JUNGKOOK

Days on trial: 73

Tossing a shirt over the LED light of my clock, I groaned, frustration taking over my tired body. Three in the morning and I found myself still wide awake, tossing and turning, uncomfortable with all the extra space I had without Annie resting peacefully next to me.

It was strange, really. I'd never noticed how used I'd gotten to sleeping next to Annie, but now that she was gone, I couldn't sleep at all. My pillows still smelt like her; La Vie Est Belle and vanilla syrup, coconut shampoo and sunsets over the beach.  

We'd spent new years day doing absolutely nothing, but somehow talking about everything under the sun. Most of it had been nonsense, like tales of her reckless university days and my rebellious boy racer phase, but all those insignificant details had shaped us into the humans we were. 

She was impossibly dreamy when she was recovering from a hangover, brows constantly furrowed in the most adorable fashion. 

I adored watching her eyes light up like dynamite when she recounted old memories, and the blush of her cheeks deepening when she admitted embarrassing annecdotes. Smitten, I could have watched her for days, picking out new favourite parts of her face every few seconds. One moment it was her slightly sharper teeth that almost looked like fangs compared to the rest of them, and then the next it was the way baby hairs framed her small face as if she were a work of art. I'd have argued that she was.

I'd taken to calling her Sonic, on account of the way she snuggled up like a hedgehog in one of my hoodies - though also because she was irritable and unquestionably had her spikes out every single time Hobi made a wisecrack about the fact she looked like shit. 

She'd retaliate with a face of thunder and a remark about how 'the only thing he managed to pull last night was his ass through the front door.' He'd glare at her, and she'd glare back until one of them couldn't hold it in, and they both erupted into fits of laughter.

I'd watched them quietly, a smile on my lips, awestruck with my life. Annie had infiltrated and integrated into every single part of it, in a way that I'd never experienced before with a girlfriend. She felt like both an extension of myself and also completely separate from me; my other half. My better half. 

I'd always found that phrase to be vomit inducing. 

And then I'd met Annie.

Pulling a pillow over my head, I pressed it into my face and huffed, trying to soothe myself into slumber. Digging the heels of my palms into my eyes, they began to spark phosphene colours behind my eyelids. Blues and greens, mostly.

It reminded me of the ring that Annie always wore on her middle finger - which I'd recently learnt had been a gift from her sister on her birthday. On a thin gold band was a marquise cut blue topaz, surrounded by a cluster of cubic zirconias - according to Annie, at least. I didn't know shit about rings, which is probably why she had been the one to help Jimin pick a ring instead of me.

Morning light would catch on the intricate cuts of the stones, casting little blue flecks into my eyes. When I'd been Mono, I hadn't even noticed the variance in greys from things that shone, but the impact was impossible to miss now. Her ring acted like a prism, casting colour all around the mezzanine and over the pair of us.

I still couldn't quite grasp the concept of prisms, or rainbows really, to be honest, I just knew that I loved them. They were like magic to me, a new normal that I hadn't yet been able to blend into my ordinary life. 

I'd pull her into my body and dapple her skin with kisses as if I needed her like I needed air to breathe, and she'd wrestle against me until I stopped - but then she'd pout and give me puppy dog eyes over the fact that I had stopped. So we'd just repeat it all over again.

Routines like these were becoming the norm for us. It was terrifying, yet all the while exhilarating. This was my life now; a peaceful one. 

A contented one. 

One in which love was abundant and fears were minimal. 

━━━━━━━

It felt like I had barely slept a wink by the time I found myself in the waiting room of the clinic once more. Bleary eyed and head to toe in black, I stuck out like a sore thumb from all the other trial participants.

There was still one fear that loomed over me, like a black raincloud threatening to break into a storm at any given moment: 

Monovision. 

Sat here alone, my fears taunted me; hovering like syrphid flies, patiently waiting to suck the nectar from blossoming irises.

It wasn't long until I was repeating another routine I had started getting used to. 613 would be called, and I'd awkwardly manoeuvre to the double doors which took me up the corridor and into the office which had started feeling like a second home.

The plastic flap of laminated sheets hitting against one another rattled in my ears as the Doctor held up different colours, which I could now recite like my ABC's.

"Red," I spoke astutely as he presented the last card. With a smile and a nod, he shuffled the pile into a uniform stack on his desk.

"Excellent, Jungkook. Now," he looked down to his notes, double checking the information in front of him. "It says here that you picked up your last prescription early. Everything okay with them?"

Oh, boy.

"Yeah, yeah, fine," I nodded, a little too enthusiastically. He looked at me, beard white, smile lines deep and I knew that lying was going to do neither of us any favours. "Actually, no."

"Oh?"

And then it all came spilling out; how I'd accidentally started falling for someone, how I'd lost all my colours in the literal blink of an eye and how a weeks worth of pills in one sitting couldn't bring them back, but a fresh batch had. When I began to say it out loud, I realised how reckless I'd been with a relatively unstable drug and how I could have been fucking with their studies. All I had selfishly wanted to do was solve my own problems, without thinking for a moment that maybe it would cause other people problems instead.

The Doctor was silent as I spoke, only nodding tentitvely to let me know he was still listening - not that I could look at him. Ashamed, I was studying my hands instead, picking at the skin around my nails.

"Since the fresh batch, your vision has been as normal? Restored to Multivision?"

"Yeah, came back instantly, so maybe the pills just have a shorter shelf life than originally thought," I tried to suggest, knowing that my understanding of pharmaceuticals didn't even scratch the surface of his.

The lead of his pencil scratched against the thick paper in his workbook, making notes for his general trial file, not my own personal one.

"It's definitely something to look into," he conceded. "You were always a bit of an anomaly to the trials, Jungkook, so I suppose it's only fitting that your results are too."

I smiled a little bashfully at the skepticism I had shown towards the trials all those weeks ago.

"Doc, there's something else," I gritted my teeth.

"Go on..."

"I didn't mean for this to happen, and I'm really sorry, and I didn't mean to do it, it just happened and I didn't realise at first and then it just kept-

"Jungkook," he chortled from the very centre of his belly, like Father Christmas, just without the ho ho ho's. "This is a safe, confidential space. Please stop apologising."

"Sorry," I mumbled as my nose pushed up towards the crease between my brows, eyes wincing at the awkward nature of my existence. I apologised once more for apologising in the first place, before taking a deep breath. "Doc, I haven't taken a pill in four days."

He peered at me over the top of his glasses, questioning the information I had just disclosed. 

"I haven't taken a pill in four days," I repeated, looking up at him this time, more comfortable with my truth. "And my colours have never been brighter."

His pencil dropped, and then so did my eyes. 

Shouldn't have admitted that.

a/n: not long left until the end lol. only 4 (in novel) days. eeeee. x