"JUST GOT BACK to town and your first port of call is my place? I'm honoured," Namjoon grinned at Jungkook, blissfully unaware that his first port of call had actually been his ex girlfriends house.

"Couldn't keep myself away," Jungkook bantered back as he slumped onto one of the ratty sofas in Namjoon's parents basement.

Throughout high school, it had been their safe haven; a refuge from the outside world that so desperately wanted them to conform to the world of suits and studying.

It was dark and grotty down there; partially because they'd apparently never learnt how to clean, but also due to there only being a single window by the stairs. It was covered by the flag of some punk band that neither of them could quite remember the songs of, but it had been up so long that it felt wrong to pull it down.

Two sofas sat perpendicular to one another around a coffee table inscribed with their initials (and God knows whatever else) in the perfect position for their feet to rest upon it.

In the corner of the room was an old set of drums and a couple of guitars that neither of them had touched in nearly a year. The skin of the kick drum had been painted, rather crappily, with the initials 'DTMM', their former band name.

"Don't tell my mum," Jungkook tacked onto his previous comment with a grin, making reference to their shitty high school band.

It had been a saying thay he'd routinely used through his time in high-school, and had almost become synonymous with his cheeky grin. While they were brainstorming for band ideas, Jungkook had said "don't tell my mum I'm joining a band," and it just stuck.

In all fairness, they were shit. Their lyrics were oddly metaphorical, while the instrumentals were a confused mash of pop punk and thrash metal. It didn't quite work.

It had been fun though, and had meant that the boys were never shy of female attention. They were the party boys of their school, and everyone knew it.

"How is your mum?" Joon segued. "Bet she's looking fit."

Ah, yes. Mum jokes. Forgot we were 12.

"She's fine," Jungkook lied, having not yet seen her. "I would ask how your mum is, but I shagged her last night so I already know."

"You are so fucking grim," Joon turned up his nose. He should have known better than to start mum jokes, because Jungkook always somehow managed to one-up him.

Thankfully, his mother was out running errands, otherwise Jungkook would have definitely used the opportunity to sweet talk her with those honest eyes and his handsome smile. It would wind Joon up up unlike anything else, and Jungkook found it hilarious.

Having been friends for years, the pair of them were almost like brothers at this point. Despite being at different colleges and both being equally as shit at staying in touch, they had the kind of friendship that never dwindled over time. Being back in the basement, it was as if no time had ever passed.

They never really needed to discuss their feelings or the tough shit going on, because they had an understanding that the basement was a safe space for the both of them to disconnect from the real world. That wasn't to say that they didn't ever talk about things more serious than Joon's mother's tits (much to his disgust) or what they'd been drinking at whichever party they'd ended up at over the weekend, it just meant that there was no pressure to do anything other than simply exist in the security of their friendship together.

"So is that a yes, then?" Namjoons voice cut Jungkook from his contemplative toughts.

Running his fingers along the drum sticks that were nestled on the cushion of the sofa, Jungkook grunted. He hadn't heard a single word Namjoon had said prior to the question.

"Do you ever fucking listen?" Namjoon laughed, not really bothered. "Party down in one of the big houses on the hill tonight. A welcome back party for everyone. You game?"

"You really have to ask?"

↬↬↬↬↬

Jungkook was rat-arsed by 11:30.

It was poor form from him, but he'd barely eaten and had deliberately stolen drinks straight from the hands of quite literally everybody he came across that evening. Getting rat-arsed was the plan, and there was nothing Jungkook loved more than crossing something off his to-do list.

He was having a smoke and catching up with acquaintances that he didn't really care for when he saw a familiar figure approaching him with a face of thunder.

"Well if it isn't my favourite passive-agressive sho-"

"Shut up, Jungkook," Sana scowled, spurred on by a few too many tequila slammers.

She had avoided Jungkook all evening, simply choosing not to associate with the boy who had broken her best friends heart beyond repair.

"We need to talk," she continued, determined to get to the bottom of his motives with Neva - of whom had opted out of the party as she had to be up early the next morning to go and visit some family across the country.

Jungkook loved talking about Neva. He could lose hours trying to find the right words to articulate the richness of her deep brown eyes and the harmony that came with hearing her laughter. There were few conversations he participated in where he didn't think about how he could mention Neva's name during it, just for the serotonin rush that came with the syllables of her identity.

What he didn't love was being forced to talk about himself, which is what this conversation would ultimately end up as. Sana hated him.

Rightly so, but still. He couldn't be bothered with it.

"I don't think that we do," he took a sip on his beer, already feeling his mood decline.

"Stop fucking with her," Sana warned, ignoring Jungkook's rolling eyes. "You never had to deal with the fall-out of what you did to her. You don't deserve the luxury of being able to do that to her again. It's not fair."

Jungkook didn't really look at Sana. They had once been friends, quite good ones at that, but he'd burnt his bridge and then thrown a grenade in the wreckage for good measure when he had decided to fuck Neva over.

The issue wasn't that Jungkook was offended or felt that Sana's judgement was unfair. He knew she was right. He just hated that she was right.

"She's a big girl," Jungkook shrugged, stand-offish and affronted. "She can make her own decisions."

Sana laughed. "Yeah, she can make her own mistakes, too."

"Ohh, burn," Jungkook mocked with a smirk.

Despite the lonely longing in his chest that he had been grappling with all evening, he'd actually been having a really good time catching up with old friends. He'd even managed to get himself sufficiently shit-faced to the extent where dancing had briefly seemed like a good idea, though Namjoon had entirely been spurring him on. He'd cringe at the videos in the morning.

Not wanting to kill his mood entirely, he sighed.

"Look, I don't know know what you want me to say, Sana. That I'll stay away? We live next door to one another. It's borderline impossible."

"Who's your neighbour on the other side of your room?" She challenged. "Go on. Tell me all about them."

He couldn't. Jungkook wasn't even sure that he'd met them. Pursing his lips, his eyes narrowed.

"See," she grinned, pleased to have been proven right. "Proximity means shit all. You're making conscious choices, Jungkook. So how about you make the choice not to fuck her up even more than you already have done?"

"I'm not going to fuck her up-"

"I don't think you intended on doing that the last time you weaselled your way into her pants, and look at where you ended up."

"We were kids-"

"And now you're not," she interrupted, not giving him the time of day. "So make better choices than you did back then."

"With all due respect, Sana, you know fuck all," Jungkook spoke with contempt, nostrils a tad flared and his signature smile upturned. A crease had formed between his brows and his jaw had sharpened. "If you've got an issue with Neva and I hanging out, then raise it with her. You're her friend. Not mine. Save your unsolicited advice for someone who's actually gonna appreciate it."

Step one of patching things up with a former flame definitely wasn't alienating their friends, but Sana wouldn't have accepted him even if he'd have shown up at Neva's house on a white horse with a speaker above his head like a bad 80's film.

Although now that his drunk mind was considering it, he wondered if Neva would still be awake if he ran to her house to do just that.

Jungkook was no John Cusack, and Peter Gabriel definitely wouldn't have been his artist of choice, but he could do it. Firstly, though, he'd need to get a boombox, or maybe he could just drive there? Use his car speaker? No. No, you're drunk, Jungkook. Do they even still make boomboxes? Joon probably has one. Would it take CDs or cassettes?

So lost in his thoughts, Jungkook had completed zoned out, his vacant eyes and ears not paying Sana an ounce of attention.

Eventually she sighed, slapping the sides of her thighs with her palms before walking away. She was convinced that there was no getting through to him. Once a fuck boy, always a fuck boy.

Suddenly, Jungkook could think of nothing but Neva. Perhaps it wasn't so sudden - he'd never stopped - but it was different now. He had to see her. He needed to make sure that she didn't hate him in the same that Sana did, and make sure that she wasn't harbouring the same resentment.

Holding his phone up to his ear, he shuffled around, a little unsteady on his feet. Sipping on his beer as the dial tone rang out, he was nervous. Why was he calling again? Just to say hello? Had Sana already messaged her? Oh god, what if she had been the one who told Sana to say those things-

"What?" a sleepy voice sounded on the end of the line, Neva's mumbles filling his brain and ridding it of any negative thoughts.

"You're up," he said with a tone of surprise, having half expected his call to go to voicemail.

"I wasn't," she clarified. Neva had a terrifying irrational fear of missing all of her alarms, so set her phone on loud underneath her pillow every night. There was no way she wouldn't wake up.

"I'm sorry," he took a sharp intake of breath, rubbing his forehead. This wasn't going well. "Let me make it up to you. I'll come to yours now."

"You're six miles away," her voice crackled through the static of her receiver. She knew the distance because she had been the one to drop Sana off earlier, secretly hoping she'd catch a glimpse of Kook. "Don't be silly."

"It's not silly," he said, and she could hear the pout in his tipsy voice. "I want to see you."

"Two nights in a row," Neva laughed, her voice laced with fondness. "You're obsessed."

"Correct."

Neva sat up in bed slowly, contemplating her options. She needed to be up early tomorrow and she definitely didn't want to drink - but part of her was obsessed with him too.

"If you're done with the party, I could give you a ride home?"

The offer was far too generous, and she knew it. If Sana saw her, Neva would end up murdered for her own good.

"I'm not hanging about," Neva clarified. "You'll need to be ready to go in like 5 minutes?"

"See you in five, Eva," Jungkook beamed into his phone.

He was pissed as a fart, but even inebriated he knew that there was nowhere he'd rather be than wherever she was.

Obsessed? Yeah. He thought he might just be.

"See you in five," she whispered back, cutting the line.