Work Text:
Eyes are the windows to the soul. Cheng Xiaoshi knew the saying, he had remembered reading it in a time so far past that it might as well not exist. His best friend’s eyes made him believe in the saying, in a window deep into that boy’s soul.
Cheng Xiaoshi didn’t remember when they had become friends. Perhaps it was a trick of time, or perhaps they had been friends before in many previous lives. But he remembered the warm feeling of fingers interlaced together, and the laughter blooming within his throat. He remembered the sad smile and its calm desperation.
What was the colour of his best friend’s eyes? Of course Cheng Xiaoshi knew. His best friend’s eyes were a dark grey, a vortex trying to pull you in. A foggy night, threatening to drown you deep into its sorrow. But a calm winter day and a silence held within it, too deeply entangled to ever let go.
As they danced along the train tracks and laughed together into the wind Cheng Xiaoshi knew Lu Guang and his deep grey eyes.
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Qiao Ling had known her latest tenant for a few years now. A nice young man, with a shockingly white hair and a quiet demeanour. Yet they were best friends, Cheng Xiaoshi had made a hefty claim. Qiao Ling knew her brother. Cheng Xiaoshi’s existence made waves. Her little brother was loud and annoying and made his claim on this little corner of the world that he had once struggled to exist in. Polar opposites she might say.
Poor boy, she had first thought of her new tenant, mentally getting ready to draft another lease. Yet he had stuck. Despite the silence he carried with him, Qiao Ling’s new tenant had made his own claim in that corner of the world. Qiao Ling’s new friend had brought to the corner a brighter smile and a louder laugh in that place.
Of course Qiao Ling knew him well, from his soft smile to his favourite noodles, from his harsh frown to the color of his eyes. His eyes were bright blue, like massive icy glaciers crackling like thunder and falling. Eyes that felt like they could see right through you, and beyond to whatever you could ever dare become. Blue eyes like the ocean, not its calm but its vast expanse threatening to consume you and all your secrets whole.
Qiao Ling had known Lu Guang for a few years now and she very well knew him and his sharp blue eyes.
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There was blood on his hands. No matter how much he scrubbed them he could never seem to take it off. There was a cry of anguish stuck somewhere inside him too, but that wasn’t ever gonna see the light of the day.
Perhaps he would be lost, Lu Guang had sometimes wondered. Engulfed in vast unchanging time, becoming nothing and nobody in front of it. Perhaps he could stop scrubbing his hands till they’re raw and pink, pruned from the soap and water. Yet the blood remained, and the smell never really left. The iron in the air and pulsating flow beneath his fingers, wrapped around his existence consuming him. He wondered if he could ever stop waking up in the middle of the night, heart pounding as he silently would check that his best friend was still breathing.
Lu Guang had always avoided mirrors, looking away as he once again went to scrub his hands. But he knew what they had held, those broken eyes. As bright as amber, trapping those unsuspecting over an unbroken time never able to escape. Eyes that once curled up in a smile once they saw him. Eyes like that nightmare that never leaves, bright like a fire threatening to burn him alive, shattered like an old promise broken and the secrets withheld.
He never fully knew himself, changed by the seemingly endless time. But he knew one thing. Lu Guang hated his amber eyes.