rain » vkook

two

it rains long into the night, and i sit on my balcony and watch as the sunset tries to break through the clouds.

it is beautiful.

i paint it when night falls, moving inside so my thoughts can knock around the confines of my apartment.

the thing i love about painting is how it erases my presence. i'm not thinking, i'm not me, i'm not anyone besides the canvas. it's relieving.

except this time, i'm still me even as i drag the brush forcefully across the canvas. because i'm thinking about sky - the boy with haunted eyes.

and then i realize i'm staring into those eyes, swimming out of the sunset. the paint runs, the lines watery and indistinct. but i can still feel the intensity of his gaze, even reproduced and fake. even like most of the plastic dolls in the concrete jungle.

the rain patters on the roof.

"dear concrete jungle," i say slowly. "does the rain make you remember?"

and i pack up my supplies and lay on the floor, letting a strange sadness sweep over me. my heartstrings twinge as the rain drops dance on the balcony and i feel as though i'm held together by safety pins instead of muscles and tendons.

when i fall asleep that night, i wish the safety pins were gone because they must be the reason that the boy's eyes never leave me.

the next morning dawns like an old mind touched by alzheimers - bright and clear and dry. disappointing. the concrete jungle is bustling with life once more, loud and dirty and obnoxious. it doesn't remember me or the boy.

i open my shop once more, baring my soul to people without eyes. their hands do the seeing instead; people tend to run their fingers across anything as they walk past it. my paintings, clothes on a rack, the wall. anything.

we really are like ants.

and the sun should pin us down but we as a whole are not aware enough of it; oblivious to the fact that our existence is not paramount, not the only flower in the field. we are so blind that we have forgotten our place in the world.

because now the world is just something we trample underfoot. we are so sure of our mark upon its skin; we are so sure that we are the reason it spins that we don't care. we don't care that we're selfish and stupid, just mindless creatures throwing around the precious uncertainty that our ancestors gifted us.

my head hurts from all the things i hold inside it, and as the day drags on, it only intensifies. it feels as though my head may crack, explode; my thoughts are all happening at once and i can't sort through them all.

i wish i could.

i can only paint; i pick up a pencil and it turns to water in my fingers, and so help me if i try to write. i forget my letters; how to string them together. sometimes i still try; an ignorant child trying to fit the wrong piece into a puzzle. what i'm left with is gibberish that not even i can understand.

i just stick to painting and drawing. 

i wish it would rain again. i'm sick of the sun. it's always there - hanging over our heads. i bet no one wonders what would happen if gravity's fingers loosened. if the very thing that kept us alive crashed down on our heads and burned our silly, flimsy assurances to the ground. 

i bet no one wishes that would happen. i bet no one has a sick little voice in their head that makes them imagine what the last few minutes would taste like - what the sun feels like as it sets fire to humanity as a whole. 

no one sees it as cauterizing a wound. 

i shake my head and close the studio early. i'm in no shape to continue lying. the truth is ugly, but lying is a subtle, slow kind of pain. like vines growing in your lungs and slowly suffocating you. 

i take a cab to my favorite coffee shop. it's in the back of a bookstore that's nearly always empty. it's perfect and tranquil, almost like the rain. 

when i enter, i take in the coffee scented air and follow the soothing smell through the aisles of books.

"hello jeongguk!" the cheery manager exclaims.

"hello namjoon," i say tiredly. everything is tranquil except for namjoon himself. 

"the usual?"

"the usual."

"hey namjoon, i - oh. we have a customer," someone says as they exit the back room.

"oh seokjin, this is jeongguk. jeongguk, seokjin." 

"hello," i say politely, and he says the word back. 

"seokjin has begun working here with me," namjoon explains. he starts making my drink and i just nod. "did you need something?" he murmurs to seokjin.

"oh - uh, i can't remember," seokjin laughs as if to erase the incident completely. he has broad shoulders and nice eyes.

i want to paint him. 

him and sky.

they wouldn't be blurry. sky would be...loose, spreading across the canvas in dripping shades of blue. and seokjin would be all together, shades of brown concentrated in his chest and fading out the farther away from his heart.

(The Rain and the Earth, Two Unlikely Coincidences and Strange Meetings.)

namjoon finally hands me my drink and i sit at a small table close to the counter. i've brought my notebook with, so i settle for sketching seokjin even though i fervently wish for my paints - the brush always feels better in my hands than the pencil.

when i'm done sketching, my coffee is cold and seokjin and namjoon are too loud. they're only talking to each other, but their voices carry as if they're speaking to me, too.

suddenly it's tiring, and i leave.

i find myself thinking about sky.

a/n: so the parenthesis are hypothetical titles of the artwork jungkook would create based on the situation hes in ;)

i have no idea how this is gonna turn out since i only have one thing planned but whatever that just makes it more exciting!!