NEVA KISSED THREE boys that week after getting a train to Sana's university town instead of her own. The week had been spent in a permanent state of 'shitfaced', and all of her nights had been endeavours to have a new pair of lips claim Jungkook's hickies as their own.

Not a single one of them tasted like him, and yet somehow they all tasted like regret. 

Just like Jungkook did.

One of them smelt like brake fluid and gasoline, and she thought that he might be a good distraction - but she had spent enough time in Jungkook's garage to be able to have discussions about blown head gaskets and overheating radiators, and that simply just wasn't what Mr Gasoline was looking for in a casual hook-up. 

The second pair of lips had two left feet and was a lot of fun to be around, but when he tried to make a move, Neva thought she might hurl into his mouth. Maybe it was the tequila. Maybe not.

The third and final mystery man had told her that she looked like danger, but the truth of it all was that her mascara was only so smudged because she'd been crying in a bathroom stall ten minutes earlier. She only kissed him because she thought she might cry again - and she did. He didn't notice.

Her eyes were dull as she returned home, spent from drunk tears and uncleansed two-day-old mascara. She'd left most of her possessions at Sana's, with the promise of picking them up in a couple of weeks time, just so that she didn't have to lug a massive bag across the city. Wearing the Thrasher shirt that Jungkook had been hoping to steal, a pair of tights that were ripped up the side of her thigh and a beat up pair of boots, she wasn't at her finest. A demin jacket hung over her shoulders, hair tied back, scowl prevailing. 

To put it bluntly, Neva was a hot mess. 

Or just a mess. Either, or.

Walking up their corridor, she was ignorant to the fact that Jungkook was getting ready to leave for his Friday afternoon seminar.

Flicking a few strands of his hair out of his eyes as he gave himself a once over, Jungkook looked hot. He'd been trying to make an effort, to mask the fact that it felt like his insides were decaying. So far, it had been working. His appetite was shot to shit, and he couldn't bring himself to party, but he hadn't missed a single lecture.

It seemed to work for him, throwing himself into academics to remedy a broken heart. He'd done it before, and it had done wonders, even if it had ultimately lead to history repeating itself.

Hooking his bag over his shoulder as he left his room, he was planning on swinging by the library first just in case he could find any of their friends and pester them for an update on Neva.

He wouldn't need to though. Not when she was staring at him dead in the face like she wished her eyes were loaded revolvers.

They both sort of just gawked for a while. Jungkook broke eye contact first, deciding that his shoes were far more interesting than the girl in front of him. 

"You look-"

"Leave it," Neva snapped. So much for appearing indifferent. "I'm not in the mood."

Jungkook nodded glumly, pushing his hands into his jeans pockets. "Right."

He was going to leave it. He really was - but he'd done everything right! Why was he getting punished for trying to be a decent human for once in his life?

"You didn't tell me you weren't coming back to town," he said, bringing his eyes to look back up at her. She looked like shit. Like really pretty, beautifully polished shit - but shit nonetheless.

"So?" She shrugged, voice impatient. "Did it matter?"

"I didn't know where you were," Jungkook's tone was stern, but there was a softness to his eyes that she refused to look into. 

"So?" She asked again. "You didn't need to."

"Eva-"

"Neva," she corrected him again, eyes colder than the love lost between them. 

He stood perfectly still, lips resting ajar as he stopped his tongue from speaking the words that were so desperately resting on the tip of it. His ribs felt brittle, heavy beating lungs destined to crack right through them, sending his heart tumbling the ground below.

He had done everything right this time. He had put his hands around her heart and kept it warm, protecting it and making sure that it remained right where it should do - so why had it all gone tits up regardless?

"Ev-"

"Talk later," she said, casting him one final glance before tapping her keycard and slipping into her room before he could even try and attempt to reconcile whatever mess he made.

He didn't exactly know what he'd done, but it was very clear that he had done something - and whatever that something was, was absolutely not good.

Tapping a closed fist against his door frame, Jungkook resisted applying enough pressure to leave a dent in the wood, or his hand, for that matter. He leant against it, defeated. "Shit."

In the confines of her dorm room, Neva let out a shaky breath.

"That went well," she lied to herself, attempting a smile.

But as with all her feeble attempts at pretending that she was fine, the truth came crashing down on her like a tidal wave.

The impact was painful, knocking her from her feet and to her bedroom floor. She huddled her knees to her chest, back to the leg of her bed in a fragile attempt at mimicking a survival position. That would keep her safe right? That would stop the wave from drowning her?

Wishful thinking was all well and good, but in times such as those, it was fruitless. Wishes weren't real, and they wouldn't come true no matter how much you willed them into existence. She'd learnt that the hard way many moons ago, but it seemed like it was a lesson that she had forgotten.

Thank God she had Jungkook to keep her grounded. Who else would keep on consistently reminding her that she wasn't worthy of any sort of permanence?

Maybe her father had never really left; he'd just been reincarnated as a Chuck Taylor wearing son of a gun who didn't care where his shots got fired, going by the name of Jeon Jungkook.

She couldn't blame Jungkook, not really. He was just built this way; to break hearts. She'd known it for longer than she could care to remember. It didn't even come as a surprise when he had done it the first time, so why was it such a surprise that he'd done it a second time? Perhaps she'd just grown soft in her old age. 

She knew that she wasn't actually old, not by any stretch of the human imagination, but she felt it. Her bones were brittle, mind numb and heart heavy. She couldn't believe that this was how a twenty-year-old should have felt. Where was her vigour? Her youth? The spritely attitude that had gotten her a scholarship, of which she was now in danger of losing thanks to underachieving and over socialising? 

Wiping her wet cheeks with the back of her palms, Neva sighed. This wasn't how things were supposed to be. 

Jungkook didn't even knock to check that she was okay. Asshole. It wasn't that she would have answered the door, God no, but she would have really loved the chance to tell him that she was busy, or sleeping or to just fuck off entirely. 

She stared at her door for a moment, before pulling off her boots and flinging them towards it with enough strength to rattle it in it's lock. 

From the other side of the door, Jungkook sighed. It was a lost cause. He knew it. 

Everyone had noticed her absence. Cassie wouldn't tell him shit every single he asked her where Neva was, even after Jimin had started spending the night in her room again. Their lecturers looked to him when they noticed her lack of attendance, and Min fucking Yoongi had even asked him why Neva was flunking when they passed each other in the library the day before. 

She's gone on a bender because I'm a fucking prick, and I've not got a clue where she is didn't seem like a great response, so Jungkook had just shrugged and said 'how am I supposed to know?'

Jen had been hitting him up again now that he didn't have his guard dog trailing around his ankles, but he'd ignored her. For a moment, he considered it. He considered fucking Jen again just so that he could forget how Neva felt. It would be fruitless, though, and he was pretty certain he couldn't even get hard when he was feeling like this, so he just blocked her number and walked in the opposite direction whenever he saw her on campus.

Maybe he should have just done it, and given Neva something to really be angry about. He had been trying to do right by her, but if it was just going to keep getting thrown back in his face, then why bother?

Why try and make things right if everything he did was just wrong?

"Oi, Jeon!" One of his coursemates called over to him from the end of the hallway. "You heading down to the seminar?"

"Uh, yeah," he tried to be quiet, not wanting Neva to know that he was still outside her door. It was redundant. She'd heard the full exchange. 

"Cool, I'm heading there now. You coming with?"

"Sure, " he nodded, casting one final glace to Neva's door, and the drunken '+' he had drawn beside the brass number 4 that was screwed to the wooden panels. 

He stalled for a moment, before biting the bullet.

"Eva, look, I know I'm the last person you wanna see right now," he spoke softly by her door, not being too loud for fear of his coursemate hearing how soft he could be. "But I'm worried about you. My lecture finishes at six."

"I don't care," she called through the door.

"You're a liar," he laughed at the trivial nature of such a childish remark. "Let's talk when I'm home, alright?"

"No."

"I'll see you at six."

"You won't."

"Bye, Eva."

"Fuck off."

She listened to the way his footsteps became so quiet they faded into nothingness, and then she realised she was smiling from the exchange.

"Fuck my life," she grumbled into her knees, groaning at the predictability of it all.

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a/n: I would say two updates, what a treat, but I don't imagine anyone is particularly happy with the spanner I've thrown into the works lmao

July 16 2022: im due to be adding in a couple chapters after this one in the coming few days. I recommend you pause reading here and come back to it when they're uploaded!!