Your Eyes Tell

7 / now

i am so sorry for this late update. i've been super busy with internships and publishing TBB i haven't written in ages :c

thanks for being patient! ily all <3

*

Nick Peterson screams.

He hears himself scream like Robb and Orion screamed.

His fingers scrape at his sink, chest rapidly rising and falling, pain searing through his eyes. It licks up his whole face like scorching fire, each colored, shining, beautiful tear feeling like a knife piercing through his skin, drawing up blood.

At the back of his skull, he hears bells jingling.

There's a branding iron pressed to his eyes, and Nick screams again, throat hoarse and abused.

He'd tear his eyes out right now if he could, because the stars continue to fall, and the pain increases in waves, robbing him of the ability to see or speak or hold himself up, sending him crashing across the bathroom, pulling on his hair, scratching at his face and neck.

All he can do is writhe, scream, and wait for the crying to stop.

*

The plan was simple: stay away. Stay away, move countries if you have to, don't look back, fall out of love before you're blind and losing fragments of memory and yourself.

The thing is, plans change, and hearts don't.

Not Nick's, anyway.

*

When he's conscious, there's light and color. No pain. He makes it to the bathroom, and in the mirror, his eyes are still brown. Bloodshot from all the piercing needles and the branding iron, but. Brown. Coffee brown, mudpie brown, gravy brown. That's how Kaia used to describe them.

He heaves a sigh, splashes water on his face, and it gets on his hair and shirt.

You lose the colors first, Orion said. And then your sight. And then your memory.

And then, by choice, yourself.

Nick takes several deep breaths, chest falling and rising repeatedly, fingers gripping the sink.

He looks at himself again, stares at his eyes, and then gets in the shower.

*

There's something wrong with Yves.

Not that there's nothing wrong with him on a regular day, and Nick has his own problems to deal with, like, maybe breaking his family's heart, the possibility of being blind forever, the excruciating pain of the star tears. Oh, yes. He has a lot of things to be worrying about, but now, at this moment, he chooses to be worrying about the guy who once bought a white hamster, had no idea how to take care of it, and let it die on its exercise wheel.

Because he's quiet, eating his dumplings, slurping really loudly on his soup, but quiet.

"It's freezing, God," Cassia mutters, palms on her pale cheeks. She's still in her cheer uniform with a school sweater on top of it, hair tied with a neat bow, and her legs are bare except for knee-high white socks.

She's the most bundled up between all of them, and Orion doesn't know this, but he takes off his jacket, his only added layer to his thin cotton shirt. He hands it to her, turning his head. The effort's there, but it looks like he's talking to her bowl. "I told you not to go to cheer practice anymore. You get cold so easily."