[ college!au > jungkook x you ] [ heavily inspired by ‘we don’t talk anymore’ ]
the one choice when the name appears on the screen. the one choice to decline or answer, to regret or resent. but this was without a doubt, a name left to voicemail
(or) when jungkook and (y/n) break up even though it kills them inside
"Hi it's (l/n) (y/n)! I can't take your call right now so please leave a message at the beep and I'll get back to you soon! Bye!"
He's a muscle pig. Everyone knows that.
He already goes to the gym every morning, starting his day off with an intense and focused workout for three hours then out to class after a quick shower and change of clothes. After a quick lunch with you, he has another block of classes and then he's studying his ass off in the library with Namjoon and Seokjin. Then, he'd rush to your dorm for some sweet kisses and dinner. Or vice versa.
It didn't matter to him.
Nowadays he can't sleep. So he immediately heads to the gym, pushing himself to his limits on the treadmill and lifting heavier weights till he feels the pain run deep in his muscles. And even then he ignores that and does another twenty reps.
The ache in his muscles is nothing compared to the ache he feels in his chest.
He can't stand to be at the apartment anymore. Just lying in bed and waiting for time to pass by makes his compulsion to do something, to do anything to keep him busy even stronger. His sheets still smell like you and the sticky note you wrote 'I love you' on is still on his desk.
Even just a nightly run around the building is something he'll do, shoving on a sweater and his headphones and jogging till his feet hurt. As long as I'm alone, I’ll be fine, he says to himself. He's been alone for nearly 21 years of his life and he can deal with it again.
Jimin and Taehyung know better than to ask him how he feels but they know he's hurting inside. With a relationship loving and lasting as long as yours was, it's hard not to feel anything but pain now. So they distract him with videogames, drinks at bars from time to time, knocking out more hours at the gym, and dance sessions and study lessons in between classes in the library.
He knows he shouldn't, but when he's on instagram and twitter, he can't help but go to your profile. He could type in your name without even looking at the keyboard. You didn't block him and neither did he.
The breakup was a mutual decision, so there was no need for blocking or anything. But the evidence of your relationship on both of your feeds were deleted. He archived the posts in a personal folder and you took yours off too.
You both agreed to stayed friends, to stay in contact with each other.
And you did keep your promise, like you always do. You sent him texts every so often, kept your snapchat streak with him, and sent funny posts on instagram and twitter like before.
Like nothing ever happened, like nothing changed at all, he thinks. Like your relationship didn't mean much at all.
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
Taehyung taps his pencil against his paper.
Him and Tae are in a corner of the library that is dead silent, save for the incessant tapping racket that you used to make.
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
That Taehyung is now making.
The rhythmic beat that he would find charming and enticing to tap along with is now something that slowly sets off a spark inside him, his anger building up like a ticking time bomb.
"Can you stop that." He commands as he tilts his eyes up for a moment, an acerbic edge to his tone. He focuses back on his textbook and looks at the same line over again, a tiny bit of regret creeping on him as the noise stops.
He swears he saw you when he lifted his gaze for that one moment—his mind teasing him with the vision of you with your hair pulled up in a messy ponytail, your thumb rubbing over your lips as you mouthed the sentence from your textbook and your other hand holding the tapping pencil—but when he lifts his gaze again, the hallucination is gone and all he sees is Tae's frown and that makes the guilt even stronger. Jungkook ignores the disappointment banging in his chest.
He can't bring himself to delete your number off his phone. At least the heart next to your name is gone, he reminds himself. A tiny shred of hope clings to his heart, once again distracting his mind with the thought of being back together.
Another frustrated groan escapes his lips.
1:42AM.
Another night he's gone without sleeping, the short five minutes he thought he spent staring at your number turned into two hours of reliving the past. Jimin's soft snores in the bed above his and Tae's sporadic groans to his left remind him of how late it is again when he grabs his phone, his backpack, a jacket, and a bottle of water. His feet bring him to the gym once again, but this time to the empty studio rooms on the first story of the building.
He plugs his phone into the speakers of the space and puts his playlist to shuffle. The music makes its way into his head, the loud beat controlling his moves till the song is over and another one starts again. He's so into the music and doesn't even realize there's someone else in the room till he notices a familiar figure in the corner of the mirror near the door.
"Jimin?" The music resumes as he turns around, the track ending and transitioning to a heavy hip hop beat. "I thought you were sleeping?"
"Kookie, what are you doing here?" Jimin tiredly groans, ignoring the question all together. Jungkook just shrugs at his roommate, gesturing to the loud music before a grumble disturbs the music again.
Jimin pats his stomach and growls, "I'm going to get a snack bar."
"Get me one too please." His roommate nods and leaves the room, allowing Jungkook to have all the peace and quiet from before. Jungkook checks the analog clock above the door.
2:13AM.
He hears footsteps outside the practice room in the hallway but ignores it, continuing to dance whenever his roommate chooses to enter the practice room again. Jimin should know better than to follow him late at night, especially when Jungkook knows the older has an early class in a couple of hours.
It takes a quick freestyle warm up to 2 contemporary songs and 4 replays of the same song when Jungkook realizes his best friend still hasn't returned from the vending machines. He goes to the stereo and stops his music, walking to the door and nearly opening it in Jimin's face as he stands in the hall alone. "Were you just standing here the whole time?"
Jimin's gaze is towards the end of the hall, but he shakes his head, "I realized I left my wallet at the apartment." He sheepishly says, his hands empty as he walks back into the practice room past Jungkook. Jungkook glances up and down the hall again, a sweet scent in the air sparking his suspicion creeps up on his shoulders before shrugging it off.
Jimin and him stay in the dance practice room till the early morning, till Jungkook's insatiable need to be busy is drained. He then becomes busy with school, hanging out with Tae and Jimin, study sessions with Seokjin and Namjoon, gym time, and sleeping when he can't even remember what the date is.
There's just one day of the year he'd always look forward to—to be exact there were three days (his birthday, yours, and your anniversary)—but he wasn't looking forward to it anymore.
His phone calendar held the small red dot that reminded him it was one of those special days—your anniversary date, the day he asked you to his and you said yes. He remembers the way his hand used to curl around yours, the way you'd squeeze his hand just to make sure he was real.
His fingers now curl against the neck of his fourth beer bottle, the condensation cooling his warm skin as he takes another swig. The bottle is light when he sets it back down, its empty weight one of the very last things on his mind.
Another thought he makes is that the bar is noisy and loud, but then again Jimin and Hoseok are doing most of the talking and their normal volume is the same as a child kicking and screaming for ice cream.
He can't remember the last time he dressed up so much just to go out. Most of his nights with you were spent inside your apartment or his, so his nice button-ups and low cut shirts just sat in the back of his closet.
His hair is gelled slightly, just out of the way of his eyes and off his forehead as he feels his face getting warm. His tolerance to alcohol still hasn't built up yet, but he seems to be getting there slowly as he ignores the warm sensation in his stomach.
He remembers the first time he went bar-hopping with you, running through the streets with your hand in his to meet your friends on time just because someone couldn't keep their hands off him and pulled him into a quickie on the couch.
After getting to the third bar, you were so drunk, Jungkook was struggling to keep you standing straight up without swaying. He remembers standing behind you as you leaned into his body at the bar counter, your eyes half-lidded as you hiccupped something into his ear that made him laugh.
Your hair smelt of some strawberry shampoo he didn't get the name of, but your lips tasted like a mix of vodka and fruit juices. The girl he just passed by at the bar smelt of the same scent. The same girl sitting at the bar counter and blatantly undressing him with her eyes should give Jungkook a rush of adrenaline but he doesn't feel interested at all.
When that same thing happened during his second time bar-hopping with you, you possessively pulled Jungkook into a kiss and pushed his hands a little bit lower to make a show in front of the other woman. His dumb ass accidentally bit your lip too hard and started to bleed a bit when you pulled him to you and you've never let him live that down since that night.
He starts on another bottle Jimin slides over to him as he tries to push down that memory all over again. But for some reason, they keep on coming back up.
The fresh air is great on his skin when Seokjin finally takes him and his roommates back home but the heavy smell of wet streets, rusting metal, and another whiff of the same strawberry shampoo makes his stomach churn.
Everything comes back up: his memories with you, his feelings for you, and all the alcohol mixed with his dinner from earlier before.
After his moment in the bathroom, he sits outside on the balcony, the cold air taking away from the throbbing in his head and the warm sheen of sweat on his body. The smell of newly planted trees and shrubbery around his apartment building makes him crinkle his nose in disgust.
He doesn't hate the outdoors, just the terrible smells of mother nature's gift to the world and when he's forced to be outside for an unreasonable amount of time. Which means camping is never a go.
But it's Hoseok who suggests a last minute camping trip in the middle of the night when he's with Hoseok, Yoongi, and Namjoon at their apartment, "C'mon, Jungkookie! It's good to just get away, camp in the great unknown—"
"Actually a camping ground 50 miles north of here." Namjoon interrupts without looking up from his paper.
"But you'll be with us, the great outdoors, and fresh air! Away from the city, the negativity and school! It'll be great!" He can never say no to Hoseok, not even when he's still recovering from his breakup. Not even when he's on his deathbed. He can never deny his hyungs anything.
The car ride's loud and filled with conversation and laughter and music lazily playing at a low volume level. Jungkook half-heartedly laughs at a joke Seokjin cracks as he stares out the window, focusing his eyes on a single point as it veers out of his vision. He fiddles with his phone, his fingers already unlocking the screen as he shoots a quick video for his snapchat story and then promptly clicking into the photo app.
Without a single thought he opens photos from the past year, your face smiling back at him through the screen, your lips kissing his cheek in some photos. Your eyes clearly shine with happiness and joy as his match the same expression. A deep pit opens up in his stomach, a somber sigh quietly escaping his lips. Nostalgia sweeps in as memories of you together play in his head, his brain memorizing the way your lips curved into your golden smile, the way your eyes shone in the sun, the look of pride and joy knowing you were his—
A hushed whisper is next to his ear, "Hey, you okay?" Jimin nudges his shoulder with his own, taking in the dazed expression on the younger's face. Even though his gaze is stuck to his, Jungkook can see his friend's eyes catch the old photo on his phone.
"What? Uh, yeah." He clicks his phone screen off and nods, taking his eyes back to looking outside the window again. He feels Jimin's eyes watching him for a solid minute after that exchange before he goes back to talking to Taehyung.
The camping site is a barren, dusty place. There's too much dirt and not enough soft grass to make the floor of the tent comfortable. And of course, he didn’t any other blankets because one usually just enough for him. You usually carried extras of everything.
Hoseok tells him to get more blankets from the trunk of the car, explaining he found more blankets he and everyone else left behind from past get togethers and that's when Jungkook recognizes a soft gray blanket folded in the stack.
There's a tiny hole in the top corner that came about when a spark from the bonfire you attended with him awhile back landed on the blanket and burned a small, distinct hole near the corner's seam. He always stretched it out by putting his thumb through it to better hold the blanket over the two of you when the night got cold.
"Hyung, whose blanket is this?"
Hoseok shrugs, "I don't know. I found it in the living room, and it's just been in our closet. I asked everyone and they said it wasn't theirs. Is it yours?"
It clicks in his head when he remembers you lent it to him some time after that bonfire, for when he needed an extra blanket at his apartment. He must have left it at his hyungs' place when he slept over there and forgot it.
"No. It just looks familiar."
Dinner rolls around and they're all sitting in a circle around the fire, eating what they bought from the store while Yoongi and Namjoon go into stories about their new jobs working at the music company.
"Jungkook, you alright?" Seokjin nudges him, but all Jungkook does is nod his head. "I know it's been hard for you, but I know—"
He abruptly stands from the circle, "Stop. I'm tired of everyone constantly asking if I'm alright, of everyone feeling bad for me." He grumbles, his temper getting the best of him. "I'm getting over it, I'm getting over her. I'm fine." Jungkook emphasizes, stalking off to his tent and zipping it closed. After nearly an hour of tossing and turning in the tent, Jungkook changes into sweats and leaves the tent.
He mutters something about a quick jog before he sleeps and does exactly that. No one bothers him and lets him do his own thing, he's guessing blowing up at them during dinner was a result of that.
He stops by the edge of the forest, right near a bank of a flowing river, the moon's pale complexion and the long, limber branches of the trees shining next to his own reflection in the water. He wishes he could wash all his worries and his frustrations and doubts away and let the river take him to who know where. He wishes this was all a bad dream that you'd wake him up from.
But it's not.
It's been months since you two broke up and he's still hurting inside and out.
This time, his knuckles burn with searing hot pain, his stupidity getting the best of him. His eyes water and blur his vision but he can see that the tree bark is crunched in half, but it's still intact.
His phone rings in his back pocket, the ringer beeping over and over as he checks it with his good hand.
Namjoon-hyung: Jungkook, where are you? We know you said a quick jog, but it's been almost an hour [10:52PM]
Jimin-hyung: hey, I know you're trying to be alone, but the hyungs and I are worried about you. come back to camp in a bit, ok? [10:55PM]
Of course Jimin would say that. Of course Jimin knew he'd do something stupid like that.
He tries to swallow the pain down, but he can already feel the pain radiating from his knuckles to his wrists. His good fingers fly to his contact book, his thumb hovering over the call button right under your name. The contact name remained untouched with the same stupid heart emoji and the same candid photo he took of you from your third date stared back at him, your smile shining brighter than the stars.
"I miss you."
It's the first time he says the words out loud, to himself, to anybody.
He yells it at the top of his lungs, his skin burning hot as his emotions run course through his veins. Suppressing everything takes a toll on him.
Jungkook's not mad at you.
God, he can never be mad at you.
He's mad at himself for letting you go. He's mad at himself for dialing your number. He's mad at the beep he hears after your voice. He's mad at himself for not saying a single word after the tone.
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