Shades of Grey
Title: Shades of Grey
Pairing: Kris/Baekhyun (KrisBaek, implied!HunHan)
Rating: PG
Genre: Colors!AU, Romance
Length: 1814w
Summary: For Kris Wu, it takes a beanie, a scarf, and a hazelnut macchiato to help him See the world.
In the books that were written at the beginning of time, they say that the world shall be seen in black and white. From the summer sky and the flowers that bloom in spring to the leaves that fall in autumn and the twinkling lights that decorate trees in winter, everything will be in shades of grey.
But the People wanted more. They wanted to see the hues that were written about in legends and sung about in songs. They wanted to see more than the monochromes that painted their world bleak and lifeless.
They begged. They pleaded. And they were given an answer.
“One shall only see the colors of the world when with the one he is destined to be with until the end of eternity.”
Kris Wu has read the books and heard the stories. But the thing about Kris is that he is a firm believer in the phrase “Seeing is believing” and based on the lack of color in his life, he’s not quite ready to jump on the rainbow bandwagon of love and sunshine just yet. Besides, he considers black and white to be his favorite colors.
“It’s like seeing emotions,” his friend, Luhan, drawls out with a dreamy sigh.
They’re sitting in a quaint bistro, sipping on iced teas and eating flatbread sandwiches. The lighting is dim and murmurs of neighboring conversations are quiet as rainclouds that carry the annual spring showers start to hang over the city.
Kris looks up at the boy across the table, “So you’re telling me that when you met Sehun, all the colors looked like psychophysiological expressions?”
“Yeah!” the elder beams, “Like blue looks calm, yellow happy, and red angry. You know what I mean?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
The smile on Luhan’s eternally youthful face fades slightly as he watches Kris take a sip of his tea. The younger proceeds to examining the liquid that is a darker shade of grey, but not quite dark enough to be black.
“If you tried looking for your other half, you would know that iced tea is brown.”
Kris looks away from his cup and finds Luhan staring down at his plate with his bottom lip jutted out.
“You know that’s not true. I could search and search until the day I die, but I would never be able to See like you and the others unless I actually find him.”
“But if you just tried at least there would be a chance that you do. He may be closer than you think.”
Kris sighs and slouches back in his chair, “What’s the point anyway?”
“The point is,” Luhan promptly replies, “the world looks better in color.”
Kris raises an eyebrow.
“I don’t really know how to explain it, but it seems more alive. And I guess you do too,” Luhan bites the inside of his lip, “No more reading tags to determine the color of your clothes or memorizing that #0db200 is a shade of green when it’s really just the color of the grass in the park.”
Kris silently pushes his straw with his finger, watching the ice cubes float to the surface then sink back down to the bottom.
“But when you’re with your other half,” Luhan’s lips stretch into a lovesick smile, “life simply seems better. Maybe that’s why we are only able to see in color when we are with our other halves. Because when they’re not there, everything turns dull again.”
Kris studies Luhan for a few moments. In his twenty-three years of existence, he would never have imagined that Luhan, the boy who once claimed “True love? Screw true love. Food is my one and only,” would be sitting across from him, preaching to him about the importance of finding his other half.
“Well, you can’t miss what you never had,” Kris murmurs and the two fall silent.
---
Kris steps out of a Starbucks a few nights later. He wraps his scarf loosely around his neck and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, one hand gripping his hazelnut macchiato and the other stuffed in his jacket pocket. He tips his head back and takes a deep breath, the nighttime shower’s mist dancing across his face.
Kris trudges down the slightly damp sidewalk. He passes the couples taking moonlit strolls and falls behind those rushing to the station before they miss their rides home. But all the way, Luhan’s words weigh heavily on his mind and the loneliness Kris has learned to cope with is suddenly pressing on his heart.
He takes a sip of his coffee, blowing out hot air as the liquid slithers down his throat and warms his body.
Four blocks till he reaches his apartment complex. Four blocks till he’s out of the cold. Four blocks till he can distract himself from Luhan’s haunting words with the novel he’s reading or a rerun of a drama he’s watched twice or maybe -
CRASH.
“I’m so sorry!” a voice cries.
Kris stares down at the hot liquid that’s seeping into his jacket before slowly reaching down and picking up the paper cup and plastic lip he dropped onto the cement during the collision.
When he stands back up, his breath gets caught in his throat and he can’t believe what he’s seeing. Kris’ eyes widen when he comes face to face with a fuzzy ball of yarn atop a knitted beanie that’s neither black, nor white, nor any shade of grey he has ever seen.
The light rain stops and everything stills.
Slowly, like watercolors on hot-press paper, the mundane city starts to come alive. It’s as if someone is taking a fine tipped brush and painting the world before his eyes. A dab here and a dab there until everything is filled with a distinct pigment of its own. Every space is filled and no spot is left untouched.
Kris blinks at the small boy who is desperately trying to wipe the spilled coffee off Kris’ jacket with the sleeve of his sweater.
“I just ruined your jacket,” the boy looks around frantically as he starts to panic, “and it looks really expensive and oh my god, there’s coffee on your scarf too.”
Usually, Kris would feel a bit upset when a stranger bumps into him, causing him to spill his $4 coffee all over his $50 jacket. And although the boy is trying to clean up the mess, he’s probably just making the stain worse. But he doesn’t feel upset or angry or irritated or anything of the sort. He feels the opposite actually.
Not knowing how to express his emotions properly, Kris does the only action he knows that relatively matches what he’s feeling.
“Why are you laughing?” the boy asks in utter horror mixed with a hint of confusion as Kris doubles over and covers his mouth with the back of his hand, “Are you in shock about your jacket? Does it hold some sentimental value that can never be replaced? Oh my god, your other half bought it for you, didn’t he?”
Kris shakes his head and waves a hand as he tries to breathe. After a few deep inhales and exhales, he blinks a couple of times and views the city with new eyes. It looks vibrant, absolutely glowing, even though the hour hand on the clock tower is leisurely creeping past ten o’clock. And for the first time in his life, Kris is actually able to appreciate the tall buildings and maze of asphalt slabs that surround him.
Kris clears his throat when he catches the beanie boy’s eyes on him, “Are you seeing in color too or am I the only one?”
Confusion flickers across the boy’s face. He quickly looks around him and his jaw drops in awe. He slowly turns back to Kris, lips slightly parted and shock blatantly visible on his soft features.
“Oh, my god,” he says for the third time since they’ve bumped into each other.
He stares up at Kris with innocent, almost childlike eyes.
“So you’re my - and I’m your -” the boy closes his eyes for a few moments and decides to just give Kris his name.
“I’m Baekhyun."
“Kris,” he replies softly.
Kris finds himself gazing at Baekhyun as the small boy admires the world in wonder. Baekhyun tips his head all the way back, eyebrows furrowed and bottom lip between his teeth as he tries to figure out the color of the night sky.
Kris glances down at his clothes and a soft sigh of relief escapes his lips. Despite the blob shaped coffee stain on the front of his jacket, Kris thanks the heavens that he read the tags before getting dressed and the colors of his clothes match.
“I really like your beanie,” he finds the words leaving his mouth before he can stop them. Baekhyun looks away from the sky and gives Kris a questioning look.
“It matches my scarf,” Kris finishes lamely.
Well, his matching clothes might save him from looking like an idiot, but they can’t save him from acting like one.
Baekhyun lifts a hand and pulls the knitted yarn hat off of his head, tousling hair that looks so soft, Kris desperately wants run his fingers through the strands and brush them back in place. But instead, he quickly stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jacket before he does something that will send himself into further embarrassment.
They stand in silence for a minute, Baekhyun comparing the color of his beanie with the color of Kris’ scarf and Kris’ eyes flickering between Baekhyun and the ground.
Was the first meeting supposed to be this awkward? Was he supposed to feel this uncomfortable? Where was the warm, fuzzy feeling Luhan wouldn’t shut up about when he returned home after meeting Sehun for the first time?
But when innocent, puppy eyes turn into perfect half moons, Kris can already feel himself falling.
Falling in love with colors.
Falling in love with Seeing.
Falling in love with Baekhyun.
He can feel himself falling hard and he can feel himself falling fast.
They both walk back towards the Starbucks Kris exited earlier that night. Baekhyun owes Kris a new hazelnut macchiato and they both have a lot to talk about.
Kris smiles a gummy smile as Baekhyun launches off into an adorable ramble of semi coherent words and enthusiastic expressions, still mulling over the fact that their accessories match on the night of their first meeting.
“Maybe we really are destined to be together,” he beams up at Kris, the color of love dusting his cheeks.
Maybe they are, Kris thinks as they enter the coffee shop and grins when Baekhyun gasps at the infinite amount of hues that color the small eatery.
And maybe Luhan was right; maybe the world does look better in color.
---
A/N: A sweet story for an adorable OTP. Thanks to Tina and Mikela for editing for me! Inspired by Kim Sunggyu's I Need You MV and a prompt from the 100 Word Writing Challenge.
Pairing: Kris/Baekhyun (KrisBaek, implied!HunHan)
Rating: PG
Genre: Colors!AU, Romance
Length: 1814w
Summary: For Kris Wu, it takes a beanie, a scarf, and a hazelnut macchiato to help him See the world.
In the books that were written at the beginning of time, they say that the world shall be seen in black and white. From the summer sky and the flowers that bloom in spring to the leaves that fall in autumn and the twinkling lights that decorate trees in winter, everything will be in shades of grey.
But the People wanted more. They wanted to see the hues that were written about in legends and sung about in songs. They wanted to see more than the monochromes that painted their world bleak and lifeless.
They begged. They pleaded. And they were given an answer.
“One shall only see the colors of the world when with the one he is destined to be with until the end of eternity.”
Kris Wu has read the books and heard the stories. But the thing about Kris is that he is a firm believer in the phrase “Seeing is believing” and based on the lack of color in his life, he’s not quite ready to jump on the rainbow bandwagon of love and sunshine just yet. Besides, he considers black and white to be his favorite colors.
“It’s like seeing emotions,” his friend, Luhan, drawls out with a dreamy sigh.
They’re sitting in a quaint bistro, sipping on iced teas and eating flatbread sandwiches. The lighting is dim and murmurs of neighboring conversations are quiet as rainclouds that carry the annual spring showers start to hang over the city.
Kris looks up at the boy across the table, “So you’re telling me that when you met Sehun, all the colors looked like psychophysiological expressions?”
“Yeah!” the elder beams, “Like blue looks calm, yellow happy, and red angry. You know what I mean?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
The smile on Luhan’s eternally youthful face fades slightly as he watches Kris take a sip of his tea. The younger proceeds to examining the liquid that is a darker shade of grey, but not quite dark enough to be black.
“If you tried looking for your other half, you would know that iced tea is brown.”
Kris looks away from his cup and finds Luhan staring down at his plate with his bottom lip jutted out.
“You know that’s not true. I could search and search until the day I die, but I would never be able to See like you and the others unless I actually find him.”
“But if you just tried at least there would be a chance that you do. He may be closer than you think.”
Kris sighs and slouches back in his chair, “What’s the point anyway?”
“The point is,” Luhan promptly replies, “the world looks better in color.”
Kris raises an eyebrow.
“I don’t really know how to explain it, but it seems more alive. And I guess you do too,” Luhan bites the inside of his lip, “No more reading tags to determine the color of your clothes or memorizing that #0db200 is a shade of green when it’s really just the color of the grass in the park.”
Kris silently pushes his straw with his finger, watching the ice cubes float to the surface then sink back down to the bottom.
“But when you’re with your other half,” Luhan’s lips stretch into a lovesick smile, “life simply seems better. Maybe that’s why we are only able to see in color when we are with our other halves. Because when they’re not there, everything turns dull again.”
Kris studies Luhan for a few moments. In his twenty-three years of existence, he would never have imagined that Luhan, the boy who once claimed “True love? Screw true love. Food is my one and only,” would be sitting across from him, preaching to him about the importance of finding his other half.
“Well, you can’t miss what you never had,” Kris murmurs and the two fall silent.
---
Kris steps out of a Starbucks a few nights later. He wraps his scarf loosely around his neck and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, one hand gripping his hazelnut macchiato and the other stuffed in his jacket pocket. He tips his head back and takes a deep breath, the nighttime shower’s mist dancing across his face.
Kris trudges down the slightly damp sidewalk. He passes the couples taking moonlit strolls and falls behind those rushing to the station before they miss their rides home. But all the way, Luhan’s words weigh heavily on his mind and the loneliness Kris has learned to cope with is suddenly pressing on his heart.
He takes a sip of his coffee, blowing out hot air as the liquid slithers down his throat and warms his body.
Four blocks till he reaches his apartment complex. Four blocks till he’s out of the cold. Four blocks till he can distract himself from Luhan’s haunting words with the novel he’s reading or a rerun of a drama he’s watched twice or maybe -
CRASH.
“I’m so sorry!” a voice cries.
Kris stares down at the hot liquid that’s seeping into his jacket before slowly reaching down and picking up the paper cup and plastic lip he dropped onto the cement during the collision.
When he stands back up, his breath gets caught in his throat and he can’t believe what he’s seeing. Kris’ eyes widen when he comes face to face with a fuzzy ball of yarn atop a knitted beanie that’s neither black, nor white, nor any shade of grey he has ever seen.
The light rain stops and everything stills.
Slowly, like watercolors on hot-press paper, the mundane city starts to come alive. It’s as if someone is taking a fine tipped brush and painting the world before his eyes. A dab here and a dab there until everything is filled with a distinct pigment of its own. Every space is filled and no spot is left untouched.
Kris blinks at the small boy who is desperately trying to wipe the spilled coffee off Kris’ jacket with the sleeve of his sweater.
“I just ruined your jacket,” the boy looks around frantically as he starts to panic, “and it looks really expensive and oh my god, there’s coffee on your scarf too.”
Usually, Kris would feel a bit upset when a stranger bumps into him, causing him to spill his $4 coffee all over his $50 jacket. And although the boy is trying to clean up the mess, he’s probably just making the stain worse. But he doesn’t feel upset or angry or irritated or anything of the sort. He feels the opposite actually.
Not knowing how to express his emotions properly, Kris does the only action he knows that relatively matches what he’s feeling.
“Why are you laughing?” the boy asks in utter horror mixed with a hint of confusion as Kris doubles over and covers his mouth with the back of his hand, “Are you in shock about your jacket? Does it hold some sentimental value that can never be replaced? Oh my god, your other half bought it for you, didn’t he?”
Kris shakes his head and waves a hand as he tries to breathe. After a few deep inhales and exhales, he blinks a couple of times and views the city with new eyes. It looks vibrant, absolutely glowing, even though the hour hand on the clock tower is leisurely creeping past ten o’clock. And for the first time in his life, Kris is actually able to appreciate the tall buildings and maze of asphalt slabs that surround him.
Kris clears his throat when he catches the beanie boy’s eyes on him, “Are you seeing in color too or am I the only one?”
Confusion flickers across the boy’s face. He quickly looks around him and his jaw drops in awe. He slowly turns back to Kris, lips slightly parted and shock blatantly visible on his soft features.
“Oh, my god,” he says for the third time since they’ve bumped into each other.
He stares up at Kris with innocent, almost childlike eyes.
“So you’re my - and I’m your -” the boy closes his eyes for a few moments and decides to just give Kris his name.
“I’m Baekhyun."
“Kris,” he replies softly.
Kris finds himself gazing at Baekhyun as the small boy admires the world in wonder. Baekhyun tips his head all the way back, eyebrows furrowed and bottom lip between his teeth as he tries to figure out the color of the night sky.
Kris glances down at his clothes and a soft sigh of relief escapes his lips. Despite the blob shaped coffee stain on the front of his jacket, Kris thanks the heavens that he read the tags before getting dressed and the colors of his clothes match.
“I really like your beanie,” he finds the words leaving his mouth before he can stop them. Baekhyun looks away from the sky and gives Kris a questioning look.
“It matches my scarf,” Kris finishes lamely.
Well, his matching clothes might save him from looking like an idiot, but they can’t save him from acting like one.
Baekhyun lifts a hand and pulls the knitted yarn hat off of his head, tousling hair that looks so soft, Kris desperately wants run his fingers through the strands and brush them back in place. But instead, he quickly stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jacket before he does something that will send himself into further embarrassment.
They stand in silence for a minute, Baekhyun comparing the color of his beanie with the color of Kris’ scarf and Kris’ eyes flickering between Baekhyun and the ground.
Was the first meeting supposed to be this awkward? Was he supposed to feel this uncomfortable? Where was the warm, fuzzy feeling Luhan wouldn’t shut up about when he returned home after meeting Sehun for the first time?
But when innocent, puppy eyes turn into perfect half moons, Kris can already feel himself falling.
Falling in love with colors.
Falling in love with Seeing.
Falling in love with Baekhyun.
He can feel himself falling hard and he can feel himself falling fast.
They both walk back towards the Starbucks Kris exited earlier that night. Baekhyun owes Kris a new hazelnut macchiato and they both have a lot to talk about.
Kris smiles a gummy smile as Baekhyun launches off into an adorable ramble of semi coherent words and enthusiastic expressions, still mulling over the fact that their accessories match on the night of their first meeting.
“Maybe we really are destined to be together,” he beams up at Kris, the color of love dusting his cheeks.
Maybe they are, Kris thinks as they enter the coffee shop and grins when Baekhyun gasps at the infinite amount of hues that color the small eatery.
And maybe Luhan was right; maybe the world does look better in color.
---
A/N: A sweet story for an adorable OTP. Thanks to Tina and Mikela for editing for me! Inspired by Kim Sunggyu's I Need You MV and a prompt from the 100 Word Writing Challenge.