because we need more fredashi feels

based on this: "apharthurkirklands: where everything is black and white until you meet your soulmate

disclaimer: i don't own the copyrighted material within

When people ask, Fred says that his awakening was golden.

He was fooling around in his mascot suit, trying to imagine what it was actually supposed to look like, and hear someone laugh behind him. He turned, gray whirling to focus on the most beautiful man Fred had ever seen, then nothing but light.

Light and gold, warmth spreading from Fred's eyes to every inch of his body until he prickled in technicolor. He gasped and swore he could see the colors, the bands of bright burning something, be sucked down his lungs and fill him up with precious gems. Gems that had color, had meaning, and gold,so much gold like the gold of the sun and the gold of his mascot sign and the gold illuminating the man's skin.

The man opened his jaw wide, just like Fred, and Fred melted a little from the spectrum of light that is his soulmate's voice. Tadashi, the man's name is Tadashi, and at once Fred colors his world in with all the light radiating from that golden name.

Later on, after the shock of the switch to Oz wears off—and it's great to finally be able to see that reference for himself—Fred wonders if everyone sees color and light from sounds and smells and feelings. The only other person he knows that have found their soulmate is Honey Lemon, awakened by the laughter of her little cousin/best friend for life. And when he describes the rainbows catching between their teeth, of how Tadashi is nothing but light and gold, she admits that maybe he's different than her due to her soulmate being platonic.

Then Fred sputters and blushes and Tadashi walks right in to this lovely conversation in a corona of glory and Honey laughs like sunshine. Tadashi sits close enough for their knees to touch and orange-red-coral-gold thrills up into Fred's chest, squeezing his heart and pumping more technicolor into his eyes. Then Tadashi smiles, and it all melds into lavender, teal, cream, and gold.

Wasabi's intrigued by this, they all are as Tadashi, Fred and Honey describe colors. Honey even introduces them all to her cousin Lola to back up her claims, and Fred calls Lola Sugar Apple, just to make Honey laugh like Honey and Sugar's colors don't swirl in the air, and Tadashi's don't swell under his skin; Fred's special, Fred's drowning in spectrums of light and doesn't ever want to resurface, not if it means going back to the gray before Tadashi.

And when Fred finally forces past milky fears to spit out the depth of his feelings towards his soulmate, Tadashi cups his face and kisses him softly, gently, nothing but light and gold. Fred half sobs and clenches his fists in Tadashi's cardigan to ground him because it's beautiful, it makes him ache with the beauty and Tadashi hushes him, whispering "I love you too" back against Fred's lips and oh

oh

Fred can taste the light, it tastes like love, and their world is so golden that he vibrates with the richness. They are inseparable, Fred meets Hiro before anyone else and when Hiro asks why his voice is indigo, Fred laughs and hopes that one day he'll find someone to color in the lines for him.

There is no pain here, only color. But then one day Honey gasps in the middle of the lab, pupils dilating wide and tears trickling monochrome down her cheeks. Gogo grabs Honey before she collapses, and the choked "No" that leaves her colorless lips makes Fred's heart shudder in cold terror, because there's only one reason why Honey would go so pale

her cousin did live in a broken down part of town, and cars turn corners so quickly, don't they?

Fred watches color leech out of Honey, as if her transition to a post-technicolor world is also turning her monochrome. Pale skin, dark eyes, and no more sunshine laughter; this is a future that Fred wants no part in and he kisses Tadashi so, kisses him hard and hot and lust tinting the world orange above Fred's lingering terror. Tadashi's light as always though, turns the frantic touches into soft lovemaking in the dark of Fred's room, and when Fred gasps it's like his awakening again, Tadashi haloed in light and gold.

"Don't ever leave me," Fred clings to the center of the spectrum, hands sloping over golden skin and memorizing its exact hue to his tongue.

"I promise," Tadashi kisses his temple and it's a blessing of color, lulling Fred into calm.

And life goes on for them all. Honey grieves elegantly, like marble, and they all give her their unyielding support, like steel. But Gogo admits in quiet mauve to Fred that she hopes she'll stay monochrome forever, if only to never lose something that sounds as lovely as color.

Fred squeezes her hands and describes to her colors in ways she'll feel: Red is bright, blaring, relentless passion good and ill. Orange is lustier, richer in the mouth, almost sickening in its citrus. Yellow is sunshine and childhood and warmth. Green is the leaves and the grasses and the cool of mint, nurturing and calming. Blue can be sad but can also be joy, the sky and the sea and the tears down cheeks. Indigo is smart, sharp, refined to an edge of almost clarity. Purple is lush, best in careful quantities and always classy even when trampy.

Light is everything at once and still nothing like it; gold is Tadashi, everything Tadashi.

Gogo doesn't ask any more questions, just exhales and thanks Fred for illuminating. The she goes to mess with Wasabi, and Tadashi messes with Honey's hair, and Fred feels them all color him in shades of warmth, familiarity, concern of the best kind.

Later on, when Hiro's a frenzy trying to get into SFIT and blasts neon into Fred's laughing eyes, Fred wonders if there's physical gold like Tadashi's aura. Price is no concern, and Tadashi deserves something like him—a ring, forever circling Fred's heart. Fred asks Tadashi if such a thing could be real and Tadashi smiles like the dawn, kissing a promise of gold-searching once they're out of college, maybe a little sooner depending on Baymax's reception.

Fred imagines that ring linking their fingers together and it's technicolor perfection, light and gold.

The science exhibition is not light and gold, though. It's red and black and gray and oh god fire burns in all the ways that red never did to Fred's lungs. He screams for Tadashi and his question blasts through the smoke in its terrified palette, screaming for Tadashi, where are you, where are

Fred gasps, and pain sears everywhere. His eyes, his tongue, his skin, his soul, everything flares into blinding agony and he can't see, he can't feel anything but the whiteness exploding out of his vision.

Then it recedes, shadows looming in as Fred sinks to his knees and scrambles for the colors. He shrieks and his voice doesn't color the air, everything sucks into the ground down deep into ashes that hide the colors, but where are they? Where's his light, where's his gold, where's

Tadashi?

Fred looks back at the flames, and they are monochrome. He looks to see Honey's horrified expression, and she's colorless. The world spins in black and white and Fred can't tell if he's crying or not because sadness isn't blue anymore.

No, everything's just gray, like the urn they bury beneath Tadashi's headstone.

also based on this: "apharthurkirklands: ADDITIONALLY: when your soulmate dies, the world goes back to black and white"

lol i am such a bad person