Work Text:
The soothing station sounds evolved to a loud crowd buzz as the minutes went by, disturbing his ears. He hadn’t brought his earphones this time, in utter certainty that he wouldn’t have any issues with the Thursday afternoon’s noise, a mistake that made him internally curse his poorly collected data from that particular period of the day.
Noticing the train’s arrival, he got into the carriage in a rush, pressing his corporeal form on the window’s side, as if he was protecting himself from the world inside. He had brought a tiny notepad and a remnant of a chewed pencil, both contained in the right pocket of his overcoat—a first aid kit that helped him put his brain in its place when it attempted to detach from reality—and he fumbled for them, proceeding to scribble a few words. Café, keychain, sand, minchia—what does it have to do with anything?, he mumbled in unison with the tip of his pencil, frustration growing in his chest and climbing up his throat. There was a missing piece, a non-existent purpose, a knot between the junction of his sentences tangling the wires of his brain.
He tucked his old tools inside the pockets of his overcoat again, forbidding abstract thoughts from leaking through words that wouldn’t tell him anything, and turned his head to contemplate the vast scenery provided by the window next to his hunched self. When the beautiful set of images got a little too ugly for his fatigued eyes, he switched his gaze to the people from the train—humans of all kinds and shapes, most of them accompanied by a loved one, and some of them travelling comfortably with the company of their own selves—including a peculiar someone on the other side of the carriage.
It was a man that certainly hadn’t reached his forties yet, although he was quite close. His round, large eyes and slouchy posture were all focused on his phone, and something from the portable screen in his hand made the stranger curl his lips in a tender smile, softening his features in a mesmerizing act. He couldn’t take his eyes off him, enthralled by a set of his most intrinsic details: the black-patterned ascot adorning his elegant neck, the tanned skin of his chest, daring to show itself through his unbuttoned dandy-ish shirt in every move he decided to make, and his slender fingers, modelling on his phone and on the handle of a mug of coffee, a couple that would certainly keep him awake on his way back to London. The amount of stimulating imagery posing for his eyes made the words dance back into his brain in an excellently organized waltz—an event he hadn’t attended in months—that propelled him to grab the notepad and chewed pencil combo from his pocket and start rearranging his previous tumult of words into a consistent line addressed to the stranger from the train.
His second shell got in the way of the train writer’s attention.
His motorcycle boots give me this kind of…
There wasn’t an adequate context for the warmth that caught his chest every time he laid his eyes on him.
Acrobatic blood… flow concertina…
The more he stared at the muse posing unknowingly for his eyes, the more the unexplainable yet vivid corpus of passionate words swirled in his head.
Cheating heartbeat… rapid fire…
He was fully submerged into the ocean of dopamine and letters in his mind, unable to avert his eyes from the travelling stranger, until his distracted gaze resulted in their eyes colliding. The train writer immediately hunched his body through an awful heat spreading across the sides of his face. A burning realization of being perceived fueled his anxiety, and he sought for a residue of serenity by keeping the pair of writing devices occupying his fingers, pretending to scribble anything on the scraped paper, terrified of the idea of looking up. But London was getting closer and closer, the passengers started to perform a well-known departure ritual, and his time inside the carriage was running out, so he found his own set of guts to direct his gaze at the charming stranger again, only to be rewarded with a timid yet soft smile. He responded by picking the most awkward grin of his collection, his heart racing in a paradoxical combination of joy and embarrassment.
The train had reached the end of the tracks, and he tried hard not to lose sight of his enigmatic stranger amid the rushing passengers trying to get the next connection, but it was too late: he had merged into the horde of people crowding the local station. Accompanied by a disappointed sigh, he traversed the now empty hallway, approaching the seat where his unknown muse had been before. To his surprise, he had left a tiny folded paper sitting gently on the leather seat, and the writer's curiosity made him take the bait by grabbing the piece of paper and unfolding it, only to find a one-sentence puzzle instruction.
8088616. The middle of adventure is such a perfect place to start x
Guided by an abundance of scenarios swimming across his brain, he tucked the paper into his pocket with the writing tools as if it was his most treasured clue, ready to start his upcoming tutorial.