Chanel's Fics

Gicleur - Kaisoo

GICLEUR

Summary: 

The coffee house by the bend, 3 pm: the Project begins.

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PART 1

Kyungsoo only opens his eyes because there’s a crow outside of his window. It’s jet black and it’s loud, caws grappling around Kyungsoo’s consciousness and ripping him out of his slumber. The crow’s noises cling to Kyungsoo’s eardrums, ringing over and over, even after the crow has flown away.

Kyungsoo sits up blearily. Sleep dangles on his bottom lashes, and his mouth is sticky. He parts his lips and shuts them several times to warm them up from the rusty feeling of exhaustion. His jaw seems to creak as he moves.

Late morning light streams in through his flimsy cotton curtains, just soft enough that it doesn’t burn his eyes as he slowly pries them open with his fingertips.

It’s almost noon, but the city seems just as tired as he is. There’s no rush of traffic on the street just outside of his fourth story window. He’s used to waking up to rush hour’s stragglers, honking noisily as they hurry to a day at work.

Kyungsoo peels himself from off of his bedsheets. There’s a fine layer of sweat between his bare back and the silk. His face feels sticky, like he’s just come back from a run. Standing up is difficult, and moving to the bathroom is the challenge of the century. He groggily feels around for his toothbrush, jamming it into his mouth, then his cheek before 

BLINDLY

 patting around his counter to find the tube of toothpaste.

Brushing his teeth is a chore. He squints into the fluorescent lighting of his bathroom and slowly lets his eyes adjust to the day and what’s to come. 

What really wakes him up is the cold water he splashes over his face after he’s combed through his hair and put his toothbrush off to the side. It jolts him awake, and suddenly his eyes are focused on his reflection in the mirror.

Kyungsoo looks curiously into the polished glass. The man reflected back at him is thin, but he doesn’t look flimsy. If he squints, the figure blurs away into pale cream, almost paper white, and an inky smudge of black for his hair. Pink lips, bright from the aftereffects of mint toothpaste, grow hazy until they’re barely noticeable on the pale oval of his face.

Kyungsoo tilts his head up, cradling his own chin in between his thumb and index finger to inspect his jawline. The skin is smooth and untouched.

Kyungsoo’s favorite feature on himself has always been his nose. It slopes nicely, and he thinks his lips are a little too thick, his eyes a little too wide when he’s not focused on controlling his expression. Kyungsoo sighs and balances thick framed glasses on the nose he likes so much, obscuring the thin angle he had admired just a moment ago.

Kyungsoo only has one clock in his house. It’s digital and made of stainless steel with a tiny little pocket of shined metal in the back to store the batteries and the gears. If the clock is hung up properly, the mechanisms aren’t visible at all, but Kyungsoo has never gotten around to putting a nail in his unmarred white wall.

It’s because Kyungsoo only has one clock that he doesn’t know what time it is until he steps out into his living room. He balances the machine on a stack of books and leans it against the wall. 

It’s eleven instead of nine, which means the city has been so kind as to hit the snooze button for him this lovely Saturday afternoon.

Kyungsoo only knows it’s Saturday because his clock displays the date and weekday alongside the time.