"Fratello, come look at this flower! It's so pretty!"
"Feli, the flower is grey. There's nothing beautiful about it at all."
"You mean you don't see it?"
"What am I supposed to be seeing?"
"Lovi…it's a red flower."
As he walked through the city, Lovino scanned his surroundings for all the faults in his vision. A woman's lipstick. A bouquet of roses. A child's coat. All things that should be red, but instead registered as dull greys that faded into the background instead of standing out, vibrant and lively as they should (at least, that's what they all said red should do).
He'd heard it all before. How he was one of the lucky ones. How he was blessed since red was the only colour missing from his perception, and oh tell us what blue looks like.
Frankly, he was sick of it. He never felt lucky at all (and besides, how do you even begin to describe a colour?). Sure, being able to see blues and greens and browns was nice, but it set him even further apart from others when he was already an outcast as it was. He heard the things people would say behind his back, about how there must be something wrong with him, since who's soulmate was someone with red eyes?
He was in the middle of a tangent about how he had half a mind to punch the guy in the face when he found him because how dare you make life so hard for me with your freaky red eyes, fuck you I have green eyes so at least I'm considerate-when someone ran into him and he found himself on the ground.
"Hey! Watch where you're going!"
"Oh man, sorry. Here, let me help you up."
Lovino took the offered hand and climbed to his feet.
"Yeah yeah, whatever," he grumbled. "Just make sure it doesn-oh."
The words died in his mouth the second he caught a glimpse of the man. A shock of almost white hair adorned his head and he was startlingly pale, but what captivated Lovino the most were his eyes.
They held a warmth in them, one that enveloped itself around him. They glimmered with the intensity of a thousand fires, lighting up and letting the world know that I will not be confined to being a part of the backdrop. They danced, and sang the songs of a hundred places, a hundred people, a hundred experiences. These eyes were alive. Lovino had never seen anything like it before.
I'm seeing red, he realized. He looked around, and everything that was once a fault in his vision leapt out at him. The spaces that were once grey were replaced with reds that pulsed with life and energy.
I've never seen anything so beautiful, he thought.
And as he turned back to his newly discovered soulmate, he vowed to never let it go.
AN: Faults refer to the colourless spaces that would usually be occupied by the colour of your soulmate's eyes.