Ye Xiu stops at the sight of brown eyes.
(Brown doesn't quite fit, really. Huang Shaotian's eyes were more like honey-dripping dew reflecting under the sunlight, a kind of color that doesn't seem real even when it's right in front of your eyes, something blindingly glazing as it shines.)
It matches him, Ye Xiu thinks, as the chatterbox goes on and on about different things his ears couldn't focus on at the moment; he hears Huang Shaotian's voice, though, loud and clear, memorizing its every tenor. Ye Xiu just stares. He just stares at Huang Shaotian, stares at his familiar irises, familiar hair, familiar build, familiar figure — and his heart constricts because for all their differences, they're still so achingly similar, and all of the reminders hurt.
So yes, Ye Xiu just stares. Stares at Huang Shaotian like he's seeing a dead man — like he's seeing Su Muqiu.
(Even though he knows well that he couldn't dwell on this. One was alive, right there in front of him, and one was buried six feet under like how he's buried deep under Ye Xiu's heart, unflinching, unmoving.)
"Old Ye, Old Ye, are you even listening? So shameless ah, inviting me over here but won't even pay attention to me."
Huang Shaotian's words reach him, then, and Ye Xiu has never been more grateful for his talkative tendencies (because Su Muqiu has never been like that — he has never talked for hours on end, he never sounded like Huang Shaotian and that's one difference. That's one of many and it washes over Ye Xiu like cold, piercing relief.)
He manages a reply, and it doesn't satisfy Huang Shaotian so he crosses his arms and throws a string of incoherent insults at him, mostly at how he's thick-headed and glaringly old (which he wasn't, not really).
As long as words were passing through his lips, Ye Xiu has a reminder of who he is. He won't be wallowing in his mistakes, in the things he couldn't do. He could keep pretending, as long as Huang Shaotian keeps on talking. As long as Huang Shaotian's words were alive like he is, as long as those words were kept colorful and blissfully existent Ye Xiu can keep pretending that he doesn't see Su Muqiu in the shadows of Huang Shaotian's eyes.
Ye Xiu hopes his voice never dies down.
(But it does.
It does, a second after Ye Xiu thinks those exact same words.)
Ye Xiu masks his inner grief at the lack of sound with a teasing remark. "Need to catch your breath from too much talking?"
"I was going on for minutes and you haven't given me even a hum in response," Huang Shaotian glares at him through his blue woolen scarf. "I'm seriously never going to come when you call me. Ever again. What am I, your dog?"
"Close," the former Excellent Era captain replied.
"Close your sister," Huang Shaotian hissed.
A low chuckle leaves Ye Xiu's lips. "Ah, keep talking. It fills the silence."
Blue Rain's vice captain looks at him skeptically, like it was odd for him to urge his habit of excessive talking. He continues to chatter, anyways.Ye Xiu sags his shoulders under the sound, as it comforts him from his thoughts — as it swayed him from thinking too much of Su Muqiu's and Huang Shaotian's shades of brown.
So Ye Xiu closes his eyes. This way, the only thing his eyes could swallow up was darkness.
Huang Shaotian finally stops talking about the ice cream shop from down the road, or about Yu Wenzhou's cruelty to subordinates like him who doesn't deserve it, or about how he almost broke his keyboard. He finally talks about why he was there in the first place. "However, how are you so sure you can break his record?"
Huang Shaotian faces him, then. With an arm slung under his head and with his lips slightly upturned on one corner. His honey dew eyes are inquisitive, suddenly even more magnificent every time he sees it.
And that's the problem; Ye Xiu sees. He could see Huang Shaotian's figure, see his every curve, every detail — and it tugs at everything he has kept controlled.
("It does sound useful — something that shifts. But, how can you be so sure you can make this weapon anyways?"
Su Muqiu's eyes shone, too, the moment he asked this. The moment these words passed through the bow of his lips.
Ye Xiu can't help but look. Look at how much their similarities go; how Su Muqiu's upturned left eyebrow looks exactly the same as Huang Shaotian's curved up lip, how their hair colors look like separated shades, how their faces seem to have been carved from one marble, how their eyes, when placed over one another, seem to melt into one piercing set of irises.
It makes Ye Xiu falter. Makes him weak. Makes him hesitate.)
But he opens his mouth nonetheless, voicing out the exact same thing he told Su Muqiu that day.
"Because I have you."
(And it might be a long way before he realizes who exactly was in front of him, that Huang Shaotian wasn't a dead man walking, that the person he has right now wasn't Su Muqiu.
That even though they share the same shade of brown, their hearts were different.
A lot more different than Ye Xiu ever expects them to be.)