"YOU'VE GOTTA STOP ignoring her calls," Neva said quietly, as Jungkook pressed the lock button down on the side of his phone to stop it from vibrating. The screen went dark, ceasing to display his mother's caller I.D. 

The picture of his mother that had popped up on his phone was sweet; taken on a summers evening in his grandmother's garden as she had been smelling freshly blossomed roses. She was silhouetted, a pale sunset illustrating just how pleasant the evening had been. 

Whenever Neva saw it, her heart hurt a little bit. 

Jungkook had such a beautiful way of capturing the world around him; tranquil moments and pockets of life that he wanted to preserve.

She'd noticed that since the night they had spent together in their lecture hall - of which they were in once more, fully clothed and somewhat paying attention - he'd started stealing snapshots of her. Nothing groundbreaking, just dumb front camera selfies that caught her off-guard or quick point-and-shoots of her in the midst of laughter with friends.

Glancing over towards Neva, not letting his eyes linger for fear of his smile growing too wide, Jungkook's amusement was evident. He swallowed it down, dimples embedding themselves in his cheeks. 

"Don't look at me like that. I'll call her back," he promised. 

Dark hair, dark eyes; light smirks, light aura. He was a brilliant paradox of a boy who had become a man in the year that they'd spent apart, and despite it all, Neva secretly thought that things had worked out just how they were always supposed to.

Looking at him in the way that she did felt like a crime. 

Yet when his fingers clasped around her wrists, all she felt was warmth, not the cold carbon steel of handcuffs. He took mug shots of her, but they were always so painfully endearing that he'd find himself smiling at them in secret moments when he was alone. He'd file them away in an evidence folder, framing her for stealing his heart, when in reality she had just been an accomplice to a heist of her own stolen heart.

There were no sirens, though. No blue lights, either, not unless you counted Jungkook's makeshift aquarium fairy lights that were still strung up in Neva's dorm room. 

The only thing they were really guilty of was being completely and utterly smitten with one another.

No one else around them noticed, thanks to a documentary rolling from the overhead projector and onto their lecture screen. It was hard to tell if anyone was actually paying attention, lights dimmed and speakers booming loud enough to drown out any chatter.

Now Wednesday, it had been no more than five days since their lecture hall liaison and yet it could have been five months with how easily things had slipped into a pattern.

They hadn't put a label on it - not officially - but he'd woken up in her bed every morning since, and was dropping L-bombs like they were going out of fashion. 

"You wanna go home this weekend?" Jungkook asked as he nuzzled his lips against the hair that covered her ear. His voice was low, trying to go unnoticed in their busy lecture hall.

Neva's choice to sit up on the back row that week had been anything but unnoticed. People were talking - about them, about how cute they were, about how Neva could do better, about the rumours they'd heard of Jungkook's wandering cock, about how they swore Neva was hooking up with Tae - or was it Yoongi? - and about how Jungkook could do better, too. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, but they didn't care for a single one of them.

Jungkook still took all of his notes, but now he was doodling in Neva's margins instead of his own. Sometimes on the back of her hand. Other times, he just let his fingertips trace up the inside of her thigh until she squeezed them together and shot him a quick warning glance. 

If anything, he paid even more attention in class now that he wasn't constantly staring at the back of her head.

Neva pushed her brows together. He hated going home. Avoided it at all costs. "You want to go home? Why?"

"Just for a night or two," he laughed quietly.

He didn't really have an answer to Neva's question. Going home wasn't really something he'd been considering until approximately thirteen seconds before he asked - and now it was the only thing he wanted to do.

Fuck the party Jimin had been talking about, fuck studying, fuck being stuck in their dorms where they were constantly surrounded by other people. 

He just wanted to spend more than a couple of hours alone with her. He didn't want to share.

"I miss the beach," he eventually lied. It was just a white one; one that she could see right through.

And so Neva just smiled, her elbow resting on his shoulder, the tips of her fingers playing with the whisps of his slept-in hair.

They'd been running late that morning, neither one of them wanting to break free from the confines of her duvet, and had had to throw on yesterday's clothes and practically sprint to make it to their lecture hall in time.

His eyes were a little less puffy now than they had been at the start of the lecture, but he still looked adorably doe-eyed. Her thumb stroked against his temple tenderly, smoothing down the vein that always showed a little more when he was too hot. 

"Me too. We should go on a beach date."

"I'll see what I can do," he replied, pulling her hand down to press a kiss against her knuckles. "So we're gonna go home this weekend?" Jungkook asked, just to be sure.

"Friday evening?" Neva suggested. "Go straight after the viewing?"

In all honesty, he'd forgotten about the viewing. It was for next years accommodation: a 6-bed house just off-campus. 

None of them quite knew what to expect, thanks to there only being a picture of the exterior, a slightly wonky floorplan and an incredibly dubious promise of 'ample space' and 'high-spec fixtures' in the description of the online listing.

Cassie had already shotgunned the biggest room, meaning that Jimin would have to take the smallest by default. It was only fair, given the fact that they'd just spend every evening in Cassie's room regardless.

Tae had bagsied the adjoining room to Jimin's, therefore leaving Jungkook and Neva to figure out the remaining rooms between themselves.

Secretly, they were both quietly terrified of the whole moving in together thing. 

It was out of convenience, more than anything, and it wouldn't be for another six months yet, but all the good houses were being leased. They needed to snap one up quickly or they'd be stuck in halls again. Lucy had already dropped out of plans with them to move in with some of her coursemates instead, meaning they'd either have split the rent for a sixth person between them, or try and fill the space ASAP.

It had been agreed that Jungkook would take the downstairs bedroom at the front of the house, which really was just a living room with a bedframe plonked in the middle of it, while Neva would be in the cramped attic conversion two stories up. Unlike Cassie and Jimin, Jungkook and Neva valued their space and knew they'd need a little room to breathe from time to time.

Perhaps in six months, they'd feel differently, but for now, it seemed apt. Sensible. Easier.

Then again, Jungkook didn't imagine things ever not being 'easy' with Neva. Gripping his hand on her thigh beneath the lecture hall workbenches, it was as if she had been created to fill the space between his fingers.

"Works for me," he grinned, pleased that his grand master plan seemed to have worked perfectly. 

"Sana's gonna be home this weekend," Neva mused, voice quiet so as to not disturb anyone else in the room. Her cheeks blushed as Jungkook's grip on her thigh got a little tighter.

"Told her yet?"

"Nope."

He wasn't surprised by the answer. Sana wasn't exactly a fan of Jungkook, and nor was she a fan of the fact Neva had been hooking up with him again. It came from a good place, but Sana always failed to factor in grey to her opinions. She saw things as black or white; good or evil. 

Jungkook was like an analogue television: static once the signal went out. He could always be tuned back to full colour, but it took some time and a little TLC from the right pair of hands. Neva liked to think she possessed hands gentle enough to remedy him.

That wouldn't matter to Sana, mind you. Jungkook had burnt his bridges, and she wasn't interested in foraging for new timber to rebuild it. That was all on him.

"Fairs," he said, trying his hardest to not sound dejected. "Your mum doesn't hate me, though, right?"

"She cooked you french toast the first morning you stayed at mine over Christmas. What do you think?"

"True," he smiled. Neva's mother was like his in the way that making food seemed to be her love language. 

The documentary that had been playing from the overhead projector began to draw to a close, the lecturer unenthusiastically flicking the light switch by the door. Apparently, Jungkook and Neva hadn't been the only ones paying fuck all attention, as a few students groaned, while a handful more began to stretch their arms out..

She adjusted in her seat, trying to look a little less cosy and Jungkook didn't object, keeping his palm firmly spread across her knee instead. He thought that he'd quite like their relationship to play out in such a way: private, but not secret. 

Thoughts of Sana's disapproval soon dissolved into nothingness, not that it had ever really mattered. They didn't need her permission.

"You better not fuck me over again," Neva half-joked as they filed out of the lecture hall. "Sana will never stop saying 'I told you so' if you do."

His hand gripped the back of her neck tenderly, leading her out of the room, keeping her close.

"Shut up, stupid. I love you."

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a/n: 

me: i don't have time to write a sequel

also me: setting up plot points for a sequel :) 

haha but in all seriousness, things are super busy for me atm - i just bought a 1-way ticket to another country and this time next month I'll be quarantining?? before i start a new life???? it's all a bit???????? mad???????? so yeah that's why I'm a little less active than usual

on the plus side i do have a yummy two-week quarantine period where I'll be doing nothingggg so i imagine I'll be super active hahahaha

Also... permission to dance?? Hello?? A bop???

Like???? I'm expected to be okay?????