TAEHYUNG WAS LIKE a mosquito. He droned on incessantly, sucking the absolute life out of Jungkook. Note to self: buy some bug repellent.

"Nah, she was hot. It wasn't just how she looked - but she was smoking - it was her attitude, man. I could drink that shit up for days," Tae went on. And on. And on and on and on. "You still owe me for that one, Jungkook."

"Maybe you can have her next time," Jungkook joked, joining in with the laddish banter, knowing full well that if he could help it, there was no chance in hell he'd ever let Tae get near Neva again.

They were crammed into his and Jimin's shared bedroom, Tae coming by for what he liked to call a 'debrief'. Quietly, Jungkook thought he was just checking up to see if he'd hooked up with Neva.

Fat fucking chance of that one happening.

A sheet was crumpled between Jungkook and Jimins bed, a failed attempt at a bid for privacy, the pins that had tried to hold into the ceiling failing. Still, Jungkook was a heavy sleeper, and it was nothing that facing the opposite direction and white noise on an incredibly high volume couldn't fix.

"So what's the deal?" Tae digged a little deeper. "You know her from home or something like that?"

"Yeah something like that," he tried to be vague, not proud of his former choices. Almost like switch flicking, he remembered that the boys he was with didn't give a shit about respecting women, so they really wouldn't care about what he had done. "We dated for a bit, got bored, cheated, she caught me and haven't really spoken since."

"Oh shit," Tae laughed at his admission. "I thought you were gonna say you hooked up a couple of times, but that, yeah, that's a bit more than 'something like that'. How long were you together?"

Jungkook shrugged as if he didn't have the exact date of their anniversary etched into his memory. "Like just over a year, I guess?"

"Dude, that's like the polar opposite of 'something like that'," Jimin laughed, taking a seat beside his roommate. 

"Meh, I was the one who got bored with her," Jungkook lied. "Plus it's been like a year since it ended, so it's no biggie anymore. She travelled, I got into uni and we just ended up in the same dorms."

"Wait, what?" Jimin craned his neck, vaguely aware that Neva was Cassie's roommate.

"407," Jungkook grimaced. "Right fuckin' next door."

"Serendipity," Jimin mused but Jungkook ignored him.

This was not a happy accident by any stretch of the imagination. This was a very unhappy coincidence. He didn't need his ex-girlfriend on his back, ruining his first shot at independence.

"Mhmm, I fucking love girls who have travelled," Tae licked his lips like a tiger on the prowl. "Did she go to Spain?"

"I- How- Huh?" Jungkook almost stuttered. "How am I supposed to know?"

A voice taunted Jungkook in the back of his head: because you stalked her Instagram for the last twelve months, you big fucking creep.

"Dunno, figured you would have had a chat last night after you stole her from me."

"Not really stealing if it was mine, to begin with," Jungkook laughed outwardly, trying to play it off as a joke.

They did have a chat. 

Well, no, they exchanged vocal statements.

A 'chat' seems far too friendly.

Once she realised who's shoulder she was over, she became feral. He'd never heard her swear so much. It was the reaction he had anticpated in the garden, and boy was he glad she only came to her senses once they were out of earshot from the party. It was far less embarrassing for both of them.

There were a lot of questions from her side of the fence. His favourite was: "Why do you get to be all sexy throwing me over your shoulder like that when the last time you threw me it was into a deep dark well of despair and heartbreak?"

At least she wasn't being dramatic or anything.

She had always had a flair for that, taking the topics she felt strongly about and making them so dramatic to the point of them becoming funny. It always felt safer for her to voice her feelings if she could pretend that she was joking.

"Do you ever think about what you did to me and just want to die?" was another standout, with a particular emphasis on the final word.

The way in which she burst into tears after he replied "not really," wasn't so much fun, though.

He didn't exactly have a plan for what would happen when he got her home, figuring that he'd make her sleep in his bed until the morning and face the consequences when they woke up.

Regardless of everything, he wasn't going to let some dude she'd just met take advantage of her when she was in a vulnerable position. At least that's what he told himself the reason was. 

That all went to shit when they turned the corner to his dorm corridor and she started whining again.

"How do you even know where I live, Jungkook? Do you get a kick out of keeping tabs on me? Stalker."

Sure enough, she grabbed her keycard and swiped the door for 407, stumbling into it and barely managing to make it to the bed, as Jungkook began to put the pieces together.

He was still intoxicated, so it took him longer than he would have liked to admit, but there was no excusing the fact that his ex-girlfriend was in the dorm room next to him. 

Chucking her top and her bag down at the foot of her bed, he tried his hardest to not take in the way she decorated her room, or the photographs of their friends from home, or even the scent of her laundry.

His brain went into autopilot, thinking about what he needed to do for her; Get her water, put her phone on charge, and make sure that she was in a position that meant she wouldn't choke on her own sick in the night. He wouldn't have put it past her. She'd never been great at handling alcohol. Her body was too small.

"Finders keepers," Tae winked, drawing Jungkook out of his memories. "If you got bored with her, then I don't see the problem. Got her number last night, so might just send her a follow-up."

"Be my guest," Jungkook shrugged, not wanting to seem bothered. Realistically, he was so bothered that he could feel himself start to sweat. "If sloppy seconds are your thing, Tae, I'll pass all my hook-ups on to you?"

He laughed, clearly not hearing the annoyance in Jungkook's tone. "Just 'cause you got bored doesn't mean I will."