Work Text:
Her hair is the most beautiful shade of gold he’s ever seen.
He peers up from the time-touched pages of the history book he was reading, observing the perfect stranger who just walked in. She was new. Of course she would be new — Xingqiu knows everyone in this town, young and old, grown and weary. A new face is always easily spotted by his ever-searching eyes.
She picks up one of his favorite novels. He stares. Maybe she feels his eyes practically boring through her head, because then she looks back and gives him a small smile. Oh, her smile is even prettier than her hair.
And her eyes. He takes a deep breath, flexing his fingers to keep them from setting aside the essay he really, really needed to be writing, and picking up his notebook to write all about her.
Okay. The essay.
Xingqiu looks down at his barely written essay. What was it about, again…?
He holds his head in his hands and groans internally. He couldn’t believe all it took to break his focus was a pretty girl.
To be fair — she was really quite pretty. She chose to sit at the table next to the big windows of the library, sunlight pouring down on her and making her hair look like molten gold, highlighting her beautiful features, the soft curve of her lips as she smiled fondly at the book she was reading, and —
Ah.
The Aztec Empire. The Aztec Empire. Write about the Aztec Empire, he chants in his mind.
|
There are little to no empires that rival that of the Aztecs. Their technology was so highly advanced, some historians question why she was so pretty, or why her hair was so perfectly golden. They wonder why the sunlight only seemed to accentuate the pink of her lips and the gold in her eyes. They wonder why it was so mesmerizing to watch her delicate fingers flit through the thin paper of the book’s pages one by one.
Damn.
|
He was going to be late. He was definitely going to be late.
Xingqiu spends the rest of the day writing about the beautiful stranger in the library, so then he spends the rest of the night finishing his essay about the Aztec Empire, so then he wakes up at seven-twenty in the morning with only ten minutes to get to the first day of class as a teaching assistant. Karma, his best friend Chongyun would definitely say when they met up later for lunch.
The heavens granted him the perfect sight for writing inspiration. He would make use of it, obviously.
Speaking of the perfect stranger, she spent most of the day reading. Maybe she got bored at one point, because she took her laptop out just before sundown and tucked a strand of her golden hair behind her ear. Whatever happened after that, Xingqiu wouldn’t know — he was too far gone, thinking about the way her eyes seemed to sparkle in the light of the afternoon sun.
He opens the door to Literature 101, hoping his professor wouldn’t scold him too much. “Ah, right on time. This handsome young man here is my teaching assistant. His name is Xingqiu. Don’t bother him too much, okay?”
How embarrassing. His cheeks burn, but he still waves at the sea of students that were very much his age. Some of them wave back. “Well, I’m going to have him go around and take attendance now. While he does that — ”
Was he still listening? No.
He walks up the stairs to start his task of having the students sign the attendance sheet. He starts at the front, making sure to smile politely and make small talk every so often. A particularly rude student — Scaramouche Balladeer, not exactly new to town, but he was a new face to Lit 101 — near the front glares at him when he asks for his signature. He pays no mind to it.
He finally gets to the back, where a small group was formed around a blonde girl with her arms tucked under her head, clearly taking a nap. “Don’t wake her,” another blonde was saying — Barbara Pegg, he notices, the shining idol of Teyvat University. “She spent all night writing!”
Oh, the sleeping blonde was Barbara’s friend, so she must be one of the more popular students. Jean Gunnhildr, maybe? No, her hair was more of a sandy blonde. The sleeping blonde’s is more...golden…
“Good morning, ladies,” he greets the group. A maroon-haired girl — Rosaria, Barbara’s girlfriend — raises an eyebrow. “Here’s the attendance sheet.”
“Oh, thank you,” Barbara says, already signing and passing it over to the other girls. “Please don’t mind our friend. She had a rough night.” She gestures to their sleeping friend whose face was obscured by golden blonde bangs. “Would it be alright if I could sign for her?”
Xingqiu wanted to be polite, but he also really wanted to see if his hypothesis was correct, so...he had to know. “I’m sorry, but you know how the professor is about these things,” he apologizes with a careful smile. “Could you wake her up for me?”
Barbara frowns. “But she’s exhausted...”
“It’ll only be a little while. She can go back to sleep once she’s done,” he reassures.
Barbara still looked uncertain, but Rosaria put her hand on her shoulder as if to tell her it would be alright. “Okay, then.” She gently shook the sleeping blonde’s shoulder. “Lumine? The TA just wants you to sign for attendance. You can go back to sleep after.”
Lumine is such a pretty name, he thinks. Light. The sleeping blonde yawns before rubbing her eyes and sitting up properly. And oh. What a sight for sore eyes. The sunlight from the windows of the lecture hall hit her face perfectly, making her look like an angel on earth, much like it did when he saw her in the library.
He was right.
She was his perfect stranger.
“I’m sorry,” she says sleepily. She takes out a pretty baby blue pen from her bag and signs the attendance sheet. “Here you go.”
“You thanks,” he blurts out. He covers his mouth, mortified. Holy shit. She was so pretty he’s forgotten how to use words. “I — I mean — thank...thank you,” he tries again. If she was amused, she didn’t show it, too sleepy to comprehend his words. Her friends, on the other hand, were trying their damned hardest not to burst out laughing.
This was going to be a very, very long semester.
“Xingqiu, you’ve turned in your report,” Professor Keaton tells him two months later.
He raises an eyebrow, confused. “I have. Was there something wrong with it?”
“No. It was actually very romantic, now that I think about it. You described her hair very well. It is quite lovely. You described her golden eyes perfectly, too.” He says, and Xingqiu nearly spits out the tea he was drinking. “Your report was very well-written. But it wasn’t the one I needed, Xingqiu.”
“I’m so sorry, professor, I’ll send you the correct one right away,” he apologizes profusely. “I apologize, I must’ve gotten the files mixed up.”
“No need to apologize. It was a wonderful read,” the professor praises. “I must ask, though. Do you think miss Viatrix knows of your feelings for her yet?”
“Fe — feelings?!”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know about them? By now, I think everyone on campus knows about your crush on the golden girl herself. Except for her, maybe. You have quite a bit of competition, if I can recall.”
Ugh. He does. But that wasn’t the point. “Professor, I don’t have feelings for Lumine.”
He snorts. “Sure you don’t. If it wasn’t obvious from the way you only write about her, it’s obvious from the way you can’t say a single word to her without turning as red as Diluc Ragnvindr’s hair. Get over yourself. We all know you have a thing for her.”
Oh god. This was the worst.
“You better get your act together before I start meddling,” he settles at last before he hits him on the head with his double-sided, printed-out, rolled-up report on Lumine Viatrix.
Well, he tried to make a move.
It didn’t end well.
Half of it because he actually, seriously can not talk to her without almost exploding into tiny bits of Xingqiu the literature professor’s teaching assistant. The other half, well —
“Move out of the way,” Scaramouche Balladeer tells him, no doubt holding himself back from shoving him away from Lumine. “Weirdos. Always crowding around Lumine.”
It seems like Scaramouche Balladeer has taken a liking to Lumine Viatrix.
Which was weird, considering the fact that he has never taken a liking to anyone. He doesn’t even like his self-proclaimed best friend, Childe Vaganov, who was also — annoyingly — into Lumine.
Curse fate for making him fall in love with someone who everyone was seemingly in love with.
In any case, Lumine doesn’t seem to notice the way their eyes light up every time she entered any room. Was that a blessing or a curse? He doesn’t know. “Scara, that was mean,” Lumine tells the annoyed boy at her side.
Oh, she’s given him a nickname. He purses his lips, flexing his fingers to calm himself down. He doesn’t get jealous. He is too...calm to get jealous. Calm...calm…
Scaramouche lazily puts an arm around her shoulders. “Not that mean,” he mumbles to her, and she laughs.
“You should still apologize,” she says quietly, and he begrudgingly does so. Xingqiu gives him a strained smile and a nod, but his fingernails dig into the soft flesh of his palms, surprising him.
Shit.
He does get jealous.
“Use your words, Xingqiu,” the professor advises him. “You’re wonderful with your words! Just use them to communicate your feelings for her!”
“I can’t use my words, professor,” he closes his book to complain. “Every time I use them, I ruin any good impression I leave on her!”
“Not those words, my boy,” he says, “words! Show her what you’ve written about her!”
Xingqiu’s eyes widen. Show her what he’s written about her? No, no, that would be mortifying. He’s written so, so much about her, he’s used up about three journals — back to back, sometimes he even wrote on scraps of paper and pinned them to his wall to marvel at. “No, I could never!”
“Why not? I’ve seen the things you write about her. If your writing doesn’t make her fall madly in love with you, I don’t know what will!”
He pauses. To show her what he’s written for her…it would be embarrassing, but it would do the job of conveying his feelings for her. Still…
“No, no,” he murmurs. “I don’t deserve it. Her.” Scaramouche does, maybe. But not him.
He can’t even hold a proper conversation with her without running away. Lumine doesn’t deserve someone like that.
“Hi, Xingqiu,” Lumine greets him at lunch the very next day, and he wants to self-combust.
She sits next to him on a bench beneath the trees. She is even prettier up close.
He gulps.
“I saw what you wrote about me...was that all, um, true?” She says, tucking a piece of golden hair behind her ear, much like she’d done at the library, all those months ago. “It was really sweet, so…”
Wait. Hold on. “I — I’m sorry...how did you — ”
“Oh, Professor Keaton asked to see me in his office. I thought I’d somehow gotten in trouble...but he gave me this,” she held out a paper that’d been folded twice, but Xingqiu knew exactly what it was. She unfolds it.
I’ve never seen anyone quite like her. Everything about her seems to scream light, light — brilliant light — she shines bright against anything, really, and she is everything I want, and everything I want to have. She is — light itself.
Lumine Viatrix is light, and I want nothing more than to love her as she deserves.
She blushes before tucking it back into the pocket of her hoodie. “Well…?”
“You weren’t...supposed to...um, see it.”
“But did you...mean it?”
“I do,” he says, looking directly into her eyes for the first time. “I mean everything I write about you.”
She takes his hands and puts them in hers. “I’m glad, then. I thought you just didn’t like me...”
“No, I love you,” he suddenly says, and he slaps a hand over his mouth with an audible slap. Lumine giggles before leaning on his shoulder. Wow, was this heaven? Did he somehow explode into bits of Xingqiu, already?
“Hehe. You’re adorable.”
This was heaven. This was definitely heaven.
He starts the first draft of his future best-selling novel that night — all about Lumine Viatrix, of course.
His beautiful wife smiles at the framed note that sat on their mantle. He smiles at her, and inwardly thanks fate — and Professor Keaton — for their help.
Fate was pretty nice when it wanted to be.