you and me, we're bumper cars (taekook ff)

Gradient Sunsets

Jungkook likes to think he's already settled into his place in the neighbourhood quite quickly.

He's been living in his aunt's humble abode for nearly five days, and he's handled them all pretty well. His mornings are illustrated by waking up at six—on the dot—due to the sound of his aunt making breakfast while singing passionately to "All My Loving" playing on the radio. It's a pleasant sight to walk into when he settles into the dining room and the plates in front of him contain mountains of toast and bacon, along with some eggs and several slices of a variety of fruits. His aunt lets him brew his own coffee and doesn't hover at an awkward distance from him. In fact, contrary to his initial feelings towards her—or lack thereof—he's grown to like her; bonding through common interests in music and pulp magazines and fixing old cameras. She doesn't mind him sneaking in a smoke in the afternoons and sometimes pops open a bottle of beer for them to share while fixing up the attic or decluttering the garage.

"Don't tell you father," she reminds him between chips, toasts, and the latest episode of Seinfeld.

When they aren't conspiratorially drinking or working on several projects, he spends hours navigating the labyrinth of concrete streets on his old Vetta bike that he apparently left with his aunt all this time ("You called it a parting gift when you were seven. You were a very thoughtful young boy."). Through his morning and afternoon cycling, he has covered perhaps half of the entire town, and if he tries hard enough to rack through his brain, he can sketch out the entire map of all his travels onto a piece of paper; all the turns and alleys, backstreets and intersections, dead ends and driveways.

However, it is also through his rendezvous that he has realized that there are a lot of things he doesn't understand about this all-too-perfect, television-ready neighbourhood.

There are the seemingly infinite streets of the same standard suburban bungalows, with impeccably manicured lawns and friendly sixty-somethings who routinely bid him good morning whenever he takes his bicycle out for a run. There are the saturated sunsets that drip down the sky in golden tones and brilliant orange-red gradients. There is the overbearing feeling of isolation; from reality, as if it were floating in the middle of a space called nowhere, somewhere beyond the threshold of the city. Something about the size of the neighbourhood; about how tight-knit the community is, about how the friendly fifty-three-year-old veteran two houses away is Mr. Harrison and not just the friendly fifty-three-year-old veteran; about how a doctor's widow is Mrs. Jackson and not just the doctor's widow. Every single person's life in this town is somehow weaved into a much bigger web; a network of stories and gossip that strips them all of their right to privacy. He doesn't like it. Not one bit.

Those things, though, he can try to pick apart; those things, he can try to understand and adapt to. But a particular boy het met at the park with sunset-coloured hair casting strange looks his way is beyond his capacity.

Jungkook takes notice of the boy on his first Saturday afternoon in the town; he had decided take the bicycle out for a ride at sunset to ease his aunt's worry about his skin getting burnt by the midday glare of the summer sun.

He pedals towards the horizon of orange and pink, the warmth of the sun spreading throughout his body as his legs pedal away. He turns to the left abruptly, and the wind whistles in his ears. The red and black flannel shirt he wears over a plain white tee is carried by the wind; from behind, it almost appears as a cape. The adrenaline-seeking spirit unleashes from within him, and without much thought, he lifts his hands off of the handlebars, raising his middle fingers up in the air. He shrieks from the rush of the moment; he indulges the wind blowing across his body, the fleeting sunlight casting its last few waves of heat and light on his face, and the wide, concrete road stretching before him.