cw; gender neutral! reader, sfw with a sprinkle of winkwink, basically just a smooch from qiuyuan aha
For a man without eyesight, QIUYUAN can do a lot of things.
He can pierce the hearts of his enemies with ease, cook meals without batting a lid, discern both familiar and unfamiliar surroundings in an instant, read your emotions better than any man with two working eyes could ever hope to — you get the gist of it. He fares just like any other person.
You wouldn’t have known he was blind, really, not unless you looked close. Not unless curiosity got the better of you and you finally asked about his eyes — those elusive, cloudy things that never seemed to look directly at you, no matter how hard you tried to catch them.
(“What? You’re telling me you’ve been blind this whole time?”
You were about to ask how a man who cannot see could cultivate such precise swordsmanship, until you remember something from a distant past.
“But you mentioned I had a fair face during our first meeting.”
“... You have no sight and now you can’t speak?”
He does not make an excuse.)
And in that manner, you truly think it is strange.
For all his practiced, almost perfect ways of adapting to a life of a blind man, for all the subtle precision of his movements and the effortless grace that makes everyone else look clumsy — Qiuyuan always, always, seems to forget where your lips are each time he leans in to humor you with a kiss.
You like to think you know enough that you are not oblivious. In fact, you are well aware of how his forte functions in relation to his surroundings, having been… loved a lot… by him, yet this does not placate your confusion.
Qiuyuan is sharp and concise in everything he does. He never wastes time. He never rushes either. Every movement of his is deliberate, efficient. Most details are trivial to him; he only cares about the things that matter to wandering swordsmen — sharpening their blades, bathing in rivers, mending their coats by the firelight. He may notice everything, even the things in between, yet very rarely does he make them his business.
(Thinking about it, you recall the time he mentioned he liked the frequencies of your bold personality, that or it was the smell of your virtues. What did he mean by this?)
All in all, why would kissing you be any different?
If anything, he seems to take his time with it — tracing the ridge of your eyebrows, brushing the faint frown between them, mapping the moles scattered across your cheeks and neck as if they were constellations he needed to memorize. His fingers trail the bridge of your nose, linger at your lashes, circle your cheekbones in slow, unhurried motion, before resting the pad of his thumb on your bottom lip.
Your entire being feels like it’s on fire.
Qiuyuan is sharp and concise. He never wastes time. So what is he doing?
“Your thoughts,” he murmurs, his voice a low rumble that slides under your skin. “I sense chaos within it. Do you want to share?”
His eyes — that muted gray, misty and distant, as if trapped in a perpetual haze — are directed right at you. And for some reason, it's now you who can’t maintain eye contact. You look everywhere but him, at the stars stitched into the sky, at the restless trees swaying with the wind — anything to forget the feeling of the feather-light pressure of his thumb on your lip.
“D-don’t look at me like that.” You stutter against your will.
“I can’t see, nor look,” he replies evenly. “I am simply facing where a threat looms.”
Like lightning, your eyes are on him immediately, raising a brow at him. “What threat?”
He chuckles, rare and quiet, and your stomach flips at the sound. “That’s what it takes for you to look at me. Interesting.”
You glare, half annoyed, half flustered. “Qiuyuan, what are you trying to say?”
“Your temperament is truly a wonder I can never hope to comprehend,” he dismisses your glare like he always does — calmly, playfully, infuriatingly — and leans closer still. His breath ghosts across your cheek. “Do you not like it when I let my hands wander?”
He already knows what's bothering you. Of course he does.
Yet that tone teasing, deliberate — to make innuendos is not like him. Againt your better judgement, it sends heat curling through your chest, fueling the warmth of your face. Still, you force yourself to stay on track, to pretend you’re not already melting under his touch.
(You’d let him do anything he wanted to do to you, you realize with a dangerous clarity.)
“You always touch my face like that before you kiss me,” you say quietly. “Why is that?”
He pauses. Not long, but long enough for you to feel the shift in the air between you.
“Back when we first met, I did not lie when I called your face fair.”
You blink, unsure whether to laugh or fall apart. He senses your confusion, and treads further.
“Is it not right for me to appreciate it,” he adds, “now that we are much closer?”
When he leans in again, it is slow and unhurried. The air grows still, heavy with something unspoken. You can feel the warmth of him, close enough that your breaths tangle in the space between.
His hand moves slightly, fingers brushing against your jaw, lingering like a phantom.
The rest happens somewhere between thought and sensation. A shift forward, the briefest contact, so light you might have imagined it — and then stillness, a silence that hums louder than any sound could.
You do not move. Neither does he. And yet something in you has already unraveled.
For a man without eyesight, Qiuyuan can do a lot of things.
He can fight, cook, survive — even sense the smallest flicker of thought that crosses your mind.
But kissing you into a puddle of madness?
That, you think faintly, as his fingers slide into your hair and his lips tilt into a small, all-knowing smile against yours — might just be your favorite of all.
And perhaps, might just be his too.
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