"WHAT ON EARTH?" Neva laughed as Jungkook placed her order in front of her with a broad smile.

She'd never seen something so delicious yet so excessively disgusting in the same blink of an eye. 

"You couldn't decide," he shrugged. "Nor could I. So I got you every sprinkle variety they had. You're welcome."

"Thank you?" Her voice was raised a few octaves, a laugh sounding as she twisted the tub around to inspect it. The ice cream was mint chocolate chip (a great choice by her own admission), but it was entirely covered in little flakes of colour, chocolate curls and crunchy honeycomb. It honestly looked like a kid had been let loose at an all you can eat buffet dessert table. "It's... wow."

He smiled proudly. "I know."

"How much did it cost you?"

"Not much, just my dignity and the cashier's sanity."

"Ah, not much, then," Neva grinned at the idiot of a man in front of her. "Didn't realise you had any dignity left."

"A very small amount," he conceded, before amending himself. "Well, zero now, actually. Hope the sprinkles are worth it."

Toying with them using her little wooden scoop, she nodded. "So worth it."

Neva had their hometown in her eyes; dusty shores and sweltering asphalt beneath mid-July sunsets, jaded cliff edges off the Taejongdae coast and sticky barbecue ribs shared on nights much like these.

He'd never really loved his summers spent cycling around the same old streets, or skipping pebbles across the vast expanse of Busan harbour and pretending that they could reach Gwangan bridge.

All he'd ever wanted in life was to escape. He envied the rocks he cast out to sea.

And yet as he got lost in the night market maze that her eyes were, Jungkook couldn't help but feel as if it was his favourite place in the whole entire world.

It was a shame that he didn't realise that her dark eyes were simply reflecting images of himself back onto him. 

He was seeing himself as she saw him: home.

They bantered endlessly, their laughter drowning out the ambient music playing around them. There were only one or two others in the ice cream parlour, so neither of them felt as if they had to restrict themselves. 

Step one of Yoongi's methodical instructions had been successful - now, time for step two.

"Once the pair of you feel comfortable, strike while the iron is hot," he had advised. "If he feels at a comfortable level with you, he'll be way more likely to open up. Trust me. I'm a dude."

So she did.

Toying with the remains of her ice cream, which had now melted down to a small green lake with rainbow debris, Neva let the laughter of their conversation settle down before she pounced.

"Do you mind?" She asked airily, her tone as casual as the spring breeze that had lapped against them on their walk to the parlour, cycloning her hair for a few seconds and then leaving it be.

He blinked, once, twice, hard. "Mind what?"

"That I never ask you questions," she shrugged, looking down to watch the swirl pattern she was creating.

Jungkook stiffened his posture, before reclining back into his chair. "You know I prefer it, Beaver."

Eva-Beaver. 

"That's an old one," she smiled softly upon hearing the nickname.

He'd christened her with the name in high school, when they were first assigned seats next to one another.

At the time, asking questions was all she ever did, constantly digging or gnawing away like a beaver just to find out information.

She loved knowing things.

He loathed her knowing things, mainly because she already knew more than him about most subjects.

That's why he made himself so elusive to her; he simply wanted one-up on her.

So he'd call her a beaver, and eventually, she would stop asking questions. Name-calling had never bothered her, and she'd just call him a 'grade-A wanker with social etiquette issues' back, but she also wouldn't entertain the idea of being interested in him.

In a classic case of wanting what he couldn't have, Jungkook became restless when she wasn't asking questions. He'd say dumb provocative stuff just for a reaction, and start sharing details about his life just to try and coax her into asking questions.

He didn't quite understand why, but he wanted her to want to know about him.

And so, a habit was formed. The less questions she asked, the more he'd share. They'd done it for so long that neither of them even realised the change in their personalities as a result of it.

"I want to ask you every question that mankind has ever spoken into existence," Neva added, rather unapologetically. "The only reason I don't ask is 'cause I know you won't answer any of them."

"You wanna ask every single one of them?" He grinned, as if to challenge her. "That'll take a long time, Beaver. You might wear your teeth down."

She shrugged unbothered. "I've got a lifetime left to ask."

He raised a brow. "What makes you think I'll be around to ask?"

"Are you planning on leaving?"

Jungkook cast his eyes down to his hands, watching them toy with the spoon in his half-empty tub. The ice cream was a pink puddle, melted right through.

"No," his honest eyes met hers again. "I'm not."

Neither of them spoke as his hands dropped to the table, landing just close enough to reach out for Neva's. The gesture was delicate, his fingertips brushing hers as if to just check that she was still real, tangible, there. She was. 

There was a docile nature to Jungkook during the times when it was just he and Neva alone. Like a young fawn, he looked at her with bright eyes for guidance or reassurance that he was doing the right thing.

He never needed to, for he knew Neva like the back of his own hand. Perhaps his palm would have been a better analogy - he had studied the lines that mapped her destiny on more occasions than he cared to note.

If Jungkook knew anything about palmistry, he'd have known that Neva's long palms and slightly shorter fingers were those of fire; passionate, driven by her desires and lacking in empathy once they'd been scorched.

He'd always warned her off cigarettes, never realising that her hands could do more scalding damage than the small white sticks could.

But he was naïve to these facts, and enjoyed the warmth that came from holding her hand.

"Try me," he offered. "Ask me anything."

He knew what he was opening himself up to.

He was ready.

"You ignored me last weekend," she finally breached the elephant who had spent the last few months hanging out with them.

"I did," he nodded. "That's not a question, though, Beaver. Poor form."

Rolling her eyes, it felt borderline insane to be smiling as she asked him, "Why?"

"I was shitty company," he tried to smile. "You wouldn't have enjoyed speaking to me. Trust me."

"But you went to a party?"

"I did," he repeated.

"So I wouldn't have enjoyed you, but other people would have done?" She tried to hide the hurt in her voice and didn't do it very well.

"Yeah," he pushed his lips up as if they were shrugging. "You'd have noticed something was wrong. Other people wouldn't have - well, no, other people didn't notice. You'd have seen it from a mile off though. Probably would have read it in your bloody daily horoscope or something."

Neva tossed her licked-clean scoop towards him. It hit his torso, clattering onto his lap where his hands caught it. 

"Not true," she objected. "I'd have read it in your horoscope."

"You check my horoscope?"

"Sometimes."

"Today?"

"Maybe."

"What did it say?"

"Planets are changing alignment at the moment," Neva spoke as if Jungkook would actually understand what she was saying. He looked at her in the same way that she did whenever he was talking about Overwatch. "You're opening yourself up to new possibilities, apparently."

Jungkook grinned. "You made that up."

She didn't. She genuinely had checked his that very morning. It was habit, more than anything.

"Think what you wanna think," she didn't bother proving him right, well aware that she was having a rare encounter with an unguarded Jeon Jungkook. You didn't spot those in the wild, too often. "Anyway, stop diverting the conversation."

"Sorry."

"Tell me why would have been bad company. Was it being at home? Your parents?"

"Um," he cast his eyes down, shuffling awkwardly. It was now or never. No matter how tempting 'never' seemed to be, he knew that he couldn't keep it up any longer. Not if he wanted to fix things. "Yeah, actually. My parents finalised their divorce last weekend."

Oh, fuck, Neva panicked internally. Suddenly so much just started to make sense; the way he wouldn't answer his mum's calls, the fact that he stayed at hers as much as possible over the winter break, and the complete closure of his emotional capacity. 

She remained silent, somehow both shocked and unsurprised by the revelation. More than anything, she was absolutely devastated that he felt as if he couldn't share such a massive burden. His shoulders were broad, that was a given, but carrying weight like that alone would surely cause back issues.

"That's why I went home. Packed my room up," he paused, lamenting. "Dad didn't fight for it. Not for mum, their marriage, none of it. All he fought for was the house, but once that got sold, it was as if..." Jungkook trailed his sentence off.

Neva waited for a second, studying Jungkook's features, not wanting to interject where she wasn't wanted. He met her gaze again and shrugged. 

"And that was that," he finished, not bothering to properly end his sentence. "I don't massively wanna talk about it, still, but yeah. There you go. It'll probably answer some of your questions."

"Uh, yeah," Neva spoke a little apprehensively, unsure exactly of what the right thing to say would be in such a situation. "Shit. I'm sorry?"

Jungkook smiled, not showing his teeth, air exhaling through his nose. "What for? You didn't cause it."

"Well, no," she admitted with a little defeat.

"It's fine," he glanced up to her, shrugging a little. "It's just what you say isn't it? It's like funerals. 'Sorry' is just a word that people use when they have nothing to fill the space. That's what they're saying sorry for, for not knowing what to say. Not for what happened."

She nodded, agreeing. "There's not really a right thing to say."

"I know there isn't," he gave her a soft smile to let her know that he didn't mind. "It's why I didn't tell you, I think. I didn't wanna put such an awkward burden on you. I know you, Eva, I know you'd pussyfoot around me, mindful of the things you said just in case I got upset or something stupid like that. Kinda liked feeling as if I could just forget about it when I was with you. I like it better when you don't look at me like you feel sorry for me."

Taking note of her sorrowful eyes, Neva realised she was doing exactly that. He didn't mind as such. She still looked pretty when her eyebrows pinched together.

"Are you okay?" She asked, and instantly kicked herself for asking something so blatantly obvious. He didn't mind.

"Yeah," he smiled a little weakly, and then remembered that he was supposed to making an effort. "I mean, maybe? No? I don't know. It was the right thing to have happened. They should have got a divorce years ago, but no one wants their family to break down, do they? Nobody wants their parents to decide that there's more disdain than there is love left."

"No," Neva agreed. "It sucks. Really sucks."

Jungkook studied her sad eyes and knew that they weren't directed at him, not entirely. There was no way she wasn't thinking about her own parents. Another reason he hadn't burdened her; she'd been through it all. She didn't need reminding.

"It was a long time coming," Jungkook raked his hair back, shaking at it languidly, letting the waves fall over his forehead. The fluidity of relationships meant that peaks and troughs were inevitable. He was still young, a mere twenty years old, but that lesson had been learnt early on.

"Doesn't make it suck any less."

"Yeah," he admitted, voice glum but hopeful in the same note. "You're right."

"I'm sorry," she said again, meaning it slightly different this time, and he seemed to understand.

I'm sorry that this has happened to you.

"I know," he nodded. Neva apologising for something she had absolutely zero involvement in was just so... her. "Thank you. I'm sorry too. I should have told you."

Neva shrugged, dismissing the claim. "I get why you didn't."

The past was the past. She didn't want to dwell on it just as much as he didn't. Picking up their tubs, Jungkook stacked them neatly for the server to discard, before offering Neva a hand up.

"Let's get outta here."