an ode to us twenty-somethings

[untypicalthinker]

this is a draft fic i wrote early 2021.... also titled 'my fascination with drinking and alcohol and friendship and maybe something more'. this was also the OG draft for ghosting fic, but this turned out a bit towards the kinda-hilarious side of my writing spectrum, so... enjoy!

💫
 

beomgyu had always dreamt of growing up. romanticized it, even.

who wouldn't? growing up meant being cool, being paid attention not because you're a cute kid, but an adult who can make decisions by oneself. you're trusted, taken seriously, and you get to choose what you want to do without caring about elders leaning over your shoulder and telling you this would be a better option.

he had grown up seeing his brother go from being fawned over as a little boy to moving to the college dormitories all on his own, from being left with beomgyu in the play area during their mom's alumni dinners to joining his own alumni meetings, a small glass in his hand and a bright, pink-cheeked giddy smile in the photos he has uploaded in his social media.

beomgyu had always wondered about growing up. wanted it for himself.

now, standing in the middle of the practice room, surrounded by four of his closest people and holding a cake box in his hand, beomgyu still wonders what growing up feels like.

nineteen.

he's nineteen, and he'll be twenty soon. sweet twenty. responsible twenty.

a tad bit scary twenty.

he tries to shake the feeling off, pasting a smile on his face as he closes his eyes.

i wish to be happy. i wish to be with the people i love.

💫

beomgyu lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding as the camera moved away from his line of vision.

"happy new year!" hueningkai exclaims, the excitement still very much alive in his body. it's just past midnight, they're still dressed in their practice wear, now starting to smell of sweat. "beomgyu-hyung, you're old!"

beomgyu smiles weakly; remembers to a year ago, to march 13, to a cake in his hand and four people he cherishes right beside him.

his twenty is here, too. his twenty comes with the same people, with the same love as the last one, and he’s content.

"and since i'm the best hyung," yeonjun says as he stands up, hands on hips as he dramatically tilts his chin up—

"he got you alcohol." soobin deadpans. beomgyu simply watches as yeonjun comically deflates, pouting at soobin for ruining the surprise.

"hey, first drinks are supposed to be special! do you know how much i struggled to keep it out of his sight? give me some credit for it!"

"well, he did try his best, beomgyu," soobin shrugs, leaning over beomgyu's back.

beomgyu tries not to freeze up and act awkward. the sudden weight against him leaves him feeling jarred, slightly off-kilter-- but it only lasts for a few seconds.

"anyways," yeonjun continues, now looking at he two maknaes. "you guys should leave for home. we'll come back a bit later."

"aw, no way! i want in on the fun too!" hueningkai whines. "i wanna see how all of you are like when you're drunk!"

"kids, you have homework to finish," their manager says, winking at yeonjun, who returns the favor with a poor attempt of a wink. beomgyu laughs at that, but stifles it when yeonjun sends him a split second glare. "and you three. don't be late."

beomgyu watches all of it with excitement buzzing underneath his skin. he watches the way soobin smiles at him lazily, the way taehyun smirks knowingly and hueningkai pouts sadly, the way yeonjun looks at him proudly. happily.

it hits him in full force, but it's a wave of happiness. he's finally twenty.

"you could not have chosen a better place, hyung."

"i know right? i'm a genius," yeonjun smiles proudly, swinging his hands, the bottles of soju in the bag clanking loudly with the motion. "an entire practice room for us to play around in! and soju for the first time!"

“who’s gonna tell him that i totally did not mean it,” soobin whispers to beomgyu, the both of them a step behind yeonjun as he proudly walks towards their practice room.

beomgyu shrugs. “i actually like this. better than going out.”

soobin gapes his mouth at him in disbelief.

"it's actually not my first time having soju," soobin adds, crossing his legs and leaning against the wall. yeonjun zeroes in on him suspiciously. "what? my hyung had soju at home too, so i got a sip. i didn't get drunk, obviously."

"of course," yeonjun frowns mockingly. "of course you'd get a sip way before i, the actual hyung here, did."

"this is your first time?"

"no," yeonjun opens one bottle and sets it in between. "but you've still had it way before me."

soobin chuckles meekly, sticking his tongue at the elder.

beomgyu watches it all quietly, still buzzing with excitement. he has dreamed about this for all of his teenage years, give him the chance to be excited over it.

"it's bitter," soobin states just as he hands beomgyu a bottle. "and it's a lot… much on you. but you get used to the taste, i guess."

"i prefer beer too." yeonjun adds.

"then why did you buy soju?"

"it's the most authentic drinking experience, gyu."

beomgyu could only nod. he has seen his brother clink the exact same green bottles with his dad, both spending hours late into the night during weekends as beomgyu peeked in from his bedroom, and yeonjun's reasoning matched.

"okay, before going into cheers," soobin starts, lifting his bottle in his hand. "responsible drinking, okay? this doesn't mean we don't have practice tomorrow, and i don't want any one to skip it because of a hangover—"

yeonjun interrupts loudly with a "yeah, yeah, cheers!" and beomgyu watches as the eldest takes a big gulp, face frowning at what beomgyu assumes to be the bitter taste.

soobin waits and watches until beomgyu presses the edge of the bottle to his lips and tips it up, the bittersweet alcohol pouring down his throat.

there is no responsible drinking. but beomgyu knew that would be the case already.

the four bottles of soju and the other cans of beer rapidly get over, and beomgyu never managed to keep count of his tolerance level like he had planned. all he knows is that the world is a kind of blurry that cannot be explained. so this is what it feels like to get drunk, he thinks to himself.

beomgyu leans his head on soobin's shoulder as he watches yeonjun stand up and do something, feeling warm and pleasant all over. he does, in fact, feel a tad bit dizzy, but that's negligible compared to the happiness that surges through him.

beside him, soobin is also laughing at yeonjun's antics, clearly drunk enough.

"okay okay, i'm spinning now!" the eldest returns to his position, now staring at the bottle in the middle, resting side-ways.

right, they had started playing truth or dare sometime before. beomgyu remembers having to write his name with his hips, yelling when yeonjun started laughing. and soobin smacking beomgyu for something he cannot recall.

beomgyu intently tries to remember why yeonjun was doing what he was doing when there's utter silence, to which he looks up.

"your turn, gyu." yeonjun whispers, eyes gleaming with happiness.

beomgyu thinks he could look at it all day.

"truth or dare?"

beomgyu gulps. blinks a few times to clear the daze. "dare." is he even speaking? he doesn't know at this point.

"i…" yeonjun trails off, frowning yet again as he racks his brain for a dare. "ah, shit. can't think of one."

"you have two minutes." beomgyu slurs. this is his chance to escape the game, and he is not letting it go. "and then i'm spinning."

"hey, where did that rule come from?"

"from me."

"from when!?"

"from right now," beomgyu replies. "one and half minute."

"dammit!" yeonjun frowns, deep in thought, as if this is the most important thing ever. beomgyu stares at yeonjun's brightly flushed cheeks, at the lines on his forehead, and laughs to himself. he's cute, he thinks to himself. so cute.

"aha!" soobin snaps his fingers as he perks up, setting his can of beer down. "i got the perfect dare!"

"what is it?"

"i'm such a genius, ha," soobin says with a proud smirk, turning to beomgyu. "gyu, i dare you to kiss who you think is the best kisser."

beomgyu blinks once. then twice.

and slowly asks: "the fuck, soobin?"

"what!" soobin yells in defense. "we have both kissed people before, and it's just a dare!"

yeonjun also nods excitedly, trying hard to cover his laughter behind his hand. "yeah, do that!"

"or? what if i don't?"

"you're getting us food tomorrow." yeonjun smirks, definitely proud about his instant (and only) idea for penalty. "all of tomorrow."

beomgyu stares at both with wide eyes. buying them food? he might as well surrender his wallet to them for the day.

"that's honestly— *hiccup* unfair!" he whines. "you two are just gonna order all the expensive stuff!"

yeonjun and soobin only laugh in mockery, high-fiving each other.

"then do the dare," yeonjun winks, puckering his lips out. "come on, i think we all know i'm the best kisser here."

"there's only two other people here, and none of us have seen you kiss." soobin deadpans. “personally, don’t wanna experience it either.”

"shush!"

beomgyu sits between them with a frown, undecided on what to do. he doesn't know who he wants to kiss, really; has he ever thought of it? he doesn't think so, but the idea isn't all that bad to him.

from both his sides, yeonjun and soobin keep chanting 'do it, do it, do it' repeatedly.

"okay, okay, i will! sheesh," beomgyu concedes, huffing and pulling his crossed legs together as he leans in. "close your eyes first."

yeonjun readily closes his eyes while soobin grumbles, but follows soon after. beomgyu looks at the both of them, a giggle hidden poorly by the back of his hand.

and in his hazy, alcohol-muddled vision, in the cloud of fog that covers his mind and thoughts, beomgyu takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and leans forward. everything blurs out right then, his vision slightly hazy and even more so without his contacts.

he meets a pair of soft, plush lips, and is overtaken by a want so strong, one that he has never experienced in his life. he moves a hand to the other's hair, grabbing onto it as he feels a warm hand behind his neck.

"hey!" beomgyu hears from beside him, and laughs into the kiss. it's so, so satisfying.

that's all he remembers, really, before his senses shut down and his body slumps forward, letting a pair of arms catch him. it’s going to eb a hilarious story come morning, about how beomgyu passed out mid-way, but he doubts anyone will barely remember what went down. The doodles on yeonjun’s face might say that they played a game, but them remembering this? unlikely.

"what the hell," he hears in his drunk state. "yah, choi beomgyu!"

beomgyu only curls into the warmth even more, smacking his lips as he slowly feels everything fade into nothingness.

"cute," is the last thing he hears as he falls asleep.

he does not remember anything after that.

💫

while beomgyu was ecstatic about the drinking part, he did not expect the consequential hangover to be so painful.

"don't talk," he grunts under his breath as hueningkai opens his mouth, a hand massaging his temple. "not one word."

it's only him and hueningkai at the table, taehyun and yeonjun probably off to the gym to work out and soobin still very much asleep. beomgyu doesn't know the gist of it, but they have been apparently given a day off, considering how knocked out the three eldest of the group were when they reached the dorm. hueningkai only laugh at beomgyu's miserable state as he munches on his morning cereal.

“well , i’m glad we got a day off today because of you three being smashed.”

there is also another thing he did not expect: the blank spaces in his memories.

beomgyu prided himself in having the best memory, remembering even the trivial things in his daily life; like the pet store they always pass on their way to inkigayo, or the way soobin would huddle up on the car seat, always in the same position as he catches some shut eye.

but now, everything he tried to think only reached a blank point. it was bizarre, really, to know that he's missing something and not knowing what it is. it felt like reading a page that has been erased; evident that something filled the space, but never knowing what it was.

"cereal?"

"i said not one word," beomgyu grunts, lifting his head up to see—

soobin, and not hueningkai.

"wasn't asking you," soobin says, looking towards kai. "cereal?"

"in the cupboard," kai replies back.

beomgyu simply watches as soobin walks over to the cupboard to take out the cereal, the lift of his arms lifting his shirt up a little bit and giving a peek of his waist.

and on other, normal days, this is a usual sight. there’s nothing special about it, he has seen it so many times, soobin is (surprisingly) still a growing kid whose shirts don’t fit after a point and beomgyu wishes he would stop growing, but.

but.

beomgyu feels his face strangely heat up, a weird feeling pooling in his stomach at the sight of it.

just what happened to him?

he watches as soobin wordlessly fills his bowl with cereal, rubbing his eyes before he reaches into the refrigerator for milk. he sees the elder munch onto some of the cereal right as he pours the milk in, his lips moving in a pout—

wait.

wait a goddamn second.

beomgyu’s eyes widen in absolute horror as the events of the previous night plays in his mind: the green bottles, the metal green tin cans, the dares and truths and then— then—

(“i dare you to—”)

beomgyu stands up abruptly, sending the chair toppling down to the floor. that is enough to make soobin turn to him, wide-eyed with confusion.

“did you see a ghost, or something?” soobin asks, looking around warily.

“i— you—” beomgyu speaks all the words jumbled up in his mind. “we—?”

“you have to speak coherently, gyu, i’m as hungover as you are. i don’t understand shit.”

how the fuck are you normal? is what beomgyu wants to ask, but he doesn't, out of sheer decency and the presence of one hueningkai between them.

"what?" soobin whines.

"n-no… nothing—"

"why are y'all so loud, god," yeonjun walks in, and beomgyu promptly trips over his own foot, only held from falling by hueningkai. "good morning."

beomgyu almost gasps for air, because—

"wear a shirt, hyung," soobin says nonchalantly, like he is totally unaffected by it.

beomgyu, on the other hand…

"why does he look like he saw a ghost," yeonjun asks, sleep still laced thickly in his voice, making it raspier than ever.

"i-"

"he saw you." soobin deadpans, scooping a spoonful of cereal and shoving it into his mouth. his eyes waver between the three before him, obviously looking for validation.

a long silence lingers, with beomgyu's eyes wavering between yeonjun and soobin, his brain running on overdrive.

"ha ha, very funny," yeonjun laughs mockingly, slipping into the t-shirt he had bunched up in his hand.

"you… are very weird," hueningkai concludes. "i knew you guys had bad humor levels, but this is…"

yeonjun whines something as he chugs a bottle of cold water. beomgyu simply watches as yeonjun's adam's apple bobs up and down, feeling his own throat go parched.

("yah, choi beomgyu!")

"i-i-i'm—" beomgyu finally stutters out, feeling his face get hotter with every passing second. "i'm gonna— go, yeah, go back to my— go to my room."

"what happened to you?" yeonjun asks, eyes filled with genuine confusion. "does drinking for the first time do that to people?" he asks soobin now, who only shrugs back.

beomgyu doesn't stay to hear the rest of their conversation, footsteps hurrying back to his room, ears rushing with blood and memories of last night.

It is only within the confines of his own room, no one else to witness, heart thudding against his chest erratically, that he admits:

“I… kissed them. one of them.” He breathes out. “when i was drunk.”

the world might as well spin to a stop.

💫

beomgyu was sixteen when he realized that maybe he was not like the other boys in his class. he did not talk about girls during every break; he wasn’t interested in the pen-drive his classmates kept passing under the table in secrecy. he stuck to his school work, extracurricular activities and his piano and guitar, and maybe his pet parrot toto, but that was it; he did not have a hidden box of magazines like some of his classmates apparently did.

he did not think it was different, or at least not until he was seventeen and staring at the guy playing basketball as he sat on the stairs, his sandwich in hand. he had just escaped a conversations with his friends about ‘who would be the best kisser in the school’, which quickly delved into conversations about making out and the likes.

he stared, stared and stared until the subject of his sight turned to him, and gave a little smile.

beomgyu is pretty sure his face turned as red as a tomato, and scrambled away immediately.

he would learn much later about homosexuality and gay people, and only hum lowly as he closes the incognito tab in his computer. he would simply move on in life, that memory buried in the deepest pits of his mind, never to be taken out again. it would not help him, at any point in his life, and so it was for the better that he pretend he has no knowledge about that part of himself.

now, standing against the door, he relives his memories, every single word he had read floating before his eyes, and two faces amidst it all, and finds a crack in the wall he has built around his world.

“fuck,” he whispers as he slides down, a hand over his mouth.

if this is his end, he wishes for it to be at least less painful.

💫

beomgyu is known to not cope well with groundbreaking realizations. in fact, he cannot cope at all, his mind running the facts over and over until he breaks under pressure or under the watchful eyes of someone noticing his suffering.

and therefore, he is very surprised when he finds himself acting normal around yeonjun and soobin, the lingering feeling of lips pressed against his tingling almost painfully, even days after the incident. he wonders if the reason he is acting like nothing had happened is because of the normalcy they maintain around him, to such an extent that it makes him wonder whether it was just an image cooked up by his alcohol-driven brain, and maybe it never really happened.

he is doing fine; or so he thinks. he knows how he consciously keeps a distance from yeonjun and soobin, sticking to hueningkai or taehyun more. it’s very subtle, unnoticeable even, but it gives beomgyu a tad bit of comfort. he can maintain a face while knowing consciously that he is taking steps towards getting everything back to normal. just until he forgets the kiss ever happened, or better, forgets the entire night.

he is doing fine, he thinks as he downs the last remnants of his coffee, bitter and sweet. bittersweet. ah.

he turns away from his mobile, smiling at the realization that some of the sweat on his forehead and his clothes have dried out, and nothing is sticking too much to his skin anymore. a personal win. he can finally move without feeling like slime.

he is just about to call kai to get him to fetch a bottle of water (because even if he can move, he will not) when his eyes land on yeonjun… and soobin. the two of them, huddled together in a corner, closer than they usually are. he sits and stares until he realizes it might be a bit too obvious, but he notices things within that short period.

things like:

the way yeonjun reaches out to soobin’s hand and presses it against his palm, comparing their hand sizes, and laughing against his face. the way soobin's ears redden, a dimpled smile mirroring yeonjun's happiness blooming in his face. the way yeonjun rests his head on soobin's shoulder, their hands clasped tightly.

beomgyu thinks they look like a couple; a couple happily in love, a couple he would probably be jealous of, in a good way.

he is still staring, unable to look away for some reason.

it is at this time that soobin looks his way, the smile on his face slowly fading away into a look that beomgyu cannot describe. yeonjun is talking about something, oblivious about soobin's attention being elsewhere.

beomgyu wants to look away, wants to focus on something else, but something in soobin's eyes stop him. he cannot place a finger on it, but it does make him feel multiple things at one time, a confusing set of curiosity, guilt and

taehyun chooses that exact time to stand right before his line of sight, holding a bottle of water and blocking his sight. "here, water,"

beomgyu cannot be more thankful.

(after practice is over, after soobin is deep asleep, cocooned in his own bed, beomgyu tells himself: "it's nothing, probably. nothing important."

he wills himself to believe his words.)