#anyway i'd have to rewatch all 36 eps to remember where I was going with this and I do not have that time rn rip

[anonymouscatloaf]

title: I could paint you picture perfect, even if I were blinded

aka guess who dug up a 1.3k word unfinished guangying soulmate AU fic in my old docs from two years ago, read through the entire thing, and realized they officially do not remember enough about this show to even recall who the side characters are anymore lmao

unfortunate, bc I kinda like where it had been going. it was a “you see the world in black and white until you and your soulmate make skin-to-skin contact” AU where guangying don’t realize they’re soulmates until chu ying's hand brushes shi guang's just barely when he passes the fan to him in his dream, and the first color shi guang sees is the red paint on the fan, and he's frozen in the moment because he doesn't fully understand what he's seeing, and by the time he thinks to lift his head again he only sees chu ying's retreating figure and the red accents of his clothing as he fades away.

...I cannot remember for the life of me if I had a fix-it planned for this fic, or if I ended it with shi guang waking up realizing that even though he’d found his soulmate, he’d still never be able to see him again.

anyway. title's from the song picture perfect by escape the fate, and here’s all 1.3k words of the unfinished fic below the cut so I have it archived somewhere lol

Shi Guang stares at the pattern of black and white stones against the equally monochromatic Go board as if they’ll cower under his unblinking gaze and rearrange themselves into a game that favors him, as opposed to one that portends his inevitable dismal defeat.

“I lost,” he concedes, placing two stones on the board.

“You’re improving,” the translucent spirit sitting across from him says with a beatific smile.

“Hmph.” Shi Guang sighs and sprawls dramatically across the Go board, sweeping all the stones carefully to the side as he does so to avoid knocking them off the table. “Doesn’t mean anything if I don’t pass the grading tournament when that happens,” he mutters, peering up at Chu Ying and studying the miniscule shifts in his expression. “And it’s not like I’ll be up against anyone as good as you! But I can’t practice with Shen Yilang or Hong He right now, anyway—and the nerves of those two, running off to spend all this time with their soulmates when we have the tournament coming up. What’s so good about colors, anyway? Go is in black and white, what else do you need?” 

Shi Guang’s well aware that his mulish complaints seem to have run his train of thought off track and possibly off a cliff as well, but in any case, he’s never been the one to think before he speaks, and when he starts speaking, the concept of shutting up is about as foreign to him as the concept of color.

Fine, so he’s a little bit peeved about not being able to see what’s so damn pretty about a ‘blue’ sky, when all his roommates—Yue Zhi doesn’t count; that rich kid hasn’t ever slept here—can. 

The traitorous corner of his head starts blaring “You Are My Eyes” again, and Shi Guang mentally kicks that melody into the basement before slamming the door shut on it.

Chu Ying laughs quietly, drawing Shi Guang’s attention away from the rapidly scattering state of his thoughts. “I said something similar once.”

Shi Guang blinks uncomprehendingly and tries to remember what he’d been talking about. “Said what?”

“When asked about searching for my soulmate—that the colors of Go are the only ones I need.” Chu Ying’s gaze goes distant, with that same hint of bittersweet reminiscence in his eyes that accompanies any discussion of his before.

“...Do you still think that?” Shi Guang ventures cautiously. He didn’t even really mean it himself; he’s made far more outlandish claims in a fit of temper.

Chu Ying is different. Shi Guang can imagine him saying that, and meaning it.

This is the same idiot who couldn’t care less about a literal princess being in love with him, after all, Shi Guang grouches to himself.

But Chu Ying doesn’t respond immediately. The silence stretches on long enough that Shi Guang is starting to worry he’s said something to upset Chu Ying into retreating back to his own little corner of Shi Guang’s heart, and Shi Guang might end up spending the next hour having to coax him back out like one might comfort an overgrown child.

(Which Chu Ying is, a lot of the time, but that’s beside the point.)

“Go stones may be in black and white, but in the eyes of Go players, they’re an endless kaleidoscope of color,” Chu Ying finally says, his voice soft but no less firm. “My world is never truly in monochrome, Xiao Guang, and yours isn’t either.”

If Chu Ying has a soulmate, it’s most certainly Go, Shi Guang thinks, studying his face in the ensuing brief silence, I certainly wouldn’t wait a thousand years just for a chance to see something or someone again.

“And weren’t you the one who told me about the importance of friends?” Chu Ying adds lightly, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

(Shi Guang distantly wonders if Chu Ying wears lipstick in addition to eyeshadow—sometimes he thinks Chu Ying’s lips look a couple shades darker than most other people, but when it’s all shades of grey, Shi Guang can never be sure.)

Chu Ying continues teasing, wholly oblivious to the rapidly spiraling state of Shi Guang’s overactive imagination. “…Or are you just jealous you’re the only one left alone among all three of you?”

Shi Guang snaps back to attention. “Who said I’m alone?” he protests, “I have you, don’t I? And our Go?”

Chu Ying’s smile brightens. “You’ll always have us.”

-

Shi Guang can’t sleep. 

After staring at the hotel ceiling so long that he starts finding patterns in the cracks and dust, he finally tears his gaze away to glance at Chu Ying’s silhouette standing by the window—he always leaves the curtains drawn up because Chu Ying seems to like watching the world pass by outside; thankfully, neither Shen Yilang nor Hong He have ever complained about the light.

Chu Ying doesn’t seem to notice Shi Guang’s gaze, so Shi Guang continues to watch him in silence. Chu Ying’s posture is as ramrod straight as that stupid hat he wears, standing eerily still by the window—like he’s one of those ridiculous fur-hatted soldiers guarding that one palace in the United Kingdom that Shi Guang only vaguely recalls because he'd doodled Chu Ying over a picture of one of them in his primary school world history textbook.

Even in shades of grey, Chu Ying is probably one of the prettiest people Shi Guang knows. Shi Guang doesn’t have Chu Ying’s penchant for poetry or way with words; he’s a simple and straightforward person. If someone is good-looking, then they’re good-looking. No obscure—if he’s never used them in daily conversation, then they’re obscure, damn it Chu Ying—idioms about flowers and mountains and lakes will convey that better.

(And it’s an inane observation to make right now, probably, but Shi Guang's thought process around Chu Ying has never really made much sense.)

Moonlight filters through the dusty windows and casts shifting patterns across Shi Guang’s bed sheets, passing through the semi-transparent Chu Ying as if he doesn’t exist.

That thought leaves an unpleasant twinge in Shi Guang’s chest. He opens his mouth without really thinking and tosses out the first conversation starter that pops into his head, keeping his voice quiet to not awaken his roommates:

“How do you even know if your eyeshadow actually suits you, if you don’t know what color it is?”

Chu Ying turns around, blinking in confusion. “Ah? When did I say that I don’t know what color it is?” With his back to the light coming from the window, any normal person would’ve had their front shrouded in shadow. But the moonlight passes straight through Chu Ying, and he stands before Shi Guang still as bright as the moon itself.

“…I thought you never met your soulmate? And even if you did—” Shi Guang’s brain-to-mouth filter catches up just in time before he finishes that sentence.

Even if you did, she’d be long dead by now, wouldn’t she?

Chu Ying purses his lips, but he doesn’t look offended; rather, he’s fighting a smile. “Xiao Guang, just because I can’t see what color it is, doesn’t mean the servants dressing me couldn’t.”

Oh, right.

Chu Ying used to be filthy fucking rich (to put it politely), or whatever the equivalent term for that was a millennium and a half ago.

In any case, Chu Ying was someone who probably even had others bathe him, and now he was…

Well, now he was Shi Guang’s and Shi Guang’s alone, so he’d have to live with him in this ratty old hotel room with two other teenage boys—though Chu Ying seems perfectly content doing so anyway, as long as Shi Guang keeps playing Go, of course.

“…So what color is it?”

Chu Ying sighs in fond exasperation. “Even if I tell you, neither of us will really know what it looks like. It’s red,” he adds, before Shi Guang can start to protest. “And my clothes are white and red, if you were curious about that, too.”

“Red, huh? …Good color. Probably,” Shi Guang mumbles.

Chu Ying smiles helplessly. “Probably,” he parrots. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”