↬ bar.

@⁰² jeonghan y. stay put. that's what she was told to do. jieqiong claspes onto the thin fabric of her cardigan, the rouge tainting her pale cheeks deepening from both the settling alcohol and the nipping night wind. the undeviating clamour from all around her swallowed any sense of recognition she had left, surrendering herself instead the blurry haze of thin black fonts on her phone and a number she knew by heart.

kyul. she hasn't heard that name in ages. he was the only one who ever called her kyulkyung.

it felt... melodramatic, almost, how he'd chosen to keep calling her by the namesake. perhaps a part of her, a foolish part wanted to believe that he still cared. perhaps a larger part of her hated it with a certain disposition; but there it was, lounging in a long-forsaken corner, whispering things she'd wished she'd stopped believing.

keeping herself upright proved a bigger challenge than she'd thought – she wasn't really one to get so drunk, especially not alone. slumped over a streetlight pole, the drumming in her ears was near indistinguishable from the general tumult of the bar area. "he'll come soon," she mumbles, half hoping for the thought not to settle too deeply. she would worry about it later on; for now, all she wanted was to get back home.

@⁰³ bin m. Her days of coming to the bar had become quite frequent as the weight of stress had /once again/ gradually taken a toll on her, with events such as graduation approaching soon, arguing with her father and worst of all, realizing her ex-crush had gone to the same school as her all along. And so, drinking once in a while became once a month, and once a month became every weekend. Drinking her pain and stress away just seemed to be the easiest solution, since by the time the sun had arrived, she wouldn't remember any of it.

Picking up the shot glass filled with clear liquid, she downed it to and exhaled out a sigh from the bitterness, as her face flushed red from the burning pain. Setting down the cup back on the counter of the bar, she extended her arm out for service from the bartender before asking for another drink. "Another shot of rice wine please." As she waited, she pulled out her phone and stared at the blurry screen, trying to make out at the time until noticing a man sitting in the stool next to her. Turning slightly around to face him, she placed the side of her head in her palm before asking him for the time. "Hey, excuse me- sir- do you know what time is it?"

@⁰⁴ youngdae k. should he have expected the response he got? probably. was he less upset about it? absolutely not.

"dae-hyung... i even told you i was in a midterm before this," taeyong sighed in utter defeat. he loved his friend from the bottom of his heart, but when it came to the matter of blue balls – read: his – youngdae couldn't help. wouldn't help. couldn't. not that it mattered – taeyong couldn't picture him and youngdae in anything remotely intimate. they were bros only, through and through.

still.

"sometimes, i wish the aliens took you instead," the younger muttered under his breath, snuggling closer to his idiot of a friend. "that way, i wouldn't have to share any braincells with you." of course, he was all bark and no bite – taeyong couldn't imagine his life without the dorky junior student even if he tried to. youngdae had quickly and permanently carved out a little niche for himself in the young prince's heart.

"i will, however, take you up on your offer. that, and... you have to buy me cake next time we got the café!" chirped taeyong, levelling youngdae with a radiant smile. yet his eyes held a look that brokered no room for argument. "though, if i do end up buying drinks for someone else, will you this time /not/ barge in when i was just getting to the jackpot?" the boy huffed indignantly, reaching up to lightly flick the elder on his forehead.

@⁰¹ miyeon c. wide eyed as he approached the table, Jaemin knew the other female wanted to get drunk, what he didn’t expect was the table full of coloured drinks, in different quantity. It wasn’t about the money that he was concerned but more about whether they could finish it. he wasn’t a light drinker, but he knew that miyeon definitely was and with him driving the car, it was impossible for him to even take a drink, that would have been irresponsible. a little dumb founded, he looked at the number of glasses then back at the girl and then back at the glasses. either this was gonna be a very long night, or a really short one. “ miy… uh.” Jaemin scratched the back of his head as he took a sit beside the girl, brows furrowed into confusion. well.

“are you sure you can finish /all/ of these? i mean, not that i mind? my wallet doesn’t care and i can keep you company the whole night since i don’t have anything to do tomorrow but i’m more concern what has gotten you to this state? it’s so unusual of you.” his fingers already playing at the rim of the shot glass, damn was he tempted to drink too. instead, he hands it to the girl with a grin. “i’m all ears.”

@⁰² taeyong l. oh no, oh no, oh no. youngdae could hear the commotion from the other side of the door, followed by a stranger opening the door and racing past him, almost running him over. that was when youngdae took a deep breath because he knew he wasn't going to get out of this easily.

on the other side of the door was youngdae's good old friend, his buddy, his pal. as a bead of sweat dripped down his ear, he smiled cheesily trying to get out of trouble. "whoops," was all he could really say to his good old friend buddy pal after ing him.

carefully, he stepped into the dorm room, closing the door behind him so there would be no evidence in the hallway of what had just happened, not that there was really anybody around to witness anything happen anyway, and put his arm around his buddy as he sat on the couch. "come on, now," youngdae schmoozed, "between the two of us, did you really think i was the one with the braincell?" and he pat his good old buddy's back, trying his hardest to figure out how to get out of this one while running low on braincells.

"i called you a bunch of times and you didn't answer," youngdae logically tried to explain as sweet as he could, "what else was i supposed to do if you didn't answer because aliens abducted you or something?" only for his last statement to completely destroy his credibility. what a mess, but youngdae knew a way to butter him up to at least try to make up for this, patting taeyong on the head. "come on, now; how about we go out for drinks?" he suggested, "midterms are done, i bet you there are a whole lot of people trying to get that stress out. all the drinks on me, even if you want to buy somebody else a drink, okay?" youngdae gave taeyong a big goofy smile as he held up his fingers in an ok gesture.

@⁰⁴ youngdae k. naturally, taeyong was one to take things slow, savour every moment together. but the edge of the midterm was still digging into his skin, anxiety of perhaps failing and losing what precious gpa he had managed to maintain– so it didn't even come to him as a surprise that he had allowed things to escalate so quickly. one moment, he was being pampered with kisses, the next he was impatiently grinding down on his classmate as he straddled the man.

the way the taeyong was almost /thrown off/ the classmate's lap should have been comical, but it ing /hurt/ to land on his tailbone upon the floor. a large yelped escaped his lips, head whipping around to just the familiar features of his tall friend disappearing back into the hallway again. with a loud groan, he got up to his knees, ready to apologize and return to where they left off... except his classmate was red-faced and hurriedly buttoning his own shirt.

"th-this was a mistake– i'm sorry–" the man sputtered hastily, gathering his backpack and then scampered over to the door. taeyong had been so lust-blinded, he hadn't even realized the bastard hadn't removed his shoes. "what the , dude, it's fine, just– get back here–" taeyong whined loudly, his half- still uncomfortably pressed in his skinny jeans as he scrambled to his feet in an attempt to stop his means of release for the night.

it seemed that the dude was insistent to not let anyone know of this unfortunate incident, for he turned and glared at taeyong before whispering, "no one hears a word of this or i'll tell them you slept with the prof for grades."

with that, he yanked the door open, shoved past the slumped over figure near the door and made the fastest beeline taeyong had ever personally witnessed.

for a moment, the young prince just stood there, blinking at the outline of dust his classmate had made. then, he moaned loudly; it was an entirely different reason this time.

"i'm- i-i'm going to ing /kill/ you, dae!!" he whined loudly, yanking at his already ruffled hair in frustration. now that the door was open, he figured his friend would come in, given that the chances of witnessing anything more scandalous had dropped down to a fat zero. taeyong stared at the spot on the couch where he had a decent-looking bloke under him, ready to let him ride him. there was nothing but a slight dip in the fabric now, mocking him. with another loud huff, belaying to youngdae exactly how happy he was with this outcome, taeyong snatched his discarded, faded metallica t-shirt from the floor and slipped it on.

"why– why are you even here, you big idiot?" sulked the younger, dropping onto the couch and glared at his stupidly adorable friend with a pout. "did you like– leave your last braincell here when we watched netflix here?" taeyong continued to grouch. it had been a while since he had been laid too, so he had understandably been eager to have his weekly dosage of vitamin d. "i hate you– urgh. you owe me– /big/ time."

@⁰² taeyong l. after a week of studying without sleep, friday afternoon marked the last of youngdae's midterms - half of his stress and anxiety for the semester had passed. with that benchmark cleared, it was time to hit up the homies. he hit them up one by one, asking them how their midterms went and what their plans were for spring break. typical stuff. now that youngdae was a senior, he's come to reflect how far along he is in his journey and how he met all of these homies along the way. uwu he could have never imagined he'd be tight enough with his homies to predict how fast they'd respond and with what response. everybody had seemed to reply just as expected, except for one brother: taeyong.

typically, youngdae wasn't a nosy guy, but he'd known taeyong for a while now, and it wasn't like him to not respond to his text within the hour or so and it had been three hours already. to dae's knowledge, yong would have been completely free this evening and seeing that yong hadn't even read his texts, he was getting worried. perhaps he was asleep? or maybe he went to the movie theater? no, no, either way, taeyong would have responded to him by now, or at least read his text.

youngdae looked at his phone intensely, his eyebrows furrowing as he stared at taeyong's name on his phone, his last braincell trying its hardest to make sense of this conundrum. "taeyong's an adult," youngdae thought to himself, "he doesn't have to be on his phone 24/7," and nodded at his reflection as he locked his phone, deciding to be logical.

but then ten minutes went by and his thoughts festered.

maybe just one call to make sure he's taking a nap or something.

*ring* *ring*
*ring* *ring* *ring* *ring*
*ring*
*beeeep*
"you have reached the voicemail of—"

he hung up the phone and called again.

*ring* *ring*
*ring* *ring* *ring* *ring*
*ring*
*beeeep*
"you have re—"

"aliens," youngdae muttered to himself as he reached to grab his jacket and make a dash for it toward taeyong's dorm room with thoughts flooding his head.

"the last conversation i had with taeyong was about aliens," he thought to himself as he slammed his front door behind him, taking long strides down the hallway in the direction of taeyong's room, "we didn't have foil hats on when we were dissing them — i swear if taeyong isn't in his room, then it must have been aliens. IT MUST HAVE BEEN!"

he was just a stairwell away from taeyong, his hurried footsteps echoed in the halls, and as he approached the door with taeyong's number on it, he practically burned the rubber off the soles of his shoes stopping.

"TAEYONG, I'M HERE TO HELP," he screamed on the top of his lungs as he opened the unlocked door wide open, the lights of the hallway flooding the dorm's living area, highlighting the pale back of youngdae's good old friend, who had not been abducted by aliens, on top of another student.

well,,

youngdae took a moment to understand what was going on and immediately shut the door back the way it was, taking a deep breath as he stared at the door with his friend getting action on the other side. maybe youngdae didn't know his homies as well as he thought. and perhaps maybe he should consider these kinds of situations before jumping to... aliens.

@⁰⁴ youngdae k. fridays were taeyong's favourite days. more than the weekend itself, it was the thrill of being able to stay up late, let loose of all the responsibilities and stress of the week and just live in the moment, under the allure of nightfall, that got to him. usually, he was one to hit the bar or hit the streets with friends, eager to make more memories under the city lights. this friday evening, however, taeyong had just gotten out of a rough midterm and was busy seething over it with a fellow classmate. one thing lead to another... and suddenly taeyong found himself trapped against the school hallway.

7 pm on a friday meant that the hallways were practically empty. no one would have heard taeyong's loud moan as he got his neck on, yet there was that fear of being caught and having his reputation with the school tarnished. so with great efforts, he gently pushed away his classmate.

"n-not here. my room. my roommate is out."

which brought him to now. stripped down to just his jeans, splayed across their living room couch, being kissed to within an inch of his life. long fingers dug into the plush couch, back arched as his classmate travelled further down the smooth, milky expanse of his chest, marred only by purple bruises of varying sizes.

in their haste to have a taste of each other as soon as possible, taeyong had completely forgotten to lock the door. thanks to having been in a midterm just prior to his, his phone still remained on silent, so he completely missed the texts and calls from his friend. specifically, the friend who did first then thought later.

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@⁰¹ jaemin n. miyeon stared intensely at the shots the bartender had just set in front of her, cherry lips pursed into a gentle pout as her eyes capered about, trying to decide which one to take first. jaemin had gone to the bathroom right after they had arrived, leaving the poor girl--who had only ever had alcohol once before--to choose their drinks. any other day, she would have most likely spent ample time perusing the menu and researching the ingredients in each individual shot; but today was a day like no other, one in which she felt like absolute and really just wanted some kind of buzz to distract her from reality. thus, when the bartender had questioned her for their order, miyeon had admittedly told him to give them one of each (an order which had the bartender peering at her with an extremely concerned look, but she had paid him no mind, knowing jaemin wouldn't care how much she spent).

the 20 or so small shot glasses resting on the counter were dauntingly full, as if mocking her, begging to be downed in a drunken stupor. but miyeon resisted the urge to gulp them down, fingers tugging anxiously on the sleeves of her sweatshirt so as to form little sweater paws, waiting for jaemin to return before indulging.

@⁰⁴ seungwoo h. several minutes had pass while jisoo was waiting for her ride home. many of her peers began to slowly pack their belongings, while she continued laying there on her arm, half asleep and half awake. she began wondering what took her roommate so long to arrive but as soon as she heard those doors open, the sound of the bells ringing above, she perked her head up upon hearing the familiar voice but one that did not sound like the person she was expecting. "huh?" she squinted her eyes, trying her hardest to gain conscious and get a picture of the face in front of her before giving up and planting her face on the sleeve of her shirt. "yeah- b but but you're not kookie-" turning her head to the side once again to face him, the corner of her lips curl down into a frown yet, one that looked more like a child pouting.

@⁰⁴ jisoo k. pulling into a parking spot easily, seungwoo got off the car and immediately made his way into the bar. while he entered, a thought popped into his head - how was he going to convince jisoo to let seungwoo take her safely home? honestly, he wasn't too sure about how jisoo perceived him now after so much time had passed, but there really was no time to think about it more. he was able to easily spot where jisoo was, approaching with a brisk pace and crouching so he could come face to face with her. "hi jisoo, ready to go home?"

@⁰⁴ jisoo k. pulling into a parking spot easily, seungwoo got off the car and immediately made his way into the bar. while he entered, a thought popped into his head - how was he going to convince jisoo to let seungwoo take her safely home? honestly, he wasn't too sure about how jisoo perceived him now after so much time had passed, but there really was no time to think about it more. he was able to easily spot where jisoo was, approaching with a brisk pace and crouching so he could come face to face with her. "hi jisoo, ready to go home?"

@⁰⁴ seungwoo h. a wave of exhausting took over her, a sign of the alcohol creeping up onto her and shutting her body down. yet, she knew she had to make it home safe to her roommates, her dear precious sweet roommates. she was lucky enough to have the two of them, and especially jungkook who she assumed would be on his way and so, as she waited, she laid on her arm extended out on the table, while watching her peers laugh and toast to some more beer. "come on jisoo, don't be such a downer." she scoffed with lazy eyes and turned her head to face in the other direction. what were they thinking? killing her of alcohol poisoning? she had quite enough already, especially after the huge meal they just had hours ago.

@⁰⁴ jisoo k. kookie? unless seungwoo's changed his name recently (he hasn't, he knows that for sure) jisoo definitely had the wrong person in mind. however, it was obvious from the way she was talking, and the fact she was at the bar, that she was drunk. probably why she thought she was calling jungkook instead of him. seungwoo huffed out a soft breath. he could hang up, he could just tell her she was calling the wrong person - but he also didn't want to try and convince a drunk person that they were wrong, and another part of him wouldn't feel right knowing she was drunk and not knowing if she got home safe. he was close enough to the bar, and he was in his car. "the bar near campus right? i can pick you up. don't leave until i get there." he replied, pulling his seatbelt on and getting ready to start the engine.

@⁰⁴ seungwoo h. once the caller on the other end picked up, the corner of her lips curled up into a rather drunken smile as she giggled through the phone. "hello? hey- kookie can you-" she paused, placing her hands on to avoid from hurling in front of her peers and especially everyone. most importantly, avoiding to embarrass herself in front of a crowd. "can you pick me up at the b b bar?" the side of her head began throbbing in pain as rubbed the sides of her temples, accidentally dropping her phone and eventually ending the call.

@⁰⁴ jisoo k. choosing to spend the night nout and about, despite the texts on his phone from earlier from random friends and acquaintances to come out and enjoy the night with them at the bar or club, he voted to spend a bit of a calmer night with some fellow compsci seniors at a resturant, complaining over good food about the stress of their final projects. he had just finished up the meal, belly full and appetite sated when his phone rang. strange, no one really called him, most people that knew him were aware that he much rather be texted instead. the name on his phone though caused him to pick up the call though. jisoo, when was the last time they had even talked? he didn't even know where to start when it came to her, however his finger still hit the answer call button. "hello?"

@⁰⁴ seungwoo h. one shot. two shots. three shots. four shots. it was one shot after another before she realized how drunk she was the moment she felt the whole room spinning, along with her cheeks feeling hot and flushed from the number of mixed liquor she consumed. adding onto that, it was already past her usual time to return home but in this most unfortunate case, not only was she the only one intoxicated in her group, but majority of them as well. and so, she was given no choice but to call someone from her listed contacts as she scrolled through the lit screen, eyes blinded and blurred by the brightness. however, once she clumsy picked one of the names of her contacts in her drunken state, she placed the phone right beside her ear and waited for the other end to pick up.