UNIVERSE / BTS.

64: growing pains / 2seok

GROWING PAINS
( part 1 )

WORD COUNT 4k
OVERVIEW teenage paradise—or so we thought / alt: these growing pains are keeping me up at night ( au: highschool au ft fake dating, jisoo & rosé from blackpink & side taeguk/yoonmin / warnings for underage drinking, slut shaming, homophobia & slurs )

PLAYLIST ( a lot of it is in the oneshot tbh ) growing paints / alessia cara, diet mountain dew / lana del ray, japanese posters / rebounder, summer / brockhampton, lost in love / brockhampton.

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BEHIND THE BIG TOWN movie theatre where all the blockbuster films show, there sits a boy and a girl on the wall above the dumpsters, a diluted orangeade sunset sky above their heads and cigarettes dangling between their lips. they share generic white ipod headphones, old and tangled, records they've heard a thousand times playing in a tinny tone, mr brightside playing while his hand rests on her milky white thigh.

he, the boy in pink john lennon glasses as a defense against the fading sun and a top cut short so it shows off his washboard stomach, is kim seokjin, a pretty boy in levi's jeans and cherry cola flavoured chapstick. she, the girl with deep pink hair like cranberry juice and fishnet tights that are all the range, is park chaeyong, a pretty girl in shimmering lip gloss and knee socks. the reason these two are here at 6:45PM on a thursday evening sharing cigarettes is because they're fake dating as a way to clear up rumours. they shared a plate of french fries at the greasy diner that only plays one album, and then came behind the aladdin theatre just to smoke.

"fuck this town, man." seokjin spews cigarette smoke into the stagnant air, his attitude so teenage that chaeyong giggles a little, thinking how seokjin would be a cool boyfriend, if either of them were straight. she could be kissing kim jisoo right now, tasting her vanilla chapstick lips, but she's technically forbidden from doing so. seokjin could be at home just being himself, alone in his room with probably an aretha franklin vinyl, a glass of his mum's red wine and a good book, but instead he's helping build her lie.

that's what good friends are for.

"we can go home soon, cherry coke," she says, which has seokjin's strawberry shortcake lips perking into a nearly there smile. "you can go back to your gay life, fantasising about the basketball player next door."

seokjin snorts and pushes her shoulder, but she isn't wrong at all. he'll probably end up watching jung 'king' hoseok, the star basketball player of foxhole highschool, work out shirtless in his room directly adjacent to seokjin's, while the latter sips stolen wine with gloss stained lips. and chaeyong will probably end up sneaking out at 10:00PM to meet her forbidden girlfriend at the kiddie park, which isn't so much for kids anymore. chaeyong, for now, picks lint from her pineapple patterned shirt and smiles when diet mountain dew begins to play, kicking high topped converse against the bare brick wall.

seokjin can't wait till he leaves the town for college. he and chaeyong are fake dating because neither of them can tell their parents about their sexuality, and because there's a lotta wildfire rumours about kim seokjin sleeping with the basketball team captain—he wishes. ever since someone (cough, byun baekyun, cough) supposedly saw seokjin making out with a pretty faced pink haired junior from the a capella club—and seokjin did do that, in fact—behind the gym, and then baekyun's friend saw seokjin with one of the basketball boys who happened to be dating her best friend, and whispered insults of manslut and whore followed his red converse through the hallways. hell, lee yerim even wrote it on his locker in candy crush pink nail varnish—the 'e' of whore still remains. it's all bullshit.