JUNGKOOK

Days on trial: 59

"Rhianne," Annie sighed with a noticable grimace as she clunked a pitcher full of fruit cider down on the table between us. Two glasses follow suit. "It's Celtic. Apparently I was concieved in Wales. I've always just gone by Annie instead - nobody calls me Rhi."

Sitting opposite me, she was finally answering the question I had asked before she disappeared into the crowd by the bar. No-one really spoke much after she had left, except for Chloe. "Kim Taehyung," her voice divulged. "Annie's ex."

"He literally just called you Rhi," I snorted, taking note of the fact she chooses to sit opposite me now, instead of taking the seat beside me that she had left empty. 

"Yeah, and he's literally nobody."

It dawned on me quite quickly that I didn't know anything about Annie. 

I knew what she did to pay the bills, how she drank her coffee and the way she looked in yoga pants, but that was it. Confronted with someone who must have known her like the back of his hand, I suddenly felt like a stranger.

Yet when the cool winter breeze trails the scent of her perfume my way, I don't seem to care all that much. She's just too pretty in this light. I can't tell if it's the reds and green of the fairy lights, or if she's just always been this vibrant. In my heart of hearts, I think it might have been both.

I find myself wondering if she laughed with Taehyung like she laughed with me. He was handsome, and a hell of a lot better dressed than Annie had ever seen me. Was that her type? Is that why she never gave me a second glance? I mean, not that it mattered.

He looked like he was one copy of an Edgar Allan Poe collection away from starting his own debate society; as if his playlist shuffled from Daddy Issues and Fluorescent Adolescent to Symphony Number... I dunno, whatever number symphony Mozart made famous, that one. I didn't have a clue what it was - but I bet he did.

I bet he could play it.

I bet he used to make Annie watch as he played his shitty little piano pieces, wearing his shitty little berets, as he drank shitty Châteauneuf-du-Pape (or whatever shitty red wine drinking elitists like to drink). I bet he'd talk about shitty philosophers and wouldn't even have to watch his hands as he played.

I'd made her play video games. I was an idiot.

"He didn't seem like your type."

Dunno what possessed me to say that. 

Quite clearly he was her type, given the fact he'd made her see colours. Shitty stupid colours. 

"I was recently reminded that 'assumptions are the mother of all fuck ups' - so it's best not to assume, isn't it, Kook?" She was joking, her smile mimicking her playful tone, but her guard was also definitely up. "What is my type, then?"

"I dunno. Not him," I staggered a little bit, trying to think of a valid response that didn't involve the words 'shitty' or 'prick' or 'pretentious' followed by 'asshole'. "Just can't believe you looked at him and saw colour."

"Alright, Mr Multi. Sorry, I forgot you've been seeing colour for all of a month and suddenly you're a know it all on how colours work," Annie's voice was laced with sarcasm and good humour, but she had a point.

It wasn't long until the rest of our friends decided to call it a night. Chloe and Jimin let us know that they couldn't cope with the cold anymore and went back to ours to 'warm up'. We'd goaded and teased them until they were out of earshot, knowing exactly what they were going to do. Part of me was jealous of what they had.

"How many times have you seen colour?"

She's considering lying. I can see it in her lips and how a smile is tugging on the sides of it, before she shakes her head and sighs. "Three and a half times."

I can't help but raise a brow. "And a half?"

"Only got halfway there until I found out he was seeing someone else. 

"Ouch. That sucks."

"Yeah. Better to be at half vision than full, though."

Realistically, I knew I needed to stop putting so much weight on the meanings of my colours.

So what if an argument with Annie had sparked red?

Surely it was just a coincidence that the sight of her underwear had triggered the corresponding colours...twice.

The fact that as I got lost in her stupid, round, sparkling, annoying, adorable eyes the other night and started to see a new colour fade in meant nothing.

It was just the drugs.

Just the drugs, I reasoned with myself. Yeah. That's it. Nothing to do with the way she's looking at me right now... but oh boy, the way she's looking at me right now...

God, it felt like she was a drug.

Six ciders in and she's got me feeling like I'm just about ready to declare undying love. Reign it in, idiot. 

"Did it come back?" I blutered a little prematurely. I didn't want to know the answer. "Your Multivision. When you saw him, did it come back?"

Annie lifted her gaze to meet mine, words caught on the tip of her tongue. 

She was pausing. 

No good answer ever came after a pause.

In fact, no answer really came at all. She simply shook her head with a faint smile and sorrowful eyes. They were sultry, but not in the way that commands you to the bedroom. Instead, they encourgaed, as if to say: Go on. You can do it. That thing you're afraid of? Do it.

"What's it like?" I began to ask, failing to form a coherent sentence yet again. I don't know what she's doing to me. "Losing it, I mean."

There was a laugh, followed by a surpringly dignified chug of her cider. 

"Um, really fucking sad actually," she admitted, and her gentle expression reminded me of my own dissapointment from earlier on in the day.

It didn't matter how carefully I shrugged my jacket off my shoulders and down onto the back of my chair, it would always end up dappled in paint. My forearms were rarely free of it either, though I'd taken special care when I was getting ready tonight to ensure that not a trace of my workday had been left on me.

Finally done with the comission, I'd taken a sigh of relief as I stepped back and admired my work. Typically I'd call my dad through and get his thoughts, but today was different: today I slid my phone out from the side pocket of my skinny cargo jeans and took a picture first.

And then I sent it straight to Annie.

She'd flattered and complimented my work until the cows came home, and whilst I revelled in it, I couldn't help but feel dissapointed that she couldn't see it in colour too. I wanted her to see the way I'd faded silvery lavenders into quartz pink and how the white of the stars popped against them. 

Unaware of my contemplation, she continued.

"It took me months to lose all my colour after Tae."

Tae.

I hyperfixated on him, my presumptions of who he was and how he'd fucked Annie over. I hated him without knowing anything about him.

"He was an idiot to break up with you, Annie."

There was another laugh. This time her eyes weren't challenging me.

"I broke up with him."

"Oh?"

"He wanted to move in, I wasn't ready. We were just at different points. I didn't stop seeing colours because I didn't love him - I had to force myself to stop seeing colours because I did love him. It just wasn't gonna work."

I considered for a moment how much of a bad person it would have made me if I admitted that I wanted him to have broken her heart. When I phrased it like that, it sounded awful. It's not my intention, I just wished that she could have been hurt so that she could heal. 

Without a wound, hearts die a slow death instead. It's infinately more painful. 

Tiff had left a puncture hole in mine, but I'd been able to patch that up no bother. Taehyung had left Annie's to wither, like a summer rose cut prematurely from it's stem. 

"He's stupid either way."

"Then it looks like he's exactly my type, then."

"How so?"

"Idiots. I go for idiots."

I know what she's saying. I can hear her loud and clear. She's like a marching band parading down a library aisle. 

And yet my brain refuses to acknowledge it. She didn't mean it like that. Surely.

"Good job I'm not an idiot then, isn't it?" I smirk, despite my ruby ears.

Yes, you are. You're the biggest fucking idiot just for saying that.

But she laughs, and that's enough to soothe my nerves.

"Jeon Jungkook: Not an idiot," she teases, gesturing her hands as if I'm an up and coming star.

She's got it all wrong though.

I consider the alternative names of my one-man Broadway show, instead.

Jeon Jungkook: A Multi. 

Jeon Jungkook: A Definite Idiot.

Jeon Jungkook: A Helplessly Infatuated Fool.

I don't offer any of those suggestions up, though - because like we're both aware, I'm-

"Not an idiot," I repeated with a nod of my head, raising my glass before downing the rest of my pint. "Time for another pitcher."

Idiot.

A/N: idk if i mentioned it before, but jk is an idiot lol. Really badly edited but whoops, ignore my typos