he was well enough to go to class, and we had another lecture. This time the person giving the lecture kinda sucked, and I was upset because now I could finally pay attention and the lecture wasn't even worth paying attention to. Kaname got there late, and I was already surrounded by girls and one tough looking dude, so he opted for the seat right in front of me instead. He didn't do anything particularly distracting, but he kept chewing his pencil (at least I think that's what he was doing) which made his head bob, and his hair was really distracting. 

To be honest, it looked really soft, and I kind of wanted to touch it. Which was weird. Really weird. And I probably would have if I knew it wouldn't have totally killed whatever attraction this girl beside me might have had, and I didn't need a reputation already as the weird guy. I'm not denying that I deserve the title 'weird guy', but still. I didn't want it then, don't want it now.

As soon as the lecture was over, Kaname jumped up and ran out to the aisle, blazing past a couple girls and one of the girls' boyfriend to get to me. 

"Brannon, you were like, staring holes into the back of my head. What did I do?" He asked, though there was a smile on his face so I knew he wasn't really worried.

"You were distracting, that's what." I replied, walking away with my nose in the air as if I'd just dealt out a sick burn. I heard (and saw) his laughter behind me, and he caught up quickly. We walked along with a group of tall guys to the deli, and this time it was heavily populated, so I covered my ears and told Kaname to order for me.

Of course, he didn't think this was suspicious, and he admitted to me that the sound hurt his ears too. He ordered what I had the day before, which was actually my favorite sandwich, and held onto my sleeve as we walked back to our dorm.

4: Chapter 4

Once we got back to the dorm, I threw my English worksheet onto the desk and flopped on the bed to eat my sandwich. Kaname sat in the floor beside my bed, and I stared at him again. I actually wasn't even staring at him, I was just staring at his hair.
Around this time, I began to wage war with myself. Part of me wanted to reach over and touch his hair, just to feel it, see if it was soft. The other half didn't want my dormmate to think I was a total wacko. In the end, the first half one, and I absently reached over and ran one of my hands through the fluff of hair on the top of his head.

He looked over at me and continued eating his sandwich, but didn't say anything that would tell me this was strictly forbidden, so I generally just stroked his hair and munched on my sandwich until we had to leave the dorm and go across campus for chemistry.

The first day had been the introduction, which was just a lot of listening and not a whole lot of chemical stuff, but the second day was full blown chemistry. Needless to say, since Kaname hadn't been here yesterday, he absolutely sucked. I mean really sucked. He added too much of the "mysterious pink liquid" (as our professor phrased it- it was just colored water), and the professor loudly pointed out that, had that been a real chemical, Kaname could have caused an explosion. In the end, we were all released after a long lecture on "paying attention" (causing Kaname's face to go almost as pink as his hair). I thought about informing the professor that Kaname hadn't been here for the introduction, but Kaname was already smiling and laughing again with his (very attractive) chem partner for the semester, so I figured it was alright.

My chem partner was a stick in the mud, but she was also in my art class. However, Kaname wasn't, so I had no choice but to sit beside her. I learned that her name was Kayla, and her voice was light purple, so I had no real objections to talking to her. The first day of class we had been given an assignment to study something closely in our free time and then sketch it, also in our free time, and then we would be asked to color it later. Turns out later was the very next day, so Kayla and I paired up to figure out what colors to use in our individual pieces.
I had been looking for something super colorful to sketch, so I ended up drawing one of Kaname's favorite pop stars, since she had a music video that involved a lot of colors. My favorite colors were purple and red, which was perfect since her outfit had a lot of that, and Kayla was extremely pleased with my eye for color. She praised me in her lavender voice, and I smiled the entire time I was making a color swatch.

Turns out Kayla wasn't the only one pleased with my color choices, as the art teacher liked it enough that she asked to keep it. That made me blush a little bit, because it honestly wasn't that good of a sketch, but I let her keep it anyway and reported it to Kaname proudly as soon as I got out of class. 

"That's great!" He said with a grin on his face when I told him, and it made me smile a little wider with him.

After classes were done for the day, we had a lot of time to kill, so Kaname suggested we go out to eat instead of just getting something from the places on campus. I'd rarely eaten out around town before, so I let Kaname pick where we went, and we ended up at a steakhouse.

Even though I informed him that I didn't like steak, he insisted that I could order something else, so I relented. We sat on opposite sides of the booth, and spent most of our time scrutinizing the menu that the waitress had given us.

After Kaname had picked out what he wanted, he put down the menu and propped his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his hands. "Sooooo."

I looked up from my menu at him. "Sooooooo what?"

"Let's talk about something!" He said brightly, giving me a big smile.

"Um, like what?"

"I dunno. Tell me about yourself. I haven't heard much about you, and we've been friends for almost a week!" He tilted his head to the side, and I figured he was actually serious about listening, so I took a deep breath.

"Um, well. My name is Brannon Hicks, I'm twenty-one and I have been for like, three months. I moved here 4 years ago, and I've been homeschooled my entire life-"

He broke in then with, "Why?" I blinked at him for a second before closing my mouth and carefully picking my words- I wasn't quite ready to tell him about the synesthesia.

"Uh. It was mostly, um, anxiety, and, yeah. Stuff like that."

"Ahhh. Didn't it get lonely, though?"

"I have two brothers, so not really." I responded, just as the waitress returned with our previously-ordered drinks. She sat Kaname's Coke down in front of him, and my tea in front of me, and asked if we were ready to order. 

Kaname said no, and she was off again with a smile. He quickly turned his attention back to me. "Tell me about them."
I sniffed, taking a drink of my tea. "My older brother, Brandon, is almost 30, and he's the most stuck up person I've ever known."

Kaname smiled. "Even more than me?"

I smiled back. "Even more than you. Brandon's never really liked me, which kinda sucks, because I used to really look up to him when I was little. He's always been a big sports star, and he's looking for a job as a football coach right now."

"What made you stop looking up to him?" Kaname asked, chewing on his lip.

To explain that would involve talking about my synesthesia, so all that came out of my mouth was, "Well uh, it was when, um..." before I trailed off, coughing and looking off to the side.

Kaname raised his eyebrows at me, as if to say 'you okay'. He then smiled. "If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine."
"No, um, it's just. I've told people about it before and they always think I'm weird after I tell them." I explained slowly, scratching the side of my neck. 

"You can't be much weirder than me, so tell me!" He responded, and I took a deep breath.

"Okay, um. Promise not to laugh or anything?"

He nodded kinda violently, which made me laugh a bit.

"Okay, okay. Okay. Um." I took another deep breath. "There's not really a good way to explain this so let me just throw it out here. I've got um, um." I paused. I finally mumbled "synesthesia", and Kaname leaned in to try and hear me.

"Can you repeat that, please?" He asked, once he knew deciphering whatever I'd said was a lost cause.

"Synesthesia," I repeated louder, looking away from him. His brows furrowed as he tried to make sense of it, and then he pulled out his phone. "What are you doing?" I asked, leaning over the table to try and see his phone screen.

He tapped the screen a bit, his brows furrowed even harder, and then he made a loud "oh!" sound. He showed me the screen, which had a site displaying information about synesthesia on it. "You've got that!" He said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

"Um, yeah, that's it." I said after reading through the site. It was all legit, and Kaname turned his phone back to him.

"But, what kind do you have?" He asked, turning his attention from his phone to me.

I looked at him for a moment, contemplating how to explain it in a way that made sense, and then I smiled. "Your voice is pink."

He tilted his head to the side. "Pink?" He looked back at the phone screen, scrolling down a bit, and then frowned when he found nothing to explain it.

I laughed, reaching over and touching his wrist lightly. "It means I can see colors. Like, whenever I hear something, different colors show up in my vision. It shows up in different ways, like breathing looks like snow! And loud noises look like stripes, and soft noises look like sparks or shimmers." I stopped to take a breath, but Kaname spoke before I had the chance to continue.

"That sounds really weird. But... really, um... really cool, I guess?" He paused, as if replaying his words back, and then started speaking quickly. "Well um, not cool! It's probably really terrible, and I can see why you hated public school, and I have no clue how you're handling this place right now, because I'm almost deaf and I can barely hear you and-"

I wrapped my fingers around his wrist and squeezed to stop him. "All I see is pink, that means you're talking too much."

He stared at me for a moment before busting out laughing, and I couldn't help but laugh with him.

After that conversation, he couldn't stop asking me questions, like what color certain noises were, or what color other people's voices were, and to be honest it was a bit annoying. But at the same time, nobody had ever been genuinely interested- they'd always called me crazy, or they'd started avoiding me because they thought I was weird, or they thought synesthesia was some kind of disease that they'd catch. So it was also kind of fun- it was like letting someone else know how I felt, how I really felt.

On our way back to Kaname's car, I thought briefly about the fact that Kaname might take into account how annoying his constant talking and laughing might be, and maybe quiet down a bit. And then I laughed, and Kaname laughed too.