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Jungkook is colour blind.
He doesn’t mix his greens up with his reds. It’s not just a case of missing pigment or a two-dimensional glitch in his photoreceptors. It’s not a narrowing of his spectrum because there is no spectrum to narrow.
He sees black. He sees grey. He sees white.
Sees light and shadows, but not the saturated sky as it changes from orange to purple as the sun goes down. Sees details, but can’t tell you the colour of someone’s skin, the colour of their eyes. The colour of their lips. And it’s not tied to some romantic notion. Nothing to do with soul mates. It's not timers on arms, tattoos on skin, coming of age—concepts Jungkook thinks are mostly ridiculous, is jealous of, because for him there is no gain. There’s no rainbow at the other end. No love, no switch. No inbuilt trigger that’s going to change the way he sees; when he’s walking home from his job, when he’s in the midst of the busy city on a Saturday night, when he’s on a train hurtling through the country. It is what it is—the hand Jungkook was dealt. Genetic monochromatism. Rare, but so are shark attacks. So are plane crashes. Rare doesn’t mean things don’t happen. All it means is that if they happen to you, you’re unlucky—that is, if the thing that happens is bad, and in Jungkook’s case, it is.
Or at least he thinks it might be.
Reality is, he doesn’t know what he’s missing because you can’t truly miss something that you never even had.
But the older he gets, the more he learns about the world, the more he learns about people, the more he feels a snaking grief. Grief for something he’s never known but still knows is lost. Is gone. Is different. It wraps around his lungs and squeezes the air out when he hears people talk about flowers, fireworks, fabrics, what they’ve seen on film. Because, to Jungkook, it’s just a change of contrast, a shift from dark to light.
Illumination and nothingness.
Jungkook’s never had a boyfriend—or a girlfriend, for that matter—because he is afraid. Afraid he’ll say the wrong thing or give the wrong advice. Feel the wrong feeling. Bore them to death because he’s heard that grey is drab and Jungkook thinks he might be what he sees. Dreary and dull. Tedious and tiring.
He steers clear of galleries. Doesn’t enjoy spring. Never goes out to the movies. Can’t tell the difference between an orange and a grapefruit, so how is he supposed to tell you that your outfit brings out your eyes, the highlights in your hair? How is he supposed to smile when you crunch through Autumn leaves and yell that they’re so vibrant? When you say that you only go to the beach on rainy days because the sea turns green, like an uncut emerald?
Jungkook thinks that there might be a limit to how much grey a person will endure. How much they’ll bend before they fake it. He lays awake at night trying to fathom how many unshared observations, how many failed interpretations it would take for a gleam to fade from a smile, for a glimmer in patient eyes—a lover’s, say—to tarnish like cut-rate gold. And, as he calculates the cost, weighs up the risk of sure rejection, the inevitable discarding of something incomplete—something dysfunctional—he decides that he won’t ever be the cloud that eclipses someones sun, and he doesn’t have it in him to try and shine for two.
The day he meets Taehyung, it’s because colour, or lack thereof, almost nearly kills him.
He’s standing at a traffic crossing. The pedestrian lights are flashing, which to Jungkook means you can still walk but you better do it quickly because now you’re on the clock.
The problem is that they’re flashing amber, not green. Flashing amber because they’re broken. It’s something as clear as day to anyone with all the components of their ocular system intact. To Jungkook, however, the signal is normal. It’s completely fine—all good, please go—light being just a form of Morse code that Jungkook relies on in his daily life to get from A to B, pedestrian lights nothing more than a rudimentary on/off system. Static on the top? Go. Flashing? Go quickly. Static on the bottom? Stop.
So, the lights are flashing, telling Jungkook to just hurry the fuck up and cross the road. So, that’s what he does. Steps right out in front of the car that any other person would notice because it’s red. Because it’s loud, purposeful air in the exhaust because the dude behind the wheel has a teeny, tiny penis. But with his headphones in and his greys in place of something more discernible, more vivid, Jungkook is oblivious. Doesn’t notice he’s made a mistake until he hears a horn blaring, urgent, above his music. Until he feels a violent tug on the back of his shirt hard enough to make him topple on his ass, almost crack his tail bone.
“Are you fucking blind?” a guy with apple cheeks, the smoothest skin Jungkook has ever seen, is yelling. His pretty eyes bulge from his head, very clearly shaken.
Jungkook laughs, because sometimes he wishes that he was—completely blind instead of flawed. Sometimes he wishes he was dead, and honestly, today, he would have likely thanked the stars if the cute, angry guy shooting him daggers had just let him keep walking. Though, knowing Jungkook’s luck, he’d just end up quadriplegic, living out the rest of time in black and white, pissing in a bag and staring at the wall.
Recognising that his saviour's distress is somehow greater than his own, Jungkook says, “Look, I’m ok. I’m sorry. I just...didn’t see the car is all. I’m good. We're good.”
The guy sticks out his hand. Helps Jungkook up, obliging but still scowling. “Some thanks might be appropriate right about now,” hot guy grumbles.
Jeez. A tough one.
Jungkook sighs. Sort of mumbles, “Thank you.” Struggles with the words because he doesn’t really mean them. Yet, when he sees how unimpressed the guy still looks, he adds, taunting and dramatic, “Oh my god. You totally saved my life”—he swoons for effect—“how can I possibly repay you?”
Hot guy rolls his eyes. “No need to get all OTT.” He dusts his hands off on his pants, Jungkook having transferred a footpaths-worth of gravel from his own in the process of standing up from where he was splayed.
“How’s this, then?” Jungkook begins. “The reason I was crossing the road in the first place was to grab bubble tea. You like boba? I’ll shout you one. Think of it as thanks that you can taste."
“I’m late for class,” the guy says, ruefully, hesitation in his voice, his stance. If Jungkook is guessing right, the guy could easily be swayed.
Jungkook smirks. Maybe it’s the near-death adrenaline giving him an extra boost, amplifying his social skills—sketchy at the best of times—that makes him say, “So? Be later. Let me buy you a drink.”
To Jungkook’s surprise, the guy says yes.
Likes pudding-flavoured milk tea enough to follow Jungkook to the boba shop. Likes Jungkook enough to skip his Saturday English class and stick around long enough for Jungkook to learn that he likes a guy named Kim Taehyung. And though Jungkook's never had a boyfriend, it occurs to him that maybe he hasn’t given the idea the chance it probably deserves. That maybe it's really something he needs to do while he’s still young. Before he gets any more bitter. Before he gets mowed down for real—a car, a bike.
Dies without ever loving anything but boba tea.
The day that Taehyung comes to Jungkook’s for dinner is the first time Jungkook’s had someone in his house.
“That’s your couch?”
“Yeah,” Jungkook says, defensive. Already gearing up for some comment about how it clashes with the rug, the blinds, his kitchen counter. The fuzzy, loose-knit sweater slung over the back. “Why?”
“It’s fucking”—Taehyung takes a run up and lands flat on his back with an oof—“sick. Holy fucking shit, this is expensive. I could freaking live on this. Mine’s a stained piece of crap I traded for 20 hours of math help for some dudes kid.”
“Oh,” Jungkook says from the doorway. He’s still gripping the handle as he watches Taehyung flip-flop like a fish on a three-seater sofa the clerk told Jungkook was blush. Some kind of pink. He’s still having trouble marrying up the fact that Taehyung tutors in trigonometry but still can’t pop the straw through the top of a mintly-sealed Brown Sugar Special without discharging half of the contents or that he’d tried to clean his teeth with a lozenge in his mouth when he had a cold, only to get sad when it popped out into the sink. Taehyung is a jigsaw, and, for once, Jungkook thinks that he might not have to lose something if he decides to take this puzzle on, give it an honest go, invest himself in someone. Add some risk to all the self-stifled fantasies he’s had since he first saw Taehyung bend over—see if he can make them real.
“I feel like I’m in a hotel,” Taehyung kind of groans, and there, stretched out in full, arching his spine with limber ease, belly peeking out from his loose shirt, Jungkook wonders whether food can wait. Has never really wanted anyone like he wants Taehyung right now. Watches, mortified, as Taehyung tugs free a worn pair of boxer shorts from between the cushions. Taehyung wiggles his eyebrows. “A really slutty one,” he adds, slinging Jungkook’s dirty laundry—that is only there because he’d dumped his gym gear on the couch the other night and promptly fell asleep on the pile before he’d cared to move it—across the room.
Then Taehyung rolls on his side, hands stroking the upholstery, seemingly enthralled with the feel, and the look he throws Jungkook unfurls heat like waves from a bomb blast somewhere deep in Jungkook’s gut. “Love the colour.” Taehyung smirks, wide grin inviting with its luscious lips, a touch of gloss that maybe makes them darker. Fuller. “Matches the heat blotching up your cheeks. Wanna come see if two can fit?”
Jungkook fits.
His hands fit on Taehyung’s waist, his chapped lips fit Taehyung’s mouth and other places just as well—collarbones, the crease of Taehyung’s elbow. This is the fourth person Jungkook’s ever kissed, the second he’s touched below the belt. Taehyung laughs when Jungkook tells him so, loud and light, not out of ridicule but out of disbelief. He says Jungkook’s hot. Says he’s every guy’s wet dream. Body, face, the way he moves. The polarity of Jungkook’s arrogance and patent apprehension acted out in the same breath—the product of bridled anger, single-minded bodily unease that transformed into resilience laced with self-deprecation some time in Jungkook’s teens.
Annoying, Jungkook’s brother calls it. Certainly not what you’d call sexy.
Taehyung disagrees.
Has the audacity to call Jungkook cute, petulant. A baby. Thrives, like a total sadist, on making Jungkook squirm.
He pokes Jungkook on the cheek. Kisses the line creasing his forehead from the frown that is probably deeper than it should be at his age. “I’m into you, Jungkook.”
“Might wanna try my cooking before you make statements like that,” Jungkook deflects. His insides are doing a jelly dance, and he’s not sure he can stand up. Doesn’t think he wants to. Is happy in Taehyung’s arms, with his hands—a lighter shade than Taehyung’s—busy on Taehyung’s skin, warm and moisturised to the point that it feels wet. Is resolved to make it wetter before the night is through, if Taehyung lets him. If he doesn’t do something dumb and fuck this up—
Oh, please, don’t let me.
“I eat Dorito sandwiches and peanut butter with a spoon straight from the jar. Anything that steams is a big step up—except, you know, dog shit. And you have a working oven.” Taehyung says it like Jungkook has gold. Bullions stacked against the wall. Like he’s the patron saint of standards. Like he’s so much more than functional when Jungkook knows he’s mediocre, at best. “I’m already impressed,” Taehyung purrs. “Besides… I’ve never had dinner served to me by a good looking guy in an apron”—wink—“and nothing else.”
Jungkook starts to argue, “But I don’t have an apr—”
“Fine.” Taehyung sighs like he’s put out, like he’s just been asked to work a double shift on the one Sunday that he is rostered off. “If you insist on losing the apron, I’ll let it slide. Although, I’ll warn you”—he grips Jungkook just a little bit too tight around the waist, their bodies flush. Jungkook’s heart does some stupid flutter and he watches, rapt, as Taehyung’s mouth becomes something more lips, something flirtatious that fills Jungkook with hope—“the food had better be better than you naked or both of us are going hungry.”
Untouched, dinner inevitably goes cold.
In between kisses and hands in hair and skin on skin, Jungkook learns there’s more to black than burnt toast forced down a throat on another lonely weekend; more to white than the unscented bar of soap in a bathroom with a mirror that has never seen a reflection that’s not his.
Black is all the secret places he dares let Taehyung touch.
White is a blinding smile that meets his every time and doesn’t falter
The night that they first have sex Jungkook sits in sweat-damp sheets. He’s wearing Taehyung’s shirt and it’s slipping off his shoulders and his ass and legs are bare. He watches Taehyung’s face. Studies how the shadows play across his cheekbones every time that Taehyung blinks, slow, with his breath still shot to hell and his hands on Jungkook’s calves and his head in Jungkook’s lap. The dark is peaceful and Taehyung shines in it like a moon fallen to earth and he feels his neap tide settle into devastating ease.
Taehyung peppers kisses on his thigh, hair tickling Jungkook’s knee, wildly tousled from being yanked—a little something new Jungkook’s just learned can send him off the deep end, get him hot and bothered, the way that Taehyung gasps.
“Gonna tell me if you liked it?”
“I—” Tongue tied, Jungkook flails, because he can’t think where to start describing what just happened, how it liquified his bones, shook him to his core, made known the unfeigned meaning of endless possibility. There’s an echo of their sounds—Jungkook’s fragmented moans and Taehyung’s soft, obscene coaxing—in between his roving thoughts; of Taehyung hands and Taehyung’s cock, his leg slung over Jungkook’s shoulder and fierce enthusiasm, more than anything, driving Jungkook’s fevered motion. The heat that lingers in Jungkook’s eyes and the flush still on his chest speak of tells he can’t find the words for. Stuck, he rushes out with, “I think you know.”
Taehyung doesn’t press for details. Instead, he murmurs, “Can I tell you what I liked?”
Jungkook gets a flash of where his tongue just was. Of how Taehyung had sobbed and swore and bucked while Jungkook had him pinned.
He swallows and shuts his eyes.
Taehyung’s tracing idle circles around the bone of his inner ankle. It dredges up a far-off memory, something that Jungkook read once in the waiting room of his therapist—another therapist, Jungkook’s rap with referred help a stinging eye-wince at best, so folded in on himself he feels more like origami than a boy—that in the hollow below the joint, there’s a pressure point for lust. He wonders if that’s why he’s got this warmth in his belly that percolates with each pass of Taehyung’s fingers through the dip.
It soothes. Makes Jungkook brave. Brave enough to say, “Let me tell you something first.”
Taehyung whispers wordless encouragement into the fold of Jungkook’s hip and Jungkook feels dazed when he admits, “I like it when you say my name.”
His face is pressed to Jungkook's skin but Jungkook feels it when Taehyung cracks a smile.
Taehyung asks, “And?”
“I—um...” Jungkook shifts and lays back down flat. Pulls Taehyung up his body, so they’re laying side by side, tips of their noses touching. Taehyung’s staring at him, waiting. There’s patience in his silence and comfort in the foot that’s wriggled its way under Jungkook’s. It rubs along the arch, calming and smooth. Nothing like the way he clawed at Jungkook’s skin and bit his neck and demanded Jungkook make him feel it. “I like the way you arch and tip your head back when you’re going to—when you came. Like”—Jungkook exhales. His face might be on fire—“I liked it when you rode me.”
Taehyung’s tongue flicks out to sketch his lip.
“You think you’d wanna try it?”
“Yeah,” Jungkook says, automatic, breathless and unblinking. It’s on the right side of eager and it gets worse, endearing yet so desperately airy, when he adds, eyes wide, with you followed by just you.
Taehyung laughs.
It’s teasing but affectionate. Enough so that Jungkook can meet his gaze notwithstanding feeling like a grade-A dweeb. Taehyung’s eyes glint like rock-pools in the dimness. “Well. That’s good. I was worried that you were about to make me go through all the contacts on my phone and it’s down to 2%. Although, you know—if you wanted, I know a few from memory that’d be happy to oblige.”
“Oh my god,” Jungkook says, quietly. Suppressing a giggle and trying to forget how needy his voice was when he’d blurted out ‘with you’, he admonishes, “Shut up.”
“But don’t you want to hear what I liked?” Taehyung pouts, and it’s all Jungkook can do, being mere inches away, to not just kiss those lips red raw. Lips that mapped parts of his body he never thought would be unlocked.
But before he can answer, his stomach lets rip a growl loud enough to make both of them jump.
Taehyung grins. “See somebody worked up an appetite?” He’s smug, disgustingly satisfied.
So, they’re in Taehyung’s kitchen and they’re eating crumpets with plum jam, and Taehyung’s sitting on the counter, wearing nothing but a t-shirt. He’s all sunshine, distilled cheer and deranged, unerring interest—questions after questions—butter dripping down his arm.
And when they’re silent, it’s ok. Pleasantly tranquil. A quiet not like being alone.
It’s in between scalding mouthfuls of his sixth crumpet that Taehyung, without any qualms, any hint of hesitation, says he likes the way that Jungkook holds him by the hips, thumbs spread wide in a greedy grip, as Jungkook fucks him. That he likes how Jungkook shakes. That he wants to be Jungkook’s second time, his third time, his fifteenth; and when Taehyung talks, Jungkook believes him. Feels more than just intriguing, some experimental whim.
In moonlight they’re both silver, sterling harmony, fluid and strange, the dullest grey renewed with lustre, and everything is Taehyung.
The day that Jungkook musters up the courage to ask Taehyung out—officially, that is, after a few months of kicking round, of fucking on Taehyung’s couch, in Taehyung’s car, in Jungkook’s bed that doesn’t squeak with every movement—it’s raining hard.
Huddled under the umbrella Jungkook holds over their heads he smiles as Taehyung swings off his arm, dramatically decrying the weather. How it’s making his hair frizzy, splattering mud on his clean shoes. He fiddles with his fringe, long enough to graze his chin, as they weave through glassy streets, ducking in and out of shops and stomping through a hundred shallow puddles.
Their wallets thin as the day gets colder.
Jungkook stocks up on plain white t-shirts, because they’re safe; Taehyung buys everything—whatever his long fingers run across on the rack, frugal a foreign concept to Taehyung regardless of his pay grade. Jungkook has always hated shopping. Hated how the sales clerks look at him with pity when he asks if the pants tagged as ‘lime’ match the jacket tagged as ‘purple’, colours arbitrary words, abstract labels. But today Jungkook is happy. He forgets he’s different. That he’s missing something so fundamental that most people can’t believe it can be lost.
He forgets that he doesn’t know that grass is green or flames burn blue or that his eyes are brown like coffee, when he’s with Taehyung.
When they get to the jewellery store that Taehyung frequents, often has pieces made at—metal bracelets, tasteful rings—Jungkook disappears. Then he’s nervously striding out through the back-room curtains with a black box in his hand. In the box is a silver earring. Small. The letter ‘J’. He puts it in Taehyung’s left earlobe, third hole from the top, and as he does, he pushes back his hair, longer than he’s ever grown it, to show him the gold ‘T’, a colour people say is precious, means magic, passion, wealth; and Taehyung makes Jungkook richer than an unpolluted ocean, than the double-dipped toffee fudge cakes Taehyung insists he eats.
And when Taehyung smiles, presses a soft, unbearably deep kiss to Jungkook’s lips right there in the middle of the store, Jungkook delivers the words he’s wanted to say since the first time they held hands, straight into Taehyung’s mouth:
“Go out with me. Be mine. Be mine because I’m yours.”
Taehyung says yes.
Says yes again and again, and even though Jungkook can’t see the pink that’s dusting Taehyung’s cheeks, he feels it. He feels it. The heat under the palms of his hands that cup Taehyung’s chuffed face. And grinning, Taehyung says, “Bet you’re glad I saved your ass from dying cause the number of pictures people are taking of us right now is gonna get you at least two days of fame on insta.”
Bright red, Jungkook drags them out of the store, umbrella forgotten in the doorway, and lifts Taehyung off his feet, holds him up in the pouring rain. Has the kiss he’s always dreamed of—starry-eyed and hideously romantic. And as they’re walking home, soaking wet, hands interlinked and so very much together, Jungkook thinks he doesn't need an alphabet of colour to interpret Taehyung’s world. That how he sees has nothing on how he feels—a thrilled flutter that never settles, exhilaration making his heart, that’s never been this full, expand until it’s glutted, set to burst.
It’s so easy, he decides, when he clutches Taehyung’s arm and feels his waist gripped by strong hands that know how and when to touch him, to let himself just fall.
The day that Taehyung moves in, Jungkook’s apartment being the only option that doesn’t require a full steam clean and a fight with a landlord straight from hell, it’s the first time Jungkook’s flat feels like a home. It’s also the first time that he fucks Taehyung with no condom.
Head buried between Taehyung’s shoulders, tongue tracing the line of his spine, Jungkook resolves right on the spot that it might be the best thing he’s ever done in his short life because—holy shit—it feels amazing. Feels intimate in a way that speaks of trust and effortless commitment. It feels real. And when he slows the roll of his hips down just enough that his dick catches on the lip of Taehyung’s rim, that clenching, slicked-up muscle, Jungkook knows he’s swallowed stars. Knows he doesn’t need colour to comprehend that the spots that dance in his eyes are the same blinding red as the blood in his veins, the blood that races through his organs, pumps and pumps. And when he comes, he fills Taehyung up with a shattered groan, the intensity of it matched by the way Taehyung writhes and heaves beneath him. It coats Taehyung’s thighs when he pulls out, and Jungkook doesn’t know how to stop staring when Taehyung reaches between his legs and runs his fingers through the mess, brings them to his lips and licks them clean. There’s a smirk on his filthy mouth, an epicurean sparkle in his hooded, fucked-out eyes, and Jungkook is winded.
“Jesus christ,” he chokes. Quickly files away the image, one more thing to steal his breath, send him skulking to the bathroom when the memory hits at work, his job as bland as his washed-out vision. Thinks that maybe his luck might’ve changed the day that Taehyung knocked him flat. Thinks nights like these, nights when there’s no end to where they start or where they’ll go, that he might be the luckiest guy in his street, maybe the whole world.
Taehyung’s friends start a campaign. Complain that they’re too gross. Revoltingly in love and could they stop being so disgusting. But this is new and privately Jungkook is awed at how their wash load grows to deal with the volume of soiled sheets, repurposed t-shirts, sodden socks. They have needs and they’re insatiable; multicoloured in their own ways.
The sex is good.
But what makes Jungkook senselessly giddy are the trifling, mundane things and how they don’t seem so insipid when they’re done Kim Taehyung—doing dishes, paying bills, shopping for groceries, food expenses always high because Jungkook is a chronic, secret snacker and Taehyung a shameless feeder.
“I like watching you chew,” Taehyung says most nights when they’re having dinner. Tonight, he follows the admission with: “Want me to tell you why?”
“I know why.” Jungkook smiles.
“Why then?” Taehyung goads.
“Because I look like Reno.”
Reno. Taehyung’s pet rabbit. He died shortly after they got together, Taehyung convinced Jungkook was sent to him as some kind of replacement. A human, souped-up version. Bigger and—Jungkook had said ‘better’ at the time, but Taehyung got sad, so they agreed to go with buffer.
Taehyung likes Jungkook’s muscles.
Enjoys them just as much as Jungkook enjoys them being touched, felt up and squeezed; the size of Taehyung’s hands, the way fit around his bicep, span the outline of his thigh.
God, his fucking hands.
And even though Jungkook can’t know those hands are a single shade of honey, a gorgeous unblemished bronze that stretches all the way from Taehyung’s slender wrists to the tips of his long fingers, he does know that they’re special.
Knows that these are the hands he wants to hold until it’s over, that permanent kind of black, and just the fact he's had this at all, Jungkook knows that he’ll find peace.
The day Taehyung walks out of their flat after their first real fight is the day Jungkook thinks he understands the colour blue.
People told him that blue was calm. Was the colour of shorelines in warm, exotic places, the sky on the clearest day. But Jungkook thinks, that just like the sky and the endless deep, it’s the empty colour of vastness. Of despair. A colour that follows the fervid red of love and the happiness of yellow, the comfort of green. A wretched colour jammed next to the brutal hue of a bruise, of being broken—
Indigo.
The shortest wavelength.
The most visible colour to the naked eye. The only part of a rainbow that Jungkook has even seen simply because it is the darkest; a sore streak across a bleak expanse, the sky a thing that merely changes texture. Changes with setting sun and rising moon and breaking dawn. Is never really beautiful; not the way that people describe it—in books, on the TV.
Nothing is as beautiful as Taehyung.
The blue sticks around for three days. Clings to Jungkook's monochrome prison until he hears the jingle of Taehyung's keys in the front door. Wary footsteps in the kitchen.
Jungkook’s been listening and now his heart's right there—his life, his person—he’s terrified.
The bluest blue.
The blankest white, the gravest grey.
“Where’d you go?” he calls out. His voice is rough. It wavers. He’s too scared to move from the bed. Their bed. Where they sleep and fuck and learn and grow and share.
A glass drops, shatters as it hits the tiles.
Jungkook finds Taehyung on the floor, hands trembling, scrambling at the fragments.
“Nowhere that I wanted to be,” Taehyung says when he looks up, and they both know then and there, maybe knew all along, that they can always, always fix it.
Nerves make for senseless actions. This Taehyung tells Jungkook much later through puffy lips, tear-stained, kiss-swollen lips. Says his hands were shaking from the moment he got in the car to make his way home, afraid Jungkook—who always had a temper, harmless as it is, all practiced fury funnelled through a cracked release valve—would ask Taehyung to leave again, and this Taehyung can’t do.
In the night, with Jungkook’s arms around Taehyung’s middle and his lips in Taehyung’s hair, Taehyung lays bare that he’ll love Jungkook until the day he passes over, and if Jungkook goes first, he’ll find him. For sure he’ll fucking find him. He’ll turn the brightest silver and they’ll light it up forever. But for what time they have left, Taehyung’s all in for all the days Jungkook wears orange with brown, comes home with green bananas, waits by the wrong car. For the days that Jungkook cries when he doesn’t know what colour Taehyung’s eyes shine in sun, and for the days he laughs, a smear of strawberry topping across Taehyung’s shocked face, funny even though he'll never know it’s pink.
Taehyung tells him that he’s in the scariest, truest love that he has ever been in. Wants to stay in Jungkook’s grey world with his long black hair and big white teeth. Then to prove it, in a show of stupid, heartfelt solidarity, Taehyung dyes his own hair. Swaps out dark brown for pewter. A touch of grayscale to keep with him, a little slice of Jungkook’s world. Jungkook doesn’t have the heart to tell him that it doesn’t look much different. That pewter and dark brown are the same shade as dreary, but his soul sings at the gesture. Taehyung’s devotion takes Jungkook down to his knees. It makes him sick to his gut to think he could have passed this up. Just meandered through the shadows, never knowing what he’d missed—a pretty boy who talks too loud, that shares his light each time they kiss, sends it express through Jungkook’s body. A boy who takes his drab and launches it like a flare, bright and beautiful enough to shame every colour in the sky.
This love is big.
Bigger than the emission of light and the way Jungkook perceives it—the principle of univariance that he broke when he was born.
It’s bigger than him.
Bigger than his monochromatism.
The day Jungkook decides that he no longer needs colour is like any other day.
Curled around Taehyung on the couch watching some drama neither of them could rightly name, Taehyung’s thighs between his own, warm and soft and heavy, Jungkook’s drifting in and out of sleep when something hits him. Hits him hard. It might be the beers they sank. Might have something to do with the way that Taehyung smells, how he smells like home. His clothes, his neck, his hair. But what he thinks as he’s lying there, trailing fingers up and down Taehyung’s bare arms, is that he’s whole. Doesn’t need colour. Is no longer missing out because he has it—it’s right here.
Taehyung is colour.
Every red linked to lust, every yellow linked to joy, every blue linked to heartache. It’s Taehyung.
He remembers what Taehyung said once, that white is every colour of the spectrum, and white is something that Jungkook can understand. White is where all the colours he’s never learned the name of intersect, converge and combine. Where all the colours Taehyung transmits when he laughs, when he shouts, when he moans Jungkook’s name, are simultaneously reflected.
And Jungkook has it.
White.
Everything he sees and doesn’t see, all he has and doesn’t have—it’s white; and in that moment, Jungkook gets it. He no longer longs to separate red from green, blue from sunny yellow, the way that he can’t separate himself from Kim Taehyung.
His future is white and colour blind or not, Jungkook wants—for the first time—to run, sprinting, toward it.