AU. Where everyone sees the world in black and white with the exception of one colour, until you meet and fall in love with your soul mate.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Riley's colour is blue.
It's always been blue, since the day she was born.
She can almost see it on her bedroom wall and her parents tell her that purple is a mixture of blue and red and so yes, she can almost see purple.
Riley will see blue until she falls in love with her soul mate.
It's not any of those brilliant red colours like her mother saw and it's not exactly the supposedly golden colour of her mother's hair such as her father was accustomed to, but she happens to really like blue so that's perfectly okay.
Maya's colour is brown.
It was brown when she was born and colours don't change so Maya's childhood was full of mud and dirt and other ugly or gray things.
Her eyes were meant for the muggy playground after rain, tens of puddles through Central Park after her mom's work shift, and the gruff trunks of trees along the walking path.
Maya hated brown.
However, Maya met a boy named Farkle when she was three years old and his parents named him Farkle, so she decided that brown wasn't the worst thing that could have ever happened to her.
Her mother always told her that her eyes were blue and her hair was blonde and she looked best in dark colours.
Maya never understood why her mother could see every colour but her dad still left them and Katy never gave her an answer so Maya saw brown and hated it and hated her mother for never telling her why.
Riley was thirteen when she met a boy named Lucas, who was wearing a blue shirt that almost matched his eyes.
Lucas was fourteen and his colour was green, he had light brown hair, according to Riley's father, and a bright white smile.
Riley and Lucas started dating when they were thirteen and fourteen and from then on they were Riley and Lucas, "The Golden Couple", which was ironic because neither of them could see gold, so it stayed and expression lost on the two of them.
Maya and Farkle had a friend Josh.
Josh was older than them by three years and his colour was orange, which in Maya's opinion was just as bad as brown because oranges were sour and the colour was probably terrible too.
Josh and Maya start dating when Maya's fifteen and he has brown hair but Maya doesn't hate him and they look great together in photographs.
Farkle says that it's ridiculous and she agrees with him.
Josh still sees orange and Maya only sees brown, but they really do look good together in photographs so it works.
Farkle throws the best parties and Maya and Josh go to all of them.
It's been six months and Josh sees orange and Maya sees brown but their friend throws great parties so they go together anyways.
Maya wears an open flannel shirt, that her mother says is red and blue, over a white tank top and it looks nice on her.
Josh wears one that looks exactly the same only opposite and he buttons his up.
They both wear "blue" beanies and jeans so Katy takes about a dozen pictures of them because they're really photogenic standing next to each other.
Josh drives and doesn't shut up about his niece and her boyfriend who are going to be at the party too.
The niece is just like her father and the boyfriend is in Josh's fantasy football league.
The boyfriend's name is Lucas.
Lucas is sixteen and he's from Texas, his team is mostly made up of players from Texas and he likes to talk about when he used to live in Texas.
Maya turns the radio up after fifteen minutes of hearing about Lucas and Texas and decides that she can't stand this Ranger Rick fella one bit and she hasn't even met him yet.
The party is in full swing when Maya and Josh show up and he wastes no time in finding his Hop-along friend while simultaneously ditching his underage girlfriend near the spiked punch.
Maya sees a girl dancing about an hour into the night and she's pretty graceful in a completely ungraceful way.
She looks like she's having the time of her life and Maya wonders how much alcohol was consumed before she started dancing.
The girl spins around with the music and when she stops she looks right at Maya.
Her hair is brown, her eyes are brown, her dress is brown, her boots are brown, and Maya's heart stops when she realizes that the girl's skin tone isn't brown at all but it's definitely not gray.
Josh is coming toward her with some really tall guy who's shirt is bright and the dancing girl starts walking toward her too and she laces her hand with the tall boy's as reality beats Maya over the head.
This must be Ranger Roy, which means the girl is his girlfriend, who was Maya's boyfriend's niece.
Her name is Riley and Maya runs to the bathroom as soon as she speaks because her voice is so soft and perfect that Maya wants to throw up.
Vomit looks worse in colour and the sight of it almost makes her sick again.
When Josh takes her home she tells him that they should break up and he kisses her on the temple before saying it's okay and assuring her that he still cares about her.
She spends the next few hours in front of the mirror in her room just staring at her own reflection.
Her hair is blonde, blonde is yellow, blonde is gold, her hair is blonde, she can see blonde.
Her eyes are blue, like the sky, like the ocean, like the rain, her hat is blue, she can see blue.
Her shirt is red, like cherries, like strawberry's, like fire, red is bright, she can see red.
She looks at every single thing in her room and rationalizes that these are what colours look like.
She finds a book in an old box of toys that has colors on it's cardboard pages and she spends all night memorizing it and staring at the bright things in her room.
Josh's eyes were green-brown and that's why she could only almost see them.
Her room is light pink and so are her bed sheets and she thinks she hates it more than she hated brown.
Huckleberry was wearing an orange shirt and she was right, she doesn't like it either.
She looks at all the colours, all the shades of them, all the different combinations of them and realizes that her whole life has been a lie.
Brown is not ugly.
She does not hate brown.
Riley's eyes are brown and brown is the most amazing colour on the planet.
She sees the world in colour for almost a year before she sees Riley again, at least in person, because she's still friends with Josh and he has a million pictures of his family that he shows people constantly.
Katy started dating some guy named Shawn and Maya doesn't hate him so one night he invites them to his family's house and Maya goes.
Josh is there and Maya quickly realizes that this is his brother's house, but doesn't realize it quick enough because Riley's in the living room with Sundance and they're sitting too close and Maya hates him, she really does.
She spends most of the evening slipping out the front door to sit in the hallway when no one is paying attention and she spends almost and hour and a half by herself before Riley finds her.
Riley tells Maya that she's welcome to hide away in her bay window if she wants since the hallway is dingy and stuffy this time of year and Maya accepts because Riley's brown eyes are too soft and too caring to let her sit in a dingy, stuffy hallway.
Riley's walls are purple and her entire room is based around the colour purple.
Maya assumes that Riley's colour is purple and but that doesn't make much sense since colours are supposed to have something to do their with soul mates.
She sits on the fire escape outside of Riley's window instead of in the window because she doesn't want to ruin anything of Riley's, especially after she convinces herself that some mistake has been made and Riley's soul mate is anyone but Maya.
Maybe that's why her mom could see every colour even though her dad left, so Maya stopped hating brown and stopped hating Katy and started hating Mr. Perfect and the universe instead.
Riley started inviting Maya to things all the time and Maya could never manage to say no, even if she really wanted to.
They started spending entire days together and sometimes entire weekends and Maya noticed with a certain amount of relief that the more time she spent with Riley, the less time Riley spent with Bucky McBoingBoing.
Anytime that she'd talk to Josh he was usually with Ranger Rick so she stopped talking to Josh so much because she really couldn't stand hearing about her soul mate's boyfriend all the time.
Riley called her one day crying and Maya went over as fast as she could.
Sundance broke up with her and Maya's first reaction after hearing that was to knock a few of his too-white teeth out, but Riley made her promise not to.
She spent the entire night with Riley, talking to her, holding her when she cried, and telling her that things would be okay.
When she finally fell asleep Maya kissed her forehead and promised that she'd protect her, even if Riley couldn't hear her, it was still a promise.
When Maya woke up the night after Hop-along broke Riley's heart she found the younger girl staring slack-jawed at the wall, her soft face completely unreadable.
Maya asked what was wrong and Riley told Maya that the wall was purple, which made no sense whatsoever but Maya went with it anyways and eventually said goodbye to Riley with a kiss to the forehead.
Maya almost beat Josh to a pulp after he told her that she looked nice in blue.
At first she said thank you, considering she was wearing a light blue flannel shirt, then she started throwing punches, because the only person Josh ever spent any time with anymore happened to be Riley's ex-cowboy and Maya didn't like how that added up.
Words were exchanged and two lamps were broken before Josh apologized with a bloody nose and explained that he never meant for things to happen the way they did.
Maya hit him in the stomach before finally breaking down and explaining everything that had happened in the last two years.
They laughed at the mess around them, they laughed at the misunderstandings, they laughed at how their lives worked out, and how terrible their colours were even if they ended up liking them in the end.
They laughed until they cried and then they laughed because they were crying.
It was almost three in the morning when Maya told him about Riley's strange declaration of her wall being purple and she laughed at the memory of the younger girl's face.
Maya laughed.
Josh didn't laugh.
"Oh come on, it's funny. She told me the wall was purple, how random is that? It's been purple her entire life."
Maya laughed again until Josh slowly told her that Riley's colour was blue.
"What?" She asked.
"Maya.. Riley's colour is blue. It's always been blue.."
Josh's dorm room was a mile and a half away from Riley's window and Maya ran the entire distance in the rain.
It was dark and cold and Maya felt her wet pant legs slowing her down about three blocks from the dorms but she ran the entire distance.
She knocks on Riley's window at nearly five in the morning and the sun hadn't started to rise yet but the younger girl was already awake.
"Riley, the first time I saw you.."
She hadn't noticed she'd been crying until she heard her own voice crack.
"I know, Peaches.. I know." Riley nodded slowly before pushing their lips together and Maya saw colours with her eyes closed.
Maya's dorm is down the opposite hall as Josh's and she sees Sundance about four times while he's helping Josh move boxes around between the two rooms.
Riley's decorating the place for her while she moves around furniture since she doesn't have a roommate to boss around and Maya can't help but almost kick the couch everytime Ranger Roy smiles at her girlfriend.
He's only being friendly and after a year of seeing him everyday they'll become really close friends, she'll even start calling him Lucas, but as of right now he's the Hop-along that broke her soul mate's heart ten months ago.
"Hey, Peaches?"
"What do you need, Pumpkin?"
"Oh, nothing.. I just felt like saying that I love you."
"I love you too, Riles."
Riley ends up putting pictures all over the walls that either Shawn or Katy or Riley's parents took along with all of the pictures she or someone else saved that Maya drew or painted in high school.
Riley puts her favorite one, the one that had been hanging on her own bedroom wall for the past ten months, right in the middle of one of the walls.
It's canvased with a proper hook so it can be properly hung up and Riley says the word "proper" about a million times while trying to tell Josh where to hang it.
It's a portrait of Riley that looks more like a photograph than a painting and all the colours of the background are dull compared to Riley in the foreground.
"It's my favorite."
The brunette explained as her friends all gave questioning looks to the seemingly random canvased painting surrounded by plain photographs.
"Mine too."
Maya smiled only she wasn't looking at the painting, she was smiling at her muse instead.
"What was your colour?"
Some little, blonde boy from a kindergarten group asked her while kids were visiting her visual arts class.
"Mine was brown."
"Like mud and tree trunks?"
He smiled, his blue eyes lighting up as he watched her paint.
"Yeah, how do you know?"
Maya laughed.
He pointed to a little brunette girl with brown eyes and he leaned in close to whispered something to her before his class had to leave.
She went through the rest of the day with a smile on her face and she couldn't help but hear his small voice say the same words over and over again in the back of her mind.
"Mine was too."
A/N. I post every Thursday so be sure to check the account for new stories and updates. Remember to review, good or bad, and PM me prompts, pairings, and suggestions. I read EVERYTHING and I'll try my best to bring those beautiful ideas to life.