#I did not think this blog would get attention

[unriding]

PROTECTING YOU FROM A CREEP. ft. endo & togame (separate)

in which a persistent pursuer doesn’t quite get the hint … that is, until they come face to face with your boyfriend. potential warning for implied stalking ( not by the characters ). f!reader.

sfw. similar to headcanons from my previous blog, but is not a repost!

As if any unwarranted looks your direction could ever go unnoticed by Endo.

He’s pegged you as the type of person to be much too trusting of everyone you come across since day one, now even more so from the way you didn’t even bother to question the reason behind why Endo would suddenly want to pick you up from work (though.. had he known that your shifts were adjusted to wrap up at 11 PM, he certainly would have started doing so much, much earlier).

He decides to wait just outside the back entrance of your building, clock on his phone reading 10:58 PM. It doesn’t take him long to note that the street lights in this specific lot are dim, and the area itself is practically empty. Nothing out of the ordinary considering the time, but it’s definitely not the ideal place he would like for you to be walking alone in the middle of the night.

It’s not like Endo himself is immune to your cute face or your endearing personality either, but — everything about this just rubs him the wrong way.

That stranger that only visits your work when he knows you’re working. According to your coworkers, he’s got his hands on your full schedule for the month. How that would even be possible is beyond him, your coworkers, and your own comprehension. Apparently nobody had told him your hours, but in the end, he got the information from somewhere.

He thinks this has been going on for much longer than you’ve let on.

A sudden set of footsteps catches his attention, though they’re not as heavy as he imagined they would be. The new moon tonight makes it difficult for Endo to see clearly, but from what he’s able to make out — he’s smaller than him, at least.

Not that he would have a hard time with someone who happened to outsize him.

He almost says something. He certainly would have, without a doubt, but you’ve always had a thing or two to say about him ‘starting unnecessary fights.’

So he waits. He waits and watches as the man in the hood looks as if he’s about to open his mouth to say something, but changes his mind upon noticing Endo beside the door.

Specifically, the infamous infinity on his neck. The tattoo that anyone in Makochi could recognize in a single glance — one that spells death for whoever is foolish enough to bother him, let alone his girl.

The man freezes in place. The new boyfriend you’ve been talking about was him?

Perhaps Endo’s reputation as one of the strongest still stands even years after high school has passed — especially now, with the way the stranger stares at him, completely dumbstruck.

Something bordering sadistic in Endo bubbles inside his chest. He can’t help it — not when he knows that had he not decided to come to pick you up, you would have been alone with him by now.

And now that he’s seen him up close, he doesn’t like him one bit.

“Ah, here to pick her up?” Endo cocks his head to the side. “That’d be my job, don’t you think?”

“W-Who?” He stammers, eyes narrowing into his best attempt at a glare despite the tremble of his lip. “I don’t know anyone here, man.”

He almost laughs. “Well, don’t leave so soon,” he makes his way towards him, circles him like a wolf stalks his next prey.

“What’re you doing lurking at her work place like this?” Endo stops when he’s just beside him, ‘Frank’ only a couple inches from him now, “ya little punk?”

“I’m here for the trash. I can come back tomorrow—”

“Really now..” Endo leans in, almost laughing when he retreats backwards. “Because I thought you looked awfully familiar. You’re not that guy who got a hold of my girl’s work schedule, did ya?”

His eyes go wide. “N..n—”

“Cuz a nice girl like that’s already got a boyfriend,” he checks his watch, bored. 11:01. You’d probably be double checking your things by now. “Ah.”

“Unless you’d like for her to see you passed out on the floor, of course. We could arrange that.”

“Wouldn’t you like that, you mutt?”

You really, really should have taken up Togame’s offer to pick you up.

He’s always laughed at your glare, much to your annoyance. Presses a fingertip to the skin between your brows with an amused grin, reminding that you that “such a harsh look only looks cute when it’s you, y’know.”

Only, he’s nowhere in sight and this time, you truly hope your glare doesn’t come across as cute. Your back roughly bumps into the wall with your last step away from your pursuer, hand flying up to flash your phone’s messages his way — “my favorite turtle” clear across the top of the screen.

“My boyfriend’s really big and scary, just so you know,” your voice falters, panic flashing across your eyes for a moment. “And he’s on his way. I told him all about you.”

He smiles, and a chill runs down your spine.

“Did you now? Well, he doesn’t know you like I do,” he sneers, slowly moving to close the distance between the two of you. “I could treat you better. You know I could. Just give me another chance, and I’ll prove it.”

You shake your head as hard as you can. “I said you aren’t my type,” your voice comes out quieter this time, hoping the volume masks at least some of the fear, “a lot of times. And I have a boyfriend.”

It doesn’t faze him. If anything, you think he looks amused by your efforts to turn him down.

“Did you think I didn’t know that, silly girl?” He’s closer now, enough to stretch his hand out and nearly reach you, “I really, really like girls like you. I don’t care… about your little boyfriend….”

Your eyes slam shut, back pressed against the wall and your hands hugging your purse to your chest — tightly, as if something so small could still potentially shield you from him. “Well he’s gonna b-be here, so—”

Togame. Where is Togame? Your heart pounds a thousand beats a second, eyes clenched shut harder than ever before, and you wait—

But his hand never reaches you.

There’s only a brief noise of surprise from your pursuer before it turns into something resembling pain, and your eyes flutter open.

“Jo..!”

You quickly note the faint trace of sweat along his temples, as if he had frantically searched every corner of the town before finding you. It doesn’t take you much longer to note the furrow of his brows next — the way he always does when he’s angry.

“Got yourself in a real interesting situation while I was on my way, did you now?” Togame’s grip tightens on his wrist, and he winces. His eyes flicker towards you, taking a second to make sure you’re not hurt.

He sighs in relief when you appear unharmed — aside from the slight tremble of your hands, of course, but no visible injuries. Lucky for him, he thinks, or he would have had to ask you to leave the scene.

Which leaves one thing.

“Hey… you,” the look in his eyes darkens, “what do you think you’re doing bothering her like that?”

“Cornering her against the wall …. and what was that? Tell me….” Togame lets go of his wrist, only to grab a fistful of his shirt. “Exactly what you were planning to do while I was away.”

[trainer-from-unova]

day on the green

𖤐 bandom blog: @princess-lvcifer 𖤐 english ao3 𖤐 spanish ao3 𖤐 edits 𖤐 kofi 𖤐 𝄞 𖤐

ship: eddie munson x f!reader

summary: you travel with your best friend through the country to go to a metal festival in San Francisco with him

a/n: lots of metallica references as usual / i wrote this in summer 2022 / english isn't my first language, sorry if something's weird expressed

cw: fluff, best friends to lovers, sexual and romantic tension, sexual humor, affectionate insults

word count: 12'1k

"______, Eddie's calling," said her mother, entering her room without knocking or asking permission. She was listening to Metallica at full volume and knew she probably wasn't going to hear her.

"I'm coming," she said dropping the magazine she was reading, leaving it at the foot of his bed and getting up from it to go downstairs to where the house phone was. "Hey, what's up?" She wanted to hold back the urge to smile like the lovesick fool she was, since her mother was circling the house like a shark, and she didn't want her to know she liked him, not because she was ashamed of him or because her mother thought he was a bad influence — on the contrary, she and Eddie got along well, she didn't see him as a bad guy, but who would want her mother to know which boy she liked? And on top of that he was a close friend who often went to her house.

"Are you at home?" he asked nervously.

"Can't you see I am, asshole?" She asked now. "What's wrong?"

"Okay, don't move from there, I'm on my way," he said, and hung up.

"You fucking asshole," she whispered to herself, she hated being left wondering, she was worried, but knowing Eddie it wouldn't be serious. The most serious thing that could happen was that he'd get caught smoking or selling weed.

She didn't hear Eddie park his van in front of her house because her music was on full blast, but if it wasn't for that, she would have heard him. She had good hearing and recognised the noise made by the engines of his loved ones' cars. She could also recognise the sound of keys or footsteps as they walked.

What she did hear was the doorbell of the house in the distance. She got out of bed and turned the music down, it was obvious that Eddie was there to tell her something, although she had no idea what, but she'd better be able to hear it loud and clear, she'd listen to her favourite songs loud and clear at any other time.

The door to her room was open, so he didn't ask permission to enter. He was practically at his houss, but he did leave it ajar when he entered.

"What is it?" She asked indignantly as she sat cross-legged on her bed. "You've got me fucking intrigued!"

"Boom," he said, raising his right hand, in which he held a pamphlet. She could clearly see names of rock and metal bands she knew: Scorpions, Ratt, Y&T, Metallica, Rising Force, Victory.... Though his eyes went to her favourite band, Metallica, hardly paying attention to the others, as she didn't care that much about them.

Eddie took off his shoes and sat down on her bed, facing her, also with his legs crossed.

"It's this year's Day on the Green," he said, handing her the sheet, "Saturday 31 August. The next day it's Wham! and some other pop bands I obviously don't want to see. I've always wanted to go. We have to go, I won't take no for an answer."

"18'50$... It's expensive, and in Oakland! How are we going to get there, if we go at all?"

"But it's worth the price! And we can go by bus, or by plane, or in my caravan... Yeah, I think my caravan would be better. Think about it, you and me, travelling around the country in a caravan, listening to our favourite songs and shouting them out, and then listening to them played live by their creators and together with more fans..." He couldn't fit the smile on his face and his eyes were shining, it was adorable when he looked so excited, you could tell he liked what he was talking about. "It's a great plan, you can't say no," he said pointing his right hand with his index finger.

It was true, it was a great plan and she couldn't say no to him. And she really wanted to live such a unique experience with him, and alone, but the money issue put her off, and she didn't know what her mother would say about it.

"And on top of that, it's the summer holidays, you can't give me the excuse of school."

"Yes, but the money and my mother..."

"Don't worry about the money, you know..." He whispered.

Yes, it was true, he was loaded from selling weed, but it was bad for her to accept that he paid her entrance fee and everything, and that he drove and paid for the petrol.

"Even though you're failing all your science subjects, you're a good girl, I'm sure she'll let you have a whim like that. And I'm sure she doesn't think too badly of me, does she?"

"I hope so... But before we say anything, we should organise it a bit, so that she sees that we're not going on a wild adventure, that we're organised, and get her in a good mood."

"I see the logic of it, but it has to be as soon as possible, tickets may fly."

"Then let's get down to work. We must go to the library to consult maps and their routes."

That's what they did. They worked out how long the trip would take to get there and back, when they would have to leave Hawkins and when they would be back, motels to spend the night in, gas stations, how much money each of them would have to take with them to pay for expenses, how much the whole trip would cost, and a little emotional and psychological blackmail to use on _______'s mother if needed.

The next day, she let her mother know that Eddie would be going to dinner in the evening and that they wanted to tell her something important. The second she thought they wanted to tell her that they had been together for a long time or even worse, like a pregnancy, but she cleared her worries by telling her it was nothing of the sort.

"I want you here at six o'clock sharp. Get ready," she told him as she got out of Eddie's caravan in front of her house. Her house was between the school and his house, so he was her taxi driver.

"I know, I know."

"Isn't he coming in yet?" asked her mother when she saw her walk in the front door alone.

"No, he's going home to get ready," she said as she made her way to the stairs and took her backpack off her shoulders, "or did you want him to get ready here?"

"What should I make him for dinner?"

"Whatever you want, he'll eat it all pleased," she said on the first floor.

Hours passed and the doorbell rang. It was time. Luckily, he had been on time. For what he wanted to do, he was, but not for his early morning classes at school.

Eddie wasn't that uncomfortable, because he already knew the mother of his best and only female friend, but she had told him that her mother saw him as a possible boyfriend, so he knew what was going through her mind when she saw him with her daughter (the same thing happened with some people at school), and that made him ashamed, because on top of that, at least on his part, he did feel something for _______, something more than friendship.

And well, besides, it was the first time he had dinner and spent so much time with her mother, and of course, there was also the main plan, the mission they had to achieve: to convince her to let her go with him on a trip around the country and go to that metal festival. Technically she didn't need her permission, since she was already 18, but being a woman and still living under her roof, for things like that it was better to have her approval.

"Well, what is it that you wanted to tell me? Intrigue kills me," said her mother, as the three of them sat down at the table.

"Like mother, like daughter," he thought.

"Well, mom, as you know, I love metal, and so does he. It's a music that has helped me a lot in many ways for a long time, and so has Eddie, even though we've known each other for half a year. There's going to be a festival in Oakland on Saturday the 31st of August and we'd really like to go. We've thought about going in his caravan, both of us driving every couple of hours. Also, because of the proximity, we'd like to visit San Francisco and Los Angeles for at least a day, and we'd come back through the south, through the Bible Belt. He has insisted on paying for everything but I have told him no, I could pull from my savings or start working a bit. We've also looked at routes and motels to sleep in, and if anything should happen to the car Eddie is a good mechanic and has all the necessary equipment. I would call you every time we stopped at a place with a phone box. And I think I deserve to go to the festival, plus it's something that would make me very happy and travelling around the country in a car would be an experience..."

"And of course I would look after her in every way, you don't have to worry about anything," he said as seriously as she did.

"Of course, of course," she pointed her index finger at him, giving him a quick glance and a quick nod.

She looked at each of them and a smirk appeared on her face. They were both already fearing the worst.

"All this to ask me to take you on a trip and go to a concert?" she asked incredulously while holding back her laughter.

"...Yes?"

"For God's sake, you don't need to worry so much, you're both old enough to ask my permission. Besides, I can't wait for you to see the world and get wise," she said looking only at her daughter.

"So, ma'am, does that mean yes?" asked Eddie.

"Of course it does," she replied, and they both looked at each other smiling from ear to ear and high-fived.

She looked at them tenderly. It was obvious to her that they were both in love with each other.

Time passed ridiculously slowly.

During the months of waiting before the festival began, Eddie slightly increased the prices of the weed he sold, and started giving private guitar lessons to kids in town to earn a little extra and to disguise where he was getting the money to afford the trip. Meanwhile, she started giving drawing, English and Spanish classes to other kids.

On the first day of May Live Aid was announced, but despite being closer than Oakland, as it would be held in Philadelphia and would be no more than a day's drive (not counting the return trip), it was too expensive. 35$ each ticket. The price was understandable, as the event was going to be an unprecedented spectacle, where many people would be working for a good cause, but they already had enough expenses with what the Day on the Green tickets cost and the trip they would be making. Besides, even if they didn't go to the festival, raising so much money in such a short time was quite difficult, as Live Aid would be on 13th July, and tickets flew quickly, and rightly so, seeing the list of artists who were going to attend to help the cause.

Anyway, they watched Live Aid together on TV and that made them want to go to Day on the Green even more.

And finally the day came for them to go on the trip. She'd be lying if she said she wasn't climbing the walls like Spiderman herself because she was so nervous. She had never left Indiana, she had never made such a long trip, both in terms of distance and days, and she had never been separated from her mother for such a long time. But at least she was going to experience all that with her best friend and the boy she was in love with.

She had been ready since the day before and had gone through her luggage four times, and was about to do it for the fifth time, when a clack sounded outside her house. It was him, no doubt about it. She almost had a heart attack. It was time to go.

She left the house with the luggage and she and her mother pretended to put the things in the caravan, but he got off them and insisted on doing it himself.

As it was almost the end of August, and it was so hot, he was wearing no shirt and shorts. Both young friends were embarrassed for her mother to see him like that, but it was an understandable outfit because of the heat.

She hugged her mother goodbye and told her that she loved her very much. As the mother she was, she could feel her nervousness.

"Don't worry about anything, silly, you'll have a great time, you'll see," her mother whispered in her ear as they hugged.

"I know, but..."

"Before you go, I have to take a picture of you!" said her mother as they parted, "Come on, get together."

Eddie put his arm around ______'s shoulders and pulled her close to him, resting his head on hers, and she posed, making a peace sign with one of her hands. He made a devil sign with his free hand.

Her mother took the camera off her neck and handed it to her, they got into the car, both waved goodbye to her mother and Eddie drove off.

"I CAN'T WAIT!" he shouted.

"Same," she said, laughing a little nervously.

"Well, it doesn't look like it from you," he said, looking at her strangely, "what's wrong?"

"It's nerves, don't worry."

"Nerves about what?"

"To make such a trip, to be so far away from my home and my mother for so long, my comfort zone."

"I mean, it would fuck me up at this point, but if you don't want to go, there's still time for me to turn back..."

"What the fuck are you talking about?! No way, of course I want to go on the trip and to the festival, and I've got you on top of that. I wouldn't do this madness with just anyone."

"Do you consider going on a trip and to a festival a crazy thing?" he asked with a mocking smile.

"No, but yes, if it's that far away..."

"As long as you don't tell me to turn around when we're in Nebraska or something like that, it's all right," he said jokingly.

"You know I won't."

On the way they listened and sang along to the cassettes he had, and she brought her own too, so they wouldn't always be alone listening to his.

It was around lunchtime and Eddie had already been driving for a couple of hours, so they stopped to rest and eat.

"Wait, I have to put sunscreen on again," she said before getting back in the car. She had just finished talking to her mother on the phone. She had little to say to her, evidently.

"Really? That's a scam, it's not necessary."

"You're telling me you've been driving around shirtless in the sun for hours without sunscreen?"

"Of course I am."

"You're going to burn, you idiot!"

"No way, you exaggerator."

"Put it," she said, offering the bottle of sunscreen.

"No," she said with disgust.

She poured cream into her free hand, moved closer to him and directed her cream-filled hand to his collarbone, rubbing her hand over it, and trying not to look at his tattooed chest or his tablet, making a superhuman effort not to let her eyes wander to those areas of his body. That took him by surprise, but he kept still and quiet, accepting the gesture.

"Dampen down a little," she asked as she rubbed cream back into her hand, looking up, meeting his eyes. "Do you see how necessary this is?" She asked as she creamed his left cheek, inches from each other. "You're already red."

He was sure he wasn't red from the sun, but he shut up.

"Turn around," she asked again, and he again obeyed.

For a second she stared at his back. She thought is was beautiful and couldn't believe she was about to run hee hands over it. She pushed his hair forward with her little finger so as not to get even a little cream in it.

"Don't you want to put your hair in a high ponytail or a bun?" She asked as she ran her hand down his back. "You'd be cooler."

"I look ridiculous."

"I'm sure you wouldn't. Besides, what difference does it make if I see you like that?"

"A lot," he thought, "you're the only person whose opinion really matters to me."

When he noticed she was done, he turned and she offered him the bottle of sunscreen again. His arms, legs and torso remained. It was understandable, she wasn't going to rub it all over him, he was too old to follow and it would be very uncomfortable in many ways, especially touching his torso, although they both wanted to.

When he finished applying the cream, he gave her back the pot and hugged her tightly.

"You idiot, you're going to stain me and you're sweaty! Ugh!" and he laughed wickedly.

"Do you want me to help you lie on your back?" he asked as he let her out of his grip.

She was wearing shorts and a crop top.

"Okay," she said as she turned around. She didn't need to, she could do it on her own, but she wasn't going to refuse help, especially if it was about him touching her.

Eddie put cream on his right hand and directed his hand to her back. He was nervous, more so than he had been before, when she was creaming him. He didn't know how to touch her, but he knew he had to act normal, so he rubbed his hand across the uncovered part of her back with the mission to get the sticky cream off his hand as quickly as possible. He tried not to look too closely at her back, and his fingertips ended up inside her crop top, unintentionally brushing her bra for a second. Then he slid his hand down her right side to remove what little cream he had left, stopping when he brushed against her trousers. She loved the feel of his hand right then, in that place, like that, even though it probably wasn't a big deal and she was making a movie in her head. Then he pushed her hair forward and decided to rub cream on her neck, massaging it lightly.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome."

He got into the car, in the passenger seat, where she was before, and she quickly rubbed cream on her belly and legs, then sat in the driver's seat, where Eddie was before.

"Turn around and face the window," she said.

"For what?"

"You listen to me, okay?"

"Well... Okay."

She took off the extra hair tie she wore on her wrist as a spare in case she lost the one she was wearing and grabbed Eddie's hair, doing him a bun.

"Tell me, are you cooler right now?"

"Yes, but I'm sure I look ridiculous."

"You look gorgeous, as always," she said matter-of-factly, as she settled everything in the car so she could start driving.

After a few more hours they stopped again to stretch their legs and change drivers, had dinner at a fast food place and finally ended up at a motel, almost on the outskirts of the state.

When they entered the room they saw that there was only one bed.

"I'll go and ask for a room with two beds," he said, turning away.

"Eddie, it's night, and you're exhausted," she stopped him, taking him by the arm. "Come in, come on," she said, nodding her head.

"You don't care?" he asked, referring to sharing a double bed.

"I don't give a shit," she was even excited, but of course she wasn't going to say that, and she couldn't know that he did too, but he didn't want to make her uncomfortable in any way, so that's why he offered asking for a room with two beds.

They arranged their things and the first thing they wanted to do was to take a shower, they were exhausted, sweaty and sticky from the sun cream.

"I'll shower first," they both said at the same time, standing in the middle of the small room after sorting their luggage and taking things out. "...You first," they both said again at the same time, and laughed at the synchronicity and telepathy they sometimes had.

"Rock, paper, scissors?" she asked.

"Come on," he said, leaning closer to her.

They both kept their dominant hands behind their backs and recited the chant of the game at the same time.

"...and... three!" They both pulled their hands behind their backs at the same time, making their hands and fingers make the shape of the object they had chosen in their minds. She drew paper and he drew scissors, but as soon as he saw that she was losing the game, he turned his hand from scissors to stone, and then put his arm around her shoulders, making her walk towards the bathroom.

"You win, you first," he said.

"Dude!" she said, annoyed but laughing.

"Shhh."

"Well okay, but at least let me get some panties and my pajamas, or do you want me to come out of the bathroom naked?"

"All right, all right," he said letting go of her and raising his arms in the air as if he was being mugged.

She grabbed her clothes and stepped into the shower. Meanwhile, he pulled on his pajamas (aka boxer shorts), turned on the TV that was there, looked for MTV and sat on the edge of the bed to watch it. He wanted to lie down on the bed, but he didn't want to stink up the bed with the stench of his sweat or stain it.

When she came out of the bathroom her hair was wet, she was wearing only panties and a baggy T-shirt, and clearly no bra.

"Your turn," she said as she made her way to the bed to lie down on the left side of it.

He got up from the edge of the bed and went into the bathroom, which was full of steam.

"Did you take a hot shower, you crazy woman?" he asked before closing the door to get undressed and get into the shower.

"Yes," she replied as if it was the most normal thing in the world for the month they were in.

"It's the middle of August."

"Do you think I don't know that?" she asked, holding back her laughter, and then he, still surprised, closed the door.

She flicked through the television herself, but ended up back on MTV, then picked up the phone on the bedside table and called her mother again to let her know where they were and that they were okay.

He came out of the bathroom shortly after, wearing only short but baggy black boxer shorts and still with drops of cold water sliding off him, mostly running down his tattooed chest and back from his wet hair.

"Anything interesting on TV?" he asked as he lay down next to her on the bed.

"No, but we should turn it off now anyway," she said, referring to the fact that they had to get up early the next morning to continue driving.

"Yeah," he said, getting out of bed.

He went to turn off the television and the light, then turned on the ceiling fan and opened the window, then took off all his jewellery and watch, and finally lay back down on the bed with her, on her side, resting her head on his right arm. She moved into the same position facing him, and he could see her silhouette perfectly thanks to the little light coming in from outside the motel. Her T-shirt rode up slightly, revealing her belly.

She moved closer and snuggled up to him, which he gladly accepted and wrapped his free, left arm around her.

"I still can't process all of this, if you told me about this when we became friends..." she said as she looked at her friend's tattooed chest.

"Yeah, I wouldn't believe it either," he said, stroking her arm with his thumb.

It was the 27th of July last year, in the morning. She drove to her nearest record shop before they opened first thing in the morning. There was a queue of metalheads waiting in line outside the door, and she assumed they were there for exactly the same thing she was: to buy Metallica's new album, Ride the Lighting. Last year, having just released their first album, Kill 'em all, she had fallen completely in love with them and their style of music, and couldn't miss out on having the new album the instant it was released. She walked past all the metalheads standing there, until someone called out to her, catching her attention.

"_______!"

There he was, standing like the others, impatiently waiting for the shop to open to get his record.

They both knew each other from high school, despite not being in the same year or classes, and not being from popular groups, they understood and respected each other.

"Are you coming to get the new Metallica album?" he asked.

"Yes," and a big smile broke out on Eddie's lips as he gestured for her to come with him, standing next to him in the queue. "Thank you," she said for being a sneak. The person behind him pouted but fortunately didn't protest.

"I didn't know you liked Metallica, let alone knew them," he said, smiling. It was always a pleasure to meet people with the same musical tastes, especially when your tastes were considered strange and living in a small town.

"I can't say the same," she said smiling sideways, "it's pretty obvious looking at you that you do know them and many more rock and metal bands."

During the little while they waited in line they talked about how they met Metallica, their favourite songs from Kill 'em all, their favourite band members and asked each other if they liked other bands.

They went inside and went straight to get their copies of Ride the Lighting to take home.

"I'd love to listen to it together," he said as they left the shop after paying for the records, "and know each other's opinion of the songs instantly."

"Yeah," she said as they walked to the car park.

"I'd invite you to my place, but since my uncle works nights he sleeps in the mornings, and I'm going to have to listen to it," he said, referring to the record, "with my headphones on..."

"It's all right," she said. She could invite him to her house, since her mother was working and she had the whole house to herself, but she had just met him formally, she wasn't going to just invite him to her house. "I have an idea."

"What's that?"

"As soon as we get home we'll listen to it and when we're done we'll call each other to talk about it, what do you think?"

"That's fine with me."

They exchanged phone numbers and got into their cars and headed home to listen to the album for the first time.

Two minutes after she finished listening to the album, the phone rang. She knew it was him.

"What do you think?" he asked expectantly.

"I'm in shock, man."

"In a good way or a bad way?"

"What do you think? Let's see."

"Good? Because come on, I loved it."

"Me too! Although I didn't like all the songs," she said with a wince as she ran her finger along the phone's curly cord.

"No? Really?!"

"Yes."

"Which ones didn't you like?"

"Fade to Black and The call of Ktulu or whatever the fuck it's called," she could hear a small chuckle on the other line.

"I don't think they're bad."

"No no, I'm not saying that, it's just that they're not my style, I need a lot more rhythm, apart from the fact that they're too long."

"Yeah, it's understandable. I do like them but they're not my favourites either."

"And which ones are?"

"I couldn't tell you, they're all very good..." he was thoughtful for a few seconds. "Maybe... My favourite is Creeping Death. The riff, the lyrics, James's voice... It's tremendous."

"I loved that one too! And For Whom the Bell Tolls. Ride the lighting too but not as much as those two. I need to listen to them on loop for hours, I swear, I loved them."

Who knew in that moment that that album would quickly become a gold album and that just over a year later they would hear them live with him on the other side of the country?

The next few days of the trip were pretty much the same as that day: driving for hours, changing drivers, putting on sun cream, stopping to eat and go to the toilet, calling her mother and his uncle, filling up with petrol, listening to their cassettes at full volume and singing loudly in the caravan, smoking tobacco, laughing, talking about silly things, taking pictures with the camera of _______, and taking showers and sleeping in motels.

It was Thursday night, and they were already in downtown Nevada, resting in the motel where they stayed that night. They were also in a room with only one bed, a double bed, but they didn't mind.

"I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight, I can't believe we'll be in Oakland by tomorrow. I could just keep driving right now," he said as they huddled together, and knowing him as well as she did, she knew it was true.

"Yeah, me too," she said, smiling as much as he was.

"I'm so glad you're my friend, I wouldn't be having this magical experience without you... I love you so much," he said smiling sweetly.

He really wanted to say so much more, he wanted to tell her how much he loved her, that she made him crazier than he already was, that he wanted to hold her tight and never let go, to kiss her and take care of her, but... He had to keep quiet. They had a precious friendship and if he confessed and she didn't reciprocate, which he assumed was most likely, it would probably make things very awkward between them and if he confessed during the trip, they wouldn't be able to run away from each other, having to share a car and rooms for days. It would be the worst-case scenario.

She assumed that he meant that he loved her very much as a person and as a friend, and nothing more. And he did mean that he loved her in those ways, but he also meant that he secretly loved her as a partner.

"I love you too," she said, smiling in the same way.

They stood for a few seconds looking into each other's eyes in silence, and for microseconds at times their eyes would wander to each other's lips.

Maybe it was the emotions running high, maybe it was the tiredness, maybe it was the night, maybe it was the hormones, maybe it was the way they were cuddled up in that marriage bed, maybe it was that she was sick of hiding her feelings, maybe it was that she was too brave when she liked someone, maybe it was Eddie's words and that she wanted to have even a little faith that she could have more than friendship with him, or maybe it was all of the above at once, but she decided to bring her face close to his, ridiculously slowly for fear of screwing up.

He noticed and almost had a heart attack. He didn't know what was going through his best friend's mind, he didn't know how she felt about him, but according to him, it looked like she was getting close to his face to kiss him, which if it was true, he had to take advantage of the opportunity, so he decided to do the same as her: get close to her face in a ridiculously slow way.

But then they were stopped by noises from the people in the next room, and they weren't just any noises; they were noises of bed springs and moaning, especially from a woman.

They both stopped dead in their tracks, frozen in their tracks, staring at each other with wide eyes and trying not to piss themselves laughing.

"This is ridiculous, I swear," she whispered as she moved slightly away from him and lay on her back, "I can't believe it," she said, pillowing her ears, to no listen the moans.

"Why are you whispering? You aren't the one who should be quiet. Do you want me to knock on the wall?" he asked as he raised his left arm and put his hand on the wall.

"No, let them have a good time," she said, her pillow no longer acting as a hoof against the noise. "Besides, if you hit the wall, you'll break her," she said as he lay on his back like her.

"We're not going to sleep tonight, but not for what we thought."

"It probably won't be long before they're done."

"They'd better."

And there they were, lying on their backs staring at the ceiling, taking in what had just happened, or rather what might have happened... if it hadn't been for the two shamelessly scandalous people who were fucking like rutting animals in the next room. They were uncomfortable in many ways, although they had to admit that the situation was funny at the same time.

The next evening they were in Oakland. They went to dinner and to stretch their legs a bit, seeing a bit of the city, and then to rest at the hotel where they would sleep.

"There are a lot of good looking guys around here," she said as they walked back to the hotel, noticing that there were a lot of metalheads around town, and she assumed that many of them might be like them: not from there, not living there, but had travelled there to attend the festival. "Something tells me they're here for the same reason we are."

He didn't say anything, he knew perfectly well that his best friend was crazy about long-haired men because she said so on several occasions, but still, he didn't think he had a chance with her even if he had long hair.

They still couldn't believe that they were already there and that the next day after lunch they would be at the stadium enjoying themselves like crazy.

The next morning they decided to take the car and go sightseeing in San Francisco, passing over the Bay Bridge of course. They were aware that with how big the city was and how little time they had before they had to be ready to go to the stadium in Oakland they wouldn't be able to see much, but they weren't there for sightseeing and seeing how different it was to Hawkins was enough for them.

The concert started at two in the afternoon.

She insisted that they had better be there as soon as possible to get parking in the stadium car park and to queue as soon as possible, so they drove back to their hotel in Oakland to get their tickets and then to the stadium. They were both wearing Metallica T-shirts.

Fortunately Eddie bought the tickets a few days after the event was announced, so they had tickets to be on the field and not in the stands, which was too boring and far away from the stage. As soon as the gates to the field opened, they and everyone else ran as if they were being chased with a chainsaw to get to the front row, in front of the stage.

"Do you see how I was right to come early?" she asked. They were almost in the front row.

"Yeah, yeah."

"I saw on TV once that this kind of thing happened at concerts in stadiums, at a Michael Jackson concert."

The first band to play was Victory, then Rising Force, then Metallica. At last the moment they had been waiting for the most, the moment they had travelled thousands of miles from their hometown on the other side of their big country had finally arrived.

_______ started screaming with excitement, jumping of joy and grabbing Eddie's arm, almost cutting off his circulation and digging her nails in when she heard The Ecstasy of Gold, a song by Ennio Morricone from the soundtrack for the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly that they always played at the beginning of their concerts two years ago as they went on stage and prepared to play.

"Are you all right?" he asked, laughing.

"AAAAAAH!" she said, waving his arm.

"I agree," he laughed, "Ride on my back," he said, bending down.

"Oh," she thought the suggestion was a good idea, but she felt bad for him, because he would have to carry her weight for all or most of their performance and he wouldn't be able to enjoy doing headbangs, or pogos, or even raising his hands in the metalhead's signature horns symbol. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," he said, "ride."

"Okay, thank you very much, really."

"You don't have to give them," he said as she mounted his back and grabbed it.

She had her favourite band member, Cliff Burton, practically a few feet away from her. She felt like if she reached out and lifted her arm she could touch him, even though he was actually about 20m away.

They started playing one of their favourite songs: Creeping Death.

She wasn't the only one going crazy with excitement and singing her lungs out for the song, there were many more people in the audience full of excitement to see the band playing live, and she was happy for them. They were a very good band, and it was one of the first times, if not the first, that they had played in a stadium in front of so many people.

"DIE! BY MY HAND, I CREEP ACROSS THE LAND, KILLING FIRST-BORN MAN! DIE! BY MY HAND, I CREEP ACROSS THE LAND, KILLING FIRST-BORN MAN, DIEEEEEE!"

Eddie looked up and saw her singing loudly with a smile from ear to ear that didn't fit on her face. He had never seen her so happy, and his smile grew bigger. Then he turned his attention back to the group in front of him.

"OH YEAH?" shouted James Hetsfield, the band's vocalist and rhythm guitarist, into the microphone, and then he tilted his head towards the audience and put his hand to his ear, as if trying to sharpen his hearing. He was clearly playing with the audience.

"OH YEAH!" they shouted, and many more.

"OH YEAH?" James shouted again, doing the same as before.

"OH YEAH!" they shouted again.

"FUCKING RIDE THE LIGHTIIIIING!" shouted James into the microphone, and he and the rest of the band started playing that song. "HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! ARE YOU FUCKING OUT THERE?" he shouted raising his hand, encouraging the audience to be loud when they were already halfway through the song. "HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY!" he shouted in the same way almost at the end of the song, "I CAN'T FUCKING HEAR YOU!" he shouted as he put his hand to his ear. "HEY!"

Then he walked away from the microphone and stood next to Cliff. They were both doing headbangs and were perfectly in sync without even trying. Meanwhile, Kirk Hammett, the band's lead guitarist, on the other side of the stage was going more his own way.

When the song was over James walked over to the foot of the drum kit, where Lars Ulrich was standing, and picked up a small bottle of beer, probably fresh and alcoholic, and walked back to his microphone.

"ROCK AND ROOOOOLL!" shouted Eddie, and she laughed and shouted back.

"ARE YOU DOING ALL RIGHT?" asked James, and everyone shouted, "We've come here to kick some assess! [ . . . ] You know Cliff Burton over there?" He asked the crowd, pointing to his bandmate, the bass player. "Everyone, "Hey Cliff, how ya doing?"" he said waving his hand in greeting.

"HI CLIFF!" she and a few others shouted.

James stepped away from the microphone as he took a sip from the bottle of beer he had just picked up next to the drum kit, and Cliff began to play a bass solo while doing a light headbang, his head bent low and focused on the strings of his black bass while his hair moved incessantly, as did his fingers.

The best words to describe that bass solo were "Epic", "Legendary", "Magical", "Iconic", "Mind-blowing"... And it sounded like he was playing thunder instead of an instrument. ______'s eyes and mouth opened slightly without her noticing, and the hair on her body stood on end. Absolutely everyone was shocked, including Lars, who forgot to start playing the drums, and Cliff himself had to turn around and tell him he had to start playing. As soon as Lars started playing the drums, Cliff came back and played another epic bass solo.

She would recognise that rhythm anywhere, in any situation. It was For whom the bell tolls, and it was a song entirely written by Cliff. The smile on his face throughout the whole show, but especially during that song, was priceless. He kept doing headbangs, moving around the stage, gesticulating with his hands and singing to himself. You could tell he was excited to play that bass solo and his song in front of so many people enjoying it.

Then they started playing The Four Horsemen, a song from their first album, and it seemed that she wasn't the only one who was running out of voice, because she noticed James' voice faltering a bit.

The song was followed by Fade to Black, despite a boy in the audience shouting out Whiplash as a suggestion.

"Thank you! That was Fade to Black, from the album Ride the Lighting...! ...ARE WE GOING TO FUCK UP TODAY OR WHAT?" The crowd screamed in response, and he threw the pick at a person in the audience. "Good catch! ...WANT DESTRUCTION?" the audience shouted back in response. "By the way, this one goes... There's no other way, on the Kill 'em all album. We want to hear you scream! This song is called... SEEK & DESTROY!" The crowd screamed again for the third time, and more than the previous times. "I can't fucking hear you," said James pretending to be disappointed as the crowd sang the chorus. That was the song where the crowd was the loudest.

And last but not least, and finally for the fan in the audience who kept shouting it: Whiplash.

"THANK YOU SO MUCH!" said James as the song ended, "THANK YOU!

The crowd started screaming "Metallica!" non-stop, and seeing that they wanted more of them and that Y&T weren't ready to go on stage yet, they were allowed to play more songs. They chose to play half of Diamond Head's Am I Evil? and Motorbreath.

"Good day, whatever!" said James, waving goodbye to the audience. "Cheers! Thank you very much!"

As they left the stage, Eddie crouched down and she got off his shoulders.

"Well, we can go now," she said jokingly. "Thank you very much. I'll give you a massage later."

"Don't worry about it."

"That was amazing, my God!" she said as they walked out of the stadium after all the performances were over.

"I told you you had to come!" he said. "Thank goodness I convinced you into it."

"But can we talk about Metallica's performance? Oh my God, it's still not sinking in!"

"Cliff's bass solo in the intro of For whom the bell tolls made the hair on the back of my neck stand up," he confessed.

"Me too, man! And his smile throughout the whole song?! I love him, he's a genius and super adorable, I could tell he was living it up."

It took them a while to get out of the car parking and around the stadium as it was packed. Being from Hawkins, they had never seen so many cars together and so much traffic.

"Where do you want to go now?" he asked as he drove. It was still daylight, but it was late afternoon. "Are you hungry? Shall we go to dinner?"

"I'm not hungry yet, are you?"

"Neither am I."

"Not as hungry as the concert, but I can't wait to go to the beach and see the ocean. I'd like to see the sunset there."

"Then there we go."

They crossed back over the bay bridge and missed directions to the locals, peering out of the caravan windows. They were told that the best beach to enjoy the view, including the Golden Gate Bridge, was Baker Beach, so that's where they went.

They arrived at just the right time, at sunset. They took off their shoes and for the first time felt the sand under their feet and between their toes. The ocean breeze made their manes and their wide shirts move as the wind wanted them to, and for the first time they smelled the salty water. The eyes of _______ were fixed on the sun hiding behind the Pacific Ocean.

She decided to take her camera out of her bag and take a picture. Meanwhile, Eddie was looking at her. He thought she was prettier than the sunset. When she finished taking the picture, she put the camera back in her bag, put it on the ground and looked at the sunset again for a second, then looked at Eddie.

"This is the best day of my life," she said, teary-eyed but smiling.

"Hey hey hey," he said worriedly, "why are you crying?"

"I'm crying from happiness," she said as she smiled at her friend's concern and ran her fingers across her eyes to wipe away the tears, "it's a good thing."

Eddie put his arms around her and kissed her head repeatedly. She was too adorable, she could handle him. He loved her madly.

"It's the best day of my life, too," he said when they broke apart, and he placed one of his hands on her cheek, rubbing his thumb gently to wipe away the trace of the silent tear that had fallen down her face seconds before.

They both couldn't wait to tell the other that they loved each other, that they loved each other madly and not just as best friends, to kiss... But the fear of rejection and ruining the moment, the day, the trip and their friendship outweighed those desires.

"We haven't tasted water yet, how is that possible?" he said, grabbing her by the shoulders, trying to make her laugh and trying to distract himself from the impulse he had felt to confess and kiss her at that moment. "Come on!" he said, taking her by the hand and making her walk towards the shore, leaving her slippers, socks and bag behind.

"It's warm," she said, slightly surprised with her feet in the water.

"It must be because it's been in the sun all day. How about a swim? It's perfe-"

"Ugh, something touched my foot!" She said in disgust, lifting her foot and moving towards him.

"It's seaweed."

"I'm not taking a bath," she said, still disgusted.

"Because of the seaweed?" he asked, raising one of his eyebrows and smiling mockingly.

"It's too disgusting... For that I prefer swimming pools or bathtubs."

"It's just a plant, but a sea plant," he said, bending down and picking it up. He stretched out his arm to pull her closer but she pulled back as if he was holding a cockroach, and seeing how her body and face reacted, he couldn't help but laugh as he let go the plant. "Look, there's a very clean area over there," he said pointing with his head as he approached her, and while she was distracted for a second looking at the area he had pointed out to her, he bent down and grabbed her behind her knees and her waist, like a prince carrying his princess in a fairy tale that mothers told their daughters in bed before they went to sleep at night.

"What-" She didn't mind him grabbing her like that, in fact, she obviously liked it if it was him, but she stopped liking it when she saw Eddie start to go into the sea, into an area with too much seaweed for her liking. "Eddie, no! Don't even think about it!" and he laughed a wicked laugh, like when he saw his fellow Hellfire Club members in distress in a Dungeons and Dragons battle.

"Don't be a pussy!"

"Eddie I'm literally a pussy!" she said refering to her vagina.

"Not everything could be perfect this day, baby!"

"Eddie, if you drop me there, your uncle will never hear from you again! And I'm wearing clothes, not a bikini!"

"So what? The clothes are drying."

"Not in this air and it's getting dark, and I don't have a towel."

"Weeeell," he said, turning around while smiling and setting her down on the shore, on the sand.

They walked back to where they had left their things and she sat down on the sand. He decided to sit behind her, wrapping his legs and arms around her, resting his head on her shoulder.

"You're stupid," she said, annoyed but smiling at the same time.

"And you love me for it," he said, poking her lightly in the side with the tip of his index finger.

"Yes..." He sighed deeply, "very much, as you have no idea, much to my disgrace," she thought.

It was getting colder and colder, so they decided to go somewhere for dinner and then to the hotel to rest, trying to catch up on sleep while they were snuggled up to each other, as they were used to.

The next morning Eddie woke up with a horrible neck ache from doing so many headbangs and some back pain from holding _______ during Metallica's performance, so before leaving the hotel she lay on top of him on the bed and gave him the best neck, shoulder and back massage she could. She was smart and knowing how much her neck would hurt the next day and how fragile it was, she decided not to do headbangs.

Then they headed for Los Angeles and by lunchtime they were there, on Venice Beach with a few litres of alcoholic beer they had bought, and now they had their swimming costumes and towels on (and sunscreen, of course).

"We had rock and roll..." he said, referring to the festival, "we've had 'drugs', if we can consider them drugs...", he said, throwing his hands up in the air, one with a bottle of beer and a freshly lit cigarette in the other. She had forbidden him to bring weed for fear of being caught in a checkpoint. "The sex is the only thing missing."

"I don't feel like fucking any guy here," she said, "they all look like Barbie's boyfriend."

"And they all look like Barbies here," he said half-heartedly, to her surprise.

"But Barbies are pretty."

"Have you seen the sculptures of the ancient Romans? They're made of rock, they're quality and there are few of them. On the other hand, there are a lot of plastic ones, of poor quality and copies of each other. I prefer a woman made of rock."

"How do you know that, Shakespeare?" She asked with a mocking smile. "I thought you were bad at history."

"Yes, but not at art."

"Anyway, even if we wanted to fuck with someone here, I don't think they'd want to fuck with us."

"Speak for me, but not for you. You're beautiful."

"I'm not that much."

"Said the one who always has several guys behind her."

"But they're not Kens because I'm not a Barbie, I'm not popular."

"You are popular among the "weirdos" at school, and you know it, don't tell me you're not."

"Well, I didn't say I was ugly, I admit it, but..."

"You're beautiful. End of discussion."

"Well, all right, if you say so..." She looked away, holding her smile and blushing a little, "Thanks, I guess. You too," she looked back at him.

"Oh, you think I'm a pretty girl, too!" He said in a squeaky voice and put his hand to his chest, pretending to be surprised. "Thank you very much! Aren't you roasting? Shall we go in the water? Or are you still terrified of seaweed?"

"Mm..." Yes, actually yes, she was too disgusted by that.

"At least come and soak your feet, right?" he asked as he stubbed out his cigarette in the sand and got up.

"Well, okay," she said, doing the same as she made a bun with one of the hair ties around her wrists.

"The tide brings the seaweed to the shore," he said, pointing to it as the two of them stood there soaking their feet, "but look, it's all clear up ahead. You only have to go the first few yards. I can carry you and get you there without you touching any seaweed."

"Uh..."

The beach was full of people and she was embarrassed to be seen being carried, as if she didn't have the legs to walk and go into the water on her own. It would be more embarrassing if they found out how disgusting the seaweed made her feel, but it was not her fault that she found it disgusting, especially as an inland girl who could only swim in clean pools. But then she thought that she shouldn't give a shit what strangers thought of her and that she didn't want to miss the experience of swimming in the Pacific Ocean with her best friend after an epic and unforgettable trip, so she accepted the proposal.

"Well, okay," he thought he was going to carry her like he had carried her at the festival the day before, but he carried her like he had carried her on the beach in San Francisco, like a princess. That was a little more embarrassing than being carried like a little girl on hia back. "How are you not disgusted by stepping on them?" she asked, disgusted, referring to the seaweed as he began to walk deeper into the ocean.

"They're just plants," he laughed, "you act like they're cockroaches."

"But their touch is disgusting."

"I don't think it's that bad."

"Well, lucky you."

"You know there are people who eat them?"

"Good for them," she said indifferently, and he laughed again at her answer. "Oh, it's freezing!" she said, referring to the water when he was already deeper in, the water coming up to his waist, and she was wetting her butt.

"It's not that bad! Besides, what did you expect? Don't be a pussy!"

And when he finally reached the area without seaweed, he suddenly let her go, making her scream at such an abrupt change of temperature. She, annoyed, splashed him with her arm. He laughed.

"It would have been worse little by little, if you do it all at once it's less bad," yes, he was one of those who jumped in the pool, "or did you want me to baptise you?" He closed his eyes, shut his mouth, covered his nose with his hand and bent down, putting his head completely in the water. When he pulled it out, he shook her hair like a shampoo advert and splashed her a little.

They stayed on the beach most of the day, until it got dark and they went to the hotel where they would be staying that night.

On Monday morning, 2 September, they would start the journey home, back to Hawkins. It was a bit depressing, as they didn't want the trip to end, they had had too much fun, and on top of that they didn't feel like going back to school, especially as they had to repeat their last year.

It was the second time that Eddie had repeated his last year and the whole group of friends from ______ had graduated and left town, but at least they would be in the same class together.

The last night they spent together they were sad for that very reason, because it was going to be the last night they would sleep together. And the last morning they spent together Eddie woke up before she did, so knowing how little his best friend wanted to go back and start her last term again, he decided to wake her up by tickling her, making her squirm in bed, crying with laughter and screaming for him to stop.

They returned to Hawkins on Saturday evening. Eddie helped get their luggage out of his van and into their house, and her mother offered to stay for dinner with them, so she could listen to the stories of the trip told by the two of them. Knowing that his uncle would not be home when he arrived because of his work schedule, and knowing that his best friend's mother's food was better than anything edible in his house, he gladly accepted the invitation.

"The beaches were amazing. The one I liked best was the one in San Francisco, because of the view of the Golden Gate," she told her mother when the three of them were at the dinner table.

"But she was afraid to go in the water because she was disgusted by the seaweed," said Eddie, "and the next day in Los Angeles I had to carry her like a Disney princess to get her into the water without being brushed by any of the seaweed."

"I wasn't afraid, you exaggerator!" she said in her defence, "just disgusted."

And then it was time to say goodbye. They both felt it would be a long time before they would see each other again, but in reality they would see each other in two days, on Monday morning at the school.

"I had a great time," she said in front of him, holding his hands, looking at him and smiling wistfully beside his van, parked in front of her house, "thank you for convincing me to come, thank you for everything."

"Thank you for coming," he said, looking at her and smiling in the same way, squeezing her hands and then letting go to give her a long, tight hug. "I'll see you Monday at school, okay?" he said as they parted.

"Unfortunately," she didn't even have a spark of desire to go back there, who would? Only popular people or people who find it easy to study or the poor bastards whose validation depends on having high numbers on papers after spewing out useless data for everyday life. "Goodbye," she said as she began to walk backwards, waving her hand as a final goodbye, and then she turned around. He stood there, watching her walk away from him and through the door of her house, making the last direct eye contact with her eyes quickly before she closed the door behind her.

As much as she was looking forward to seeing her mother and being in the comfort of her home, and especially in the comfort of her room and bed, she felt that she had missed something of utmost importance along the way, that she was missing something important: it was him, and the post-concert, post-trip depression. The same thing happened to him, and on top of that his uncle wasn't at home to greet him when he arrived from dropping off ______ at her house, but he knew that was a likely thing. He would see him on Sunday at noon, as he had a night shift, and in the morning he slept.

Their beds were supposed to be their greatest source of comfort, especially after almost two weeks of travelling around the country, from motel to hotel and back again. So why couldn't they sleep? They were not stupid, they were aware of their feelings, but they didn't think it would affect them so much. They missed each other, they wanted each other to be there beside them, lying down and cuddling. He tried to hug his pillow but it wasn't the same. She wanted to hug a crappy stuffed animal he gave her off the arcade hook a year ago but it was too small to be cuddled.

Eddie could have perfectly well drugged himself to calm down and fall asleep as soon as possible, but instead he decided to do something even more stupid: get out of bed, leave the house, get in the van and drive to his best friend's house. Hopefully she was still awake, hopefully they could sleep together that night, hopefully he wouldn't make a fool of himself in front of her for having such a need like a little kid.

"Shit," he thought as he got out of the van, which he had parked in front of the house. He didn't see any light inside, everything indicated that mother and daughter had already gone to bed in their respective rooms.

But then he thought that just because she was in bed didn't mean she was already asleep. She decided to go to the side of the house and stand under her bedroom window. He bent down to the floor in search of pebbles to throw at the window to get her attention in a quiet way, without waking her mother or her neighbours.

He threw a pebble at her window, calculating his aim with his mind and throwing it hard enough so that it would reach the window but not break the glass even a little bit. It didn't rattle against the glass because there was no glass, the window was open because of the heat, but he thought that wasn't a problem, and maybe it was more effective for the pebble to go inside her room.

As it happened, the pebble ended up inside her room, bouncing on the floor, making noise, but he didn't know that for sure, he didn't know if that had woken her up if she was sleeping or if it had caught her attention enough to make her get out of bed and look out the window to see what was going on, so he decided to throw another pebble, and just as he was about to throw it, she looked out of the window.

"Eddie?" she asked in a whisper, surprised and confused. "What is it? What are you doing here?" He dropped the pebbles and took a few steps forward. It was the moment he was waiting for, what he had planned and wanted was happening, but he opened his mouth to speak and nothing came out of him. He didn't know what to say, because there was really a lot he wanted to express. "Do you want me to come down?" she asked, and he nodded his head quickly, but it was dark and she couldn't see it very well, so she decided to ask. "Yes?"

"Yes," he answered, "please."

"I'll be right there, wait a second," she said, who had to put on a pair of trousers because she was in her panties, go downstairs and get her keys.

"No hurry," he said as he moved away from the window. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. The longer it took her to come down, the more time he would have to calm down. He was restless, more than usual. He never used to get this nervous before playing in front of people from the school.

He heard the door of the house open and close and she approached him with the keys in the pocket of the shorts she had just put on. Crickets could also be heard not far away, and the leaves of the trees rustling in the thin breeze.

"What's the matter?" She said, approaching him with concern. "Has something happened?"

"No, no, it's all right," she saw how nervous and uneasy he was and knew he was lying, but she took his hands to calm him in every way. He gladly agreed, and he did calm down somewhat.

"So?" she asked, even more puzzled.

"Well... You see... I know it's stupid, but... Well, you know me, don't you? I'm like that, I can't help it..." There was a brief silence in which he didn't know what to say, or rather how to say it, trying to find the words in his mind while she looked at him and waited for whatever he was going to say. She didn't really know what to expect from him, and the situation was strange. "I couldn't sleep and I think it's because I'm missing you by my side," he laughed nervously again. She smiled and tightened her grip.

"The same thing was happening to me."

"Really?" he asked in surprise.

"Really."

"So...? Are we sleeping together tonight?"

"Please and thank you. At your place?"

"Okay."

"I'll come in for a moment to write a note to my mother for when she wakes up tomorrow and doesn't see me at home," he said, holding up her hand, pointing to her house with her thumb behind it, "okay?"

"Sure."

After what she said and did, they rode in his van to Eddie's house in absolute silence, no music, no talking. They didn't need to, and they didn't have anything to talk about since they hadn't seen each other for only two hours. The silence was not uncomfortable, they wore smiles on their lips and their hair swayed in the breeze coming through the lowered windows.

"If your uncle sees me and finds out that we slept in the same bed, he'll think badly," she said as she climbed into his bed and snuggled against him.

"Let him think what he wants, I don't care," he said as she settled her head on his arm, "he'd be happy and everything. Your mother is not the only one who matches us," which was true. Some people in town, especially in high school, just assumed the two of them were a couple.

"Yeah."

He started stroking her head, or rather her hair, with the hand on the arm she was using as a pillow. The other was on her back. They were pressed against each other. He had his neck in front of her face, and his tattooed chest exposed. They both felt at last at peace, completely calm and ready to sleep if they wanted to, but they didn't want to, they wanted to enjoy this moment of being conscious.

"You could have fallen asleep smoking weed but you didn't, why?"

"You're my favourite drug," he dared to say. The night made everyone feel vulnerable and sensitive, and he was no exception. Maybe he shouldn't listen to the things that went through his mind at night, but there were times when he couldn't help it, and that was one of those times.

That phrase and him going to her home to tell hee that he needed to sleep with her definitely had to mean something, something good and important, but she couldn't assume that either if it didn't come out of his mouth in a more explicit way. She didn't want to get her hopes up, make an Oscar-worthy movie in her head, and then get the shock and the downer.

Luckily for her, Eddie spoke without her asking any questions.

"There's something else I wanted to tell you..."

"What's that?"

"The problem is... I'm afraid to tell you."

"Whatever it is, you can tell me, Eddie. I love you madly and I'm going to be there for you no matter what."

"I don't know how to express it either..."

"So, if you can't put it into words.... Express it with an action," she said, believing where he was going.

Emboldened by his best friend's words and the late hours of the night, he decided to move the hand on her back to her cheek. With his thumb he brushed her lips to find out exactly where they were, for they were in their room in complete darkness, unable to see each other even if they were inches away from each other. Then he raised her head slightly and bowed his head, and at last did what he had wanted to do for more than half a year: he kissed her, confessing at last his deep feelings for her. She quickly returned the kiss, while a big smile formed on her lips.

"So... Is that what you wanted to tell me?"

"Yes, for a long time," he said, leaning his forehead against hers.

"How long?"

"More than half a year ago."

"Well, it seems we're in sync even for that."

"Do you feel the same way I do?" He asked, surprised and confused but happy at the same time.

"How do you feel about me Eddie? Please tell me, I want to hear it come out of your mouth," she said, now she was caressing his cheek.

"I love you. You are my Arwen to my Aragorn. When I hear love songs I can't help but think of you. You make me so happy just to be by my side. You are beautiful in every way and I have so much fun with you. You are not only my best friend and the person I love the most after my uncle, you are the woman of my dreams and I think you are my soul mate" with every sentence he said she got more emotional and it was hard for her to hold back the urge to cry with happiness, while he was still not processing that he had just kissed her, that his kiss had been reciprocated and that he was finally telling her out loud what he'd been keeping quiet and so deep inside for so long, "and I can't wait to fucking graduate so I can start working a full time job and save up to get married and live on our own and together in our own house, our own home. ...Although any place is a home if you're there," he suddenly heard a sob and felt a drop fall on his arm, the one that was being her pillow. "_______?" he asked frightened with fear that he had completely screwed up.

"I love you so much," she said crying out of pure happiness, her heart couldn't fit in her chest from all the happiness she was feeling, "you have no idea how happy you make me right now."

"So you're crying from happiness again?"

"I couldn't cry for anything else," and now it was she who jumped up and kissed him. Then he hugged her tightly.

"Do you want to be my girlfriend?"

"You didn't even have to ask."

"I wanted to ask you, I've wanted that for a long time and to hear a yes for an answer from you," she smiled even more, almost laughing at what he had just said.

"Yes, silly, I do."

"Now I'm completely yours, more yours than ever, more than I've ever been."

"I'll say the same."

They kissed again, and then he moved his free hand to her pillowy arm, and took off one of the three rings he wore. He took off the skull-shaped one and handed it to her, leaving it on her hand. She could tell which ring it was by touch.

"I want you to have it from now on, as a token of my love and our relationship."

"Thank you," she said, putting it on her thumb, as it was too big on the rest of her fingers.

Little else happened after that, just a few more kisses, caresses and the occasional playful touch but nothing more. They were exhausted from the journey and finally felt at peace, ready to sleep now that they were together physically and romantically.

[bcacstuff]

People do realise he only got back from Nepal & a very big strain on his body and organs like a week ago??? Questioning him reposting at 1.30am or 3am means nothing. His sleeping is going to be messed up for weeks. Also reposting stuff twice is an easy mistake, he’s probably exhausted and forgets which he’s reposted as confusion can happen when re-acclimatising to normal altitude and reality after that. Goodness me the man can’t just do normal things without everything getting picked apart

Oh Anons, especially Anon 2.... I think you'd gonna explode if you saw my inbox. You only see the bit on other blogs and ignorant people making assumptions and acting surprised about something, getting outrageous about something that they could have known already for a while..... if you pay attention to the right things that is, not to the things that do not matter at all. 🙄

Yes, I agree very much, that trek he did, the affects it has on your body, it doesn't matter how well you are trained or how much you always live in a jetlag style off life, it has a strain not only on your body also on your mind as well. Just go figure it's not for nothing he waited to take that opportunity after he had no more responsibilities and ties for a series he has been working on for all these years. And we all know this is something he always wanted to do.

Also agree on how he shared his wonderful experience together with the posts of Jake N. I loved to explore the maps to see where and how they went, look up pictures and places, read about the challenges. And then read it first hand from the ones who really did it. What a nice change from all the booze advertising, but even more what a welcoming change in my inbox. I pretty much enjoyed the calm, apart from that one persistent Anon that kept on going on and on about........ Ash.

Yes really even then, no need for me to check her IG as I would have a daily reports about what she posted together with the most biased opinion about it, of course all in the most extreme negative way. Get a life, get a hobby... that's what I would shout at this Anon's face in real life. What poor life do you have if this is your daily business and you keep on writing to me to get it out of your system even if I do not post any of it. Yes, I chose not to post or give it any attention in here... because I just know how giving this air is only gonna make it worse!

You know it's always the sort of people that are determined to judge about someone else's life, they always know what is best for you, they even think they know better what is best for you than yourself. Even though they do not walk in your shoes or see the sun and the moon like you do. And when you do not choose the path they think is best for you.... well.... yeah, that! Talking about getting picked apart Anon 1, and agree Anon 2, this whole agenda people have with him is so unhealthy

Anyway I could have predicted, I did in fact predict exactly two weeks ago what my inbox would look like today. How it would flood with messages about 'Ash this', and 'Ash that', and the 'no doubt he must be' and the 'are you still sure about...' exactly the way it did beginning this year with Sarah H. And here we are again, nothing changed.

Boom Ash is in London! - Sorry, no not Boom as if lightning struck, she announced it already 2 weeks ago people! And not only that, a week later she also announced she was gonna be in Glasgow. These are the stories of 13 and 20 December!

So how is it any surprise to people now? Oh wait, yeah you didn't see those stories, you just see what is now. Oh she's in London, oh he posts late a story and twice the same one.... must be... right, no doubt... Can't be anything else now can it???

Yes Christmas Day she posts from London (and before you ask no that is not Sam's hand)

as well as Boxing Day

And let me help you here a bit, location Dear Jackie at Broadwick Soho. for the ones unfamiliar, yes that is the same location the Flute is in, remember that weird 'launch' party organised by Flaunt magazine and MGMplus UK?

And then OMG she turns up in Glasgow posting from EDA... oh wow. Let's just throw out all common sense and make things fit a certain narrative. Let's just simply ignore how Sam has been posting all Christmas Day constantly from 7am until after 11pm. Because that's what you do when you try to hide you're in London secretly meeting up with somebody who announced her presence there weeks ago. Right? Let's just pay attention to the fact he posted at 1.30am and 3am the night after Boxing Day (where he also posted almost all afternoon). Let's just conveniently forget that there are a ton of other options, like going out with other friends in Glasgow, or having some good times with family like his brother and newly wed wife f.i. or falling asleep on the couch while watching Netflix (his latest follow on Christmas Day) and I can think of lots of other options.

Nope, we just go by the one option that fits our narrative, right? Cause we all want some entertainment, and so we just claim he was with her in London without a shred of evidence, not even a voice or hand to be recognized not even a matching cloud on the horizon. And my persistent Ash-Anon (how I call her) is all satisfied as she get's her way with all the attention she so hard tried to stir in this fandom and now she can accuse him again of all kind of mischief.

Yes, my inbox keeps flooding, even while I write this post. I already lost count. The weirdest things, because... you all take this one narrative as a basis and lose all sense of reality focussing on minor things that do not matter and by ignoring things that do not fit the narrative and other simple options and things like:

You really think Sam would fly one day to London while knowing she would be in Glasgow the very next day? Especially after a trip that wasn't peanuts and had its strain on his body and mind? That he wouldn't spend time with family and friends in these holidays after that trip but run to London cause his employee is there all alone? And gosh why would they not meet up at some point, have a drink or dinner or whatever together while she's in town, why would he say no? Is that in any way proof he started to date his employee, or have some hidden relationship with her?

Even though it is a bit awkward how Ash pushed herself into his circle of friends, is it that strange she'd go to EDA to work out? Is it strange that when she follows 3.231 (and we thought Sam follows a lot!^^) that it she follows a lot accounts mutually as Sam does? And by following them, are they suddenly all her friends as well? Do you really think Ash never traveled before in her job representing the Jagermeister brand? Like she doesn't know anybody else in London but the people and places connected to Sam? Like she doesn't know anybody else in Scotland but Sam? (what about Shiobhan who became her bestie?) But nooooo... she traveled to the UK during the holidays, she can't have anything to do in the UK. She can't have any other friends there who told her about hogmanay in Scotland perhaps? Oh wait, that doesn't fit the narrative, let's just skip that, okay? Because then we have entertainment and we all can go on telling how somebody else must live his or her life, because we all know better than themselves.

Why do you all care?

You know what? I'm just gonna leave it at this and post this song with the lyrics. As they apply to all of us

Because, you know we're all just passengers in this world, much unlike those high mountains that are here forever to stay. Tomorrow or next year, it will be all the same, Just another drama and another name, Another fight who's right or wrong, And they all forgot about yesterday... when we were young!

[personasintro]

First off I LOVE your works!!! My question is little odd but I wanted to know how long did it take for your works to start getting attention? I write as well and pumping out 10k-20k word count fics and only getting 6 likes is VERY demotivating, I know not everyone’s writing journey will be the same and people will come and go, but I was just curious!

I think it was 2017 when I first posted my story on this blog, so that’s quite a long time (feeling really old here lmao 🥲) and I don’t exactly remember too many details, so don’t quote me on this — but I remember it happened naturally and gradually. I think at that time I was really “lucky”. Drunk was the mentioned story I posted. I had no idea if people would love it and I didn’t put that much thought into it back then. I got these ideas for a story and I felt like I wanna write again. So I did and just posted it. I remember my first chapter had around hundred of notes. There wasn’t that much feedback, but I wasn’t exactly looking for it back then. I just kept writing and posting it for fun haha.

Somehow people found me and then started to show me their support in their own ways. My ideas were at their peak and I just kept writing, posting…

You said it yourself. The lack of feedback can be demotivating. But I’m not sure if my journey can be compared to yours. We all have our own journey and mindset of what we’re looking for when posting. But I’d say don’t give up and keep writing if that’s what you love. Firstly, you’re writing for yourself :) just hang it there and the right people will find you!

[trailmix-silent-old]

TDP: general thoughts about s7 (spoilers, duh)

Sooo I know it's been a week, but I wanted to get some of my thoughts about season 7 out. I'll be posting more TDP stuff for a while after this too. I haven't posted on tumblr in like 5 years (my old blog is @trailmixstar-blog) but the possible end of this show made me come out of hibernation.

So some general points I wanna make first:

AAAAAAAADHDKDKSFDJSKSK

I can't believe the arc is over omg

I've been following this show since the day it came out

I was such an early fan that I had a Rayllum fic on Wattpad that was top 10 in #thedragonprince

And now it may be over?????? FU-

Someone hold my hand

Now, some specific things I liked about this season:

Finally the Ruthari reunion 🥺

Kosmo and Wanda Astrid being relevant

Cute Rayllum moments

Also angsty Rayllum moments that almost gave me a heart attack

Ezran actually does something this season

It might be an unpopular opinion but I like what they did with Ezran's character, I might make a separate post about it later

Aanya is the queen we need but don't deserve

Human Aaravos is such a silly lil guy

Sorvus should've been canon but I enjoyed their banter nonetheless

The dry baguette is somehow still in the lodge

And so many other callbacks to earlier seasons

Terry finally joins the good side

Karim is still such a little bitch istg

(His death was gruesome but I still laughed)

Love how Callum still insists on using his elfsona even though the war is long over

Claudia's new armor? *chef's kiss*

Things I liked less:

Did- did they seriously confirm the Harrow bird theory in the last few minutes? Seriously?? Is this a joke to them? What's he been doing for over 2 years? Just eating worms while watching the potential end of the world?

Is it just me or was Aaravos dumbed down a little? Like him saying Callum's name while trying to give him the poisoned apple, like that's such an obvious mistake. And I didn't really understand why he killed the bird in front of Terry? He knew Terry would be upset, potentially leave and inform everyone about Aaravos returning. Was there a purpose?

I feel like the explosives could've been used more, but maybe if the series continues they'll be relevant then

Many things were left openended, many unanswered questions. What will happen to the novablade? And the evil coin? What about Miyana and her baby? And the self-eating to stay immortal they discovered? Was Harrow seriously the bird all this time?????

Overall, I really liked this finale. I especially loved all the callbacks to earlier in the show. When Aaravos said an archdragon's bite can kill a Startouch elf, I immediately thought of how Zym's bite was the only thing that could break Rayla's armband thingy in season 1. Was that subtle foreshadowing? Also, Runaan was the one who taught Rayla to sweep the leg!! And she used it against Soren, who said sweeping the leg wasn't a thing in swordfighting. Nice.

I think they tied up quite a few things in the plot, but left a bunch of unanswered questions for a potential continuation. I'm really curious about the self-eating, since I think it could be an important factor in a future arc.

That's it for now. Like I said, I'll make some more TDP posts for a while, but I'll probably mainly become a Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss focused blog after that.

If you read this far, thanks for the attention <3

[lefarte]

Can you give tips and tricks about writing headcanons? I always strugled with them (If you don't want to do it, please delete this ask)

Anoooonnnn there is unfortunately no tips or tricks to writing, anyone who tries to tell you that is trying to sell you something

Everyone wants to have someone who can tell them how to write. There are some basic ideas like doing a three-act-structure or ‘get into your characters headspace’ or ‘show don’t tell’. You can think and discuss about writing for years and years but the unfortunate truth is that the only way to get better at writing is to write 💔

Don’t think about what other people will think. It’s like when you run, don’t look behind you or you’ll stumble

[clownowo]

been replaying the Portal series I think this is where its heading

[silusvesuius]

this tree from my new drawing looking goated afffffff 👑👑

[em-b-sides]

I think about that tiktok trend where you like paint your partners eye color on your nails or make a bracelet or something with the color a lot actually

[thepandalion]

and today in "why is fandom so antisemitic" just blocked two more followers in my sideblog, which makes it about 10 of what would have been almost 35 followers over a couple months. because the "all israelis are evil" bs is really big in mcyt circles.

also haven't watched the new season of hc because I don't want to touch the fandom anymore and enjoying things alone isn't as fun when you know there's a fandom. but also the fandom is full of people that wish I was dead so I dont want to be there either. which means right now the only things in my life are the jewish bloggers I follow (love yall) and doing daily challenges in microsoft solitaire. and university ig but it's the weekend and Im trying not to think about my homework rn

also gave up and made a "btw Im israeli plz stop following me if u want me dead" post on the sideblog. hope it works ig.

[zetareticulanhitchhiker]

@staff why can’t I zoom in on pictures on mobile? Why is there a gradient instead of a black screen behind the images? Why when I swipe to exit out of the picture am I instead shown a picture from a blog I don’t even follow? The interface wasn’t broken so why did you try and fix it?

[yamujiburo]

A few months ago, some of you might know if you keep up with this blog, I went to Collect-A-Con LA. It was truly on a whim. Literally the day before my girlfriend and I had just come back from our Europe trip. Normally I'd be so tired and jetlagged but for some reason I was feeling really antsy and energized and just needed to go somewhere and get out of the house.

I found out that Collect-A-Con LA was happening the following day and that a lot of the original Pokemon voice cast would be there. So I bought a ticket, drew/printed up a picture that I wanted to get signed and got up early to drive to the convention center (you have to understand that I hate driving in town and also very much never wake up early). I don't know what possessed me to do this but I'm so glad I did.

I ended up having the privilege of meeting Eric Stuart, Veronica Taylor and of course, Rachael Lillis.

She was masked up, looked tired, and a bit sick. And at the time, I assumed she might've caught a cold over the weekend of the con. I went to her table and she still smiled and gave me all of her attention and time. I paid her assistant for an autograph, gave Rachael the drawing I'd done and she got to signing it. Her assistant said the print I had was cute and asked where I got it. I told her that I drew it myself and that I spent a LOT of my time drawing Team Rocket and other various Pokemon fanart. When I said that, Rachel stopped mid-sign and looked up and squinted at me and asked "are you Kiana Mai"? My heart skipped. I had no idea she knew who I was and was surprised that, given how many Pokemon fanartists there are in the world, she was able to pick me out. I left that interaction so happy and felt so seen. Soon after, I went to get my print signed by Veronica Taylor and while in her line, noticed Rachael had left her table; presumably not feeling well and had to leave the con early. I remember thinking how lucky I was to catch her before she left.

A couple months later, I saw the gofundme that her sister posted, detailing what Rachel was going through for the past few years and her battle with cancer. It put that convention day in such a different perspective for me.

All I could think about was how much she cared about her fans and how in touch with her community she was to go to a convention while being in so much pain and suffering in silence. I obviously don't know her personally, but based on how other fans who've met her, as well as her colleagues have spoken about her, I got the impression that she was an amazing, thoughtful person who cared about the people around her. That was only solidified for me based on this singular interaction a few months ago.

Rest in Peace Rachael Lillis. You've touched so many lives with your voice and so much of us grew up listening you. Thank you for everything!

[nanaslutt]

roommates!gojo & geto jerking each other off while thinking abt their cute neighbor they both want soooo bad

MINORS AND AGELESS BLOGS DNI

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ ࿔

“do it harder.” geto groaned, squeezing his eyes shut as he laid back against satoru’s pillows. said man currently had his hand wrapped around his cock, albeit poorly. his hand was soft as fuck, but he was touching him like he had never touched a dick before. “jerk me off how you jerk yourself off.”

gojo snorted, his words breathy as he spoke, “what if i like it soft?” geto shook his head and curled his toes when gojo wrapped his hand around him tighter. “these walls are thin, i’ve heard you having sex and i know you don’t like it soft. those poor girls.”

gojo laughed, “they love it, i think she would love it too.” he said. geto licked his lips, starting to paint an image in his head. “what would you do to her?” he asked tentatively, his eyebrows furrowing together when gojo focused on his cock head like the bastard he was.

“mmm i think id start with fingering her.” gojo said. “i’ve seen her a couple times in the laundry room bend over in those tiny shorts—you know the ones. and her-“ he stopped talking to groan when geto stroked over a particularly sensitive vein. “they don’t cover much.”

geto nodded, seeing you bent over in his head. “you think she’s sensitive?” geto asked, cracking his eyes open to peek at gojo. his eyes were lidded and focused on the hand around his cock. geto tried not to shy away when he felt his pre cum drip into his hand. he’d never jerked anyone off before—besides himself.

“oh yeah,” gojo responded, biting his plush lip. for some reason it made geto’s mouth water. “i think… fuck, i think i could make her squirt with just my fingers.” gojo’s face was getting flushed now. it made geto want to tease him. “yeah?” he asked, squeezing his hand tighter around his shaft and relishing in his reaction when he sucked in a breath through his teeth and arched his back. “would you make her squirt all over our couch?”

gojo moaned at his filthy words and nodded, his head tipping back against the headboard. “yeah.” geto nodded, looking at his roommate even though his eyes were closed. “what would you do if i walked in when you were making her cum?” he asked, paying attention to the head of his cock.

“i-id let you suck my fingers clean.” he groaned, making geto’s balls throb at the visual. “god, she’d probably get so hot… trying to press her thighs together watching me suck your fingers.” gojo nodded, his mouth falling open in a small O.

“would you want her pussy or her ass?” geto asked, his breath coming more quickly. “ass, i know it’s so tight and warm. god. would you want her at the same time?” geto nodded despite him being unable to see. “yeah, just think about how good she would look with tears down her face trying to take us both.”

suddenly, a hand way being wrapped around his wrist. geto opened his eyes fully and watched with rapt attention as gojo cursed before his back arched. he continued stroking him, despite knowing what was gonna happen. he cringed when hot ropes of cum spilled from his dick, coating his hand and his cock and making a lewd sound from the stroking.

gojo gripped geto’s wrist to stop him, and geto pulled it away and made a face at the mess on his hand. gojo also had stopped jerking him off, just weakly holding his throbbing cock. “that did it for you huh?” he teased. gojo laughed before removing his hand from geto’s cock.

gojo crawled off the edge of the bed and bent down to grab a towel to wipe his cock clean with. geto gripped his cock and languidly started stroking, waiting for gojo to help him get off. “your turn, one minute man. come keep this fantasy going so i can blow all over your hand and pretend it’s hers.”

a cruel smile twisted on gojo’s face before he dropped the towel and zipped his pants back up. “i’m sure you can finish yourself off.” getos mouth opened in disbelief. “if you need some help, i have porn from last night still up on my laptop, feel free to check it out. it’s really good stuff.” with a wink, he left geto gaping and alone in HIS room with his stiff cock in his hand.

fucking biiiitch.

[asahicore]

stupid in love - psh (m)

this work contains smut - minors please do not interact

pairing. best friend!sunghoon x fem!reader

synopsis. One night early on in your summer vacation, your best friend Sunghoon admits that his biggest anxiety about starting college is going there as a virgin - one thing leads to another, and you end up learning a few things from each other. The more time passes, the more obvious it becomes that your feelings for each other surpass friendship, but with the end of summer looming over your heads, it's hard to tell where these newfound emotions will lead you.

genre. best friends/childhood friends 2 lovers, summer au, lots of fluff and smut but also some angst to spice things up, when i say smut i mean LOTS of smut. like mostly smut lol (mutual first time, ice play, crazy stuff)

word count. 22.1k

a/n. bringing this one back from the pits of my google docs guys.. its been so long since i've posted anything and im not sure when the new hoon fic will be ready so i thought i'd repost an og asahicore fic!!! the title was originally 'hot like ice' but i changed it bc this is my blog and i do what i want <3 i'd also like to say that in terms of plot this is probably not something i would write nowadays, it's very smut-heavy and thats not what im about now idk i was crazy back then... but i rmb being happy w this fic and its reception when i first posted it so i'm happy to have it back on my blog and hope u guys will like it too <3 as always lmk what u think!!

It all started with a lollipop. Well, two, to be exact. One strawberry-flavored, one apple-flavored. 

You stand in front of your friend, lollipops in hand. “Which one do you want, Hoon?” 

“I don’t mind, just pick whichever one you like best,” he replies absent-mindedly, eyes on the TV as he tries to find a suitable movie for this late summer afternoon.

You plop down on the couch next to him and look at the two lollipops in your hands, unable to decide which flavor you like better. “I don’t know what I feel like right now,” you announce to an uninterested Sunghoon. “I’ll just try both.”

That seems to catch your best friend’s attention. He watches as you unwrap both candies, tasting each once, twice, then as you decide you want the apple-flavored lollipop and hand him the strawberry-flavored one. He doesn’t take his eyes off of your lips as you wrap them and swirl your tongue around the candy, letting its sweetness wash over your taste buds. You raise your eyebrows when you notice his staring and he blinks a couple times, trying to snap himself out of it. “Did you want the other one?” you ask, confused by his behavior.

“N-no, I like strawberry,” he stammers, turning his gaze back to the screen in front of you and settling for ‘When Harry Met Sally,’ a movie you’ve both seen a thousand times but never get bored of.

You’re used to Sunghoon getting lost in his thoughts, so you don’t question it much. You sit back on the couch, your knee touching his. You two are no strangers to a little skinship - after being friends for almost eight years, physical contact comes naturally. You have to admit that recently, it’s started to feel different; but the idea of your friendship changing tugs at your heartstrings so much that you ignore the prickles on your skin when he hugs you or the way your stomach flips when he smiles at you, dimples and sharp canines on display. You tell yourself it’s all stupid and that you can handle so much as your knees touching.

Sunghoon, on the other hand, can't. The lollipop in his mouth right now was in yours mere moments ago and you’d given it to him like sharing saliva was no big deal. He feels like a thirteen year-old for thinking like this, but this was pretty much an indirect kiss.

He stares at the TV screen, but all he can see are your perfect lips sucking that lollipop, and his mind is desperately not trying to go there, but he just cannot help himself. Blood rushes to his dick as he pictures your mouth around him, sucking him off with as much enthusiasm as you are the lollipop. Would you like his taste? Would you look up at him with those pretty eyes of yours, smiling even with his dick stuffed in your mouth?

His own thoughts catch him off guard, and before they can get any wilder, he runs off to the bathroom, knowing he’d never live it down if you caught a glimpse of his erection. Thankfully, you don’t, and you call after him, asking if he wants you to pause the movie, to which he shouts back a strangled ‘no.’

He comes back ten minutes later, face flushed and breath heavy. “Goddamn, Hoon, I know we’re best friends, but if you’re going to dump a massive load, I wished you did it in your own bathroom and not mine,” you tease him, laughing as his face gets even redder and he opens his mouth to protest.

“I was just on my phone!” he replies, mildly offended.

“Whatever,” you say, still laughing, and turn your attention back to the movie.

Well. Sunghoon would rather have you think he just took a huge shit than have you know he came to the idea of you sucking him off and swallowing every last drop of his cum. 

--

A few days later, you and Sunghoon are lying on his bed, the both of you on your backs, talking about this and that as you often do. It’s almost 3 a.m., and it feels almost rebellious, being up this late after months of waking up at 6, but your high school graduation was a week ago and you feel like you can do anything. The dim fairy lights you forced him to put up and the bright moon outside are the only sources of light in the room, and when you turn to look at him, you can just make out the outline of his face, the curve of his nose, the sharpness of his jaw. You've looked at him a thousand times before, so your memory makes up for what the light takes away from your eyes. You shift to lying on your stomach, propping yourself up on your elbows so you can take a better look at your friend. Something about the moonlight makes him look ethereal, and his beauty makes your heart skip a beat, but you’d never admit that to him. Out of habit, you reach out to touch his moles, gently placing your middle finger on his nose and your pointer finger on his cheek. Sunghoon closes his eyes at your touch, used to the warm feeling that settles in his stomach whenever you do that.

“Y/N?” he calls out, just as you pull your fingers away from his moles.

“Yeah?”

He opens his eyes again, meeting yours. “Is there anything you’re scared of for next year? You know, heading off to college and all that?” You shift again and lie on your back, the sides of your two bodies touching. You stare at the ceiling for a while, thinking about his question, and Sunghoon patiently waits for your answer.

“I’m scared about not making friends. I’m not the least outgoing person ever, but it’s so intimidating, not knowing anyone. And it’ll be weird not having you around. Shut up,” you warn before he can make an egotistical remark, so he just chuckles. “I’m also worried about the amount of work I’ll have. I’ve heard so many times that it’s a huge step-up from high school, the workload and the type of work and all that. What if I don’t even like the degree that I chose? I know I can change it, but it still stresses me out. Turning 18 doesn’t feel like a huge deal, but going to college does. It’s when all the responsibility hits. My mom told me to make my own doctor’s appointment the other day, and I almost cried when I had to call them. I’m not gonna have anyone to do my groceries for me. I’m scared I might get an awful roommate. I hate the idea of communal showers. I don’t even know what I want to do after college, and I know I have four years to make up my mind, but I’m scared those four years are gonna flash by and I’ll be indebted and unemployed by the end of it.” You pause to take a breath, and you can feel Sunghoon’s eyes on the sides of your face, but he doesn’t say anything. “Also, I heard that you put on a lot of weight during your freshman year.”

You turn to look at him to find him smiling at you. “Wow. That’s a lot.”

The two of you giggle, eyes not leaving the other’s. After a moment, you turn your gaze back to the ceiling and sigh. “Yeah, I know. But I’m more excited than I am scared. What about you?”

Sunghoon follows your gaze and looks up above him. He doesn’t say anything for a while, and when he finally speaks up, he says it so quietly, you almost don’t hear it. “I’m scared of going to college a virgin.”

You try to stay serious for a few seconds, but you can’t keep your laughter in and snort loudly at your friend’s words, laughing so hard your stomach starts to hurt.

“Don’t make fun of me!” he whines, hands coming up to cover his face.

It takes you a while to calm down; not only was Sunghoon’s statement ridiculous, it was so unexpected that you couldn’t stop laughing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you apologize, catching your breath. “I just can’t believe that that’s what you’re scared of, of all things.”

“What? It’s a perfectly reasonable concern,” he defends himself.

“Nobody’s gonna care if you’re a virgin, Hoon,” you try to reason with him, but if there is one thing your best friend is, it’s stubborn.

“I’m gonna care! What if I like a girl but I can’t bring myself to make a move on her ‘cause I have no experience?”

“But Hoon, chances are she doesn’t have a lot more experience than you do! She’ll be the same age we are, dummy. We’re not sixteen year-olds jumping into a world of twenty year-olds. Sure, some people have their first time in high school, but a lot do it at university. You’ll be fine,” you reassure. His furrowed eyebrows and pout tell you he’s not fully convinced, though.

“Oh, c’mon! If you really want to lose your virginity before leaving, we can get you laid during the summer. I’m sure we can find a girl nice enough,” you tease, jokingly patting his bicep, trying not to make a note of how firm the skin feels under your hand.

Sunghoon sighs, and you can tell he’s actually taking this seriously. “I’m not that desperate that I’d have sex with the first girl that agrees, you know. I’d still rather do it with someone…” He glances at you for just a second. “Someone I trust.”

You feel your face heat up at the possible meaning behind his words, so you look away, not wanting him to see the effect they had on you. He changes his position on the bed, and now it’s his turn to prop himself up on his elbows and look down at you.

“What about you, Y/N? Don’t you think it’d be good to get a bit of experience before going off to college? It’ll be one less thing to stress about,” he says, a small smirk playing on his lips, and his shy demeanor from moments prior is completely gone. Out of fear that his ego would get even bigger, you'd never tell him, but you love it when he gets like that - when he thinks he’s the shit and teases you mercilessly. You know he does it lightheartedly, and it never fails to bring a smile to your face.

Except right now it does. You’re not smiling, far from it; you’re looking up at your best friend, mouth slightly agape and wide eyes searching for a sign that he may be just joking. He raises an eyebrow expectantly, and your reaction is to scoff at him. 

“Do I need to remind you that you’re the reason I have no experience to begin with, Park Sunghoon?” you ask, sitting up on the bed to peer down at him. He shifts again and lays on his back, his hands coming up behind his head as he beams at you.

“Am I really?”

You wish you could slap that shit-eating grin off of his face. This is not the first time you're having this conversation. “Yes, Hoon. Every time a guy was even remotely interested in me, you chased them away. I’m still not over you telling Kang Taehyun I have smelly feet! I had a huge crush on that guy!”

Sunghoon loudly laughs at the memory, and you curse yourself for cracking a smile when you see his face scrunched in laughter. “That was in Year 5, Y/N! It’s been years!”

You grab a pillow and throw it at his head, unable to not laugh along with him. “What about Bang Yedam, then? That was only last year, and you totally ruined my chances with him!”

“Listen, if you having a creepy doll collection is enough to make him not ask you out, then he must not have liked you that much.”

“But I don’t have a creepy doll collection! That’s the whole point!” you say, on the brink of desperation. You sigh at your friend who’s still catching his breath from laughing so much. “You’re just lucky they didn’t repeat your bullshit to anyone. I would’ve had such a weird reputation otherwise.”

“Of course they didn’t. I told them I’d kill them if they did,” he stated matter-of-factly, as if that was a normal and appropriate thing to do.

“Couldn’t you have threatened them that way so they wouldn’t ask me out instead of lying to them about me?”

Sunghoon stares at you for a few seconds, eyes seemingly empty of thought. “Huh. Yeah, I guess I could’ve done that.”

“Ugh,” you groan, and plop down on the bed next to him. Neither of you says anything for some time, until you break the silence again. “You know you even stole my first kiss, Hoon,” you speak softly.

“I know,” he says, voice just as quiet as yours. “You never shut up about it.”

“Why would I? I was about to kiss Lee Heeseung, of all people, the boy everybody, including me, had a crush on, but no, someone had to get between us and kiss me in his stead,” you grumble, giving your friend a harsh side-eye.

Sunghoon sighs and shakes his head as if you’re being irrational. “I don’t get why you’re so hung-up on that. Why would you want your first kiss to be because of a middle-school party dare rather than have it with your best friend, whom you know and trust?”

“It was Lee Heeseung, for God’s sake!”

“And I’m Park Sunghoon!”

Still both laying on your backs, you turn your heads to look at each other. There’s something in his eyes you’ve never seen before that you can’t quite put your finger on. The person in front of you is one you’ve known for years now and yet the look in his eyes is of such unfamiliar intensity that it makes your stomach flip. You inhale sharply when his eyes drift down to your lips, and you can’t help but mirror his actions. The atmosphere has flipped like a light switch; it was playful just mere seconds ago, the sound of your usual banter filling up the room. All of a sudden, there’s something heavy dancing in the air around you, and it makes your heart skip a bit faster and your breath a bit shallower.

Your voice is barely above a whisper when you say his name.

“Yeah?” His eyes snap back up to yours, but you're still stuck on his lips. Have they always looked so kissable?

“Why did you do that? Why did you push those boys away from me?” you ask, even though you’ve asked this question a thousand times before. You want to hear his answer again.

“I’ve already told you. You deserved better than them.” Whenever you ask him about it, Sunghoon always stops here, and you never push. But there are unspoken words left hanging that you’re dying to hear.

“Who, then? Who’d be better than them?”

He's quiet for a second. “It’s a secret,” he whispers finally, a small smirk teasing his lips, and you roll your eyes at him. But then your eyes meet again and your breath hitches. You shift to your side so you can face him more fully, and he mirrors your actions. 

It’s his turn to say your name. “Y/N?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you kissed anyone since?” he asks, coming off shyer than he’d intended to.

You giggle and smack his shoulder lightly. “Why do you wanna know?”

He snickers too and, to your surprise, stops your fist from hitting him a second time, enveloping his larger hand around yours and laying it between the two of you on the bed. “Cause I should know that sorta thing. Also, if you did kiss someone since then, and I didn’t know about it, I'd be upset.”

“Why would you be mad?” you say, still giggling, trying to ignore the way your heartbeat quickens when he threads your fingers with his.

“Because you wouldn’t have told me!”

“Well…”

“No way, Y/N,” he practically shouts, already feeling betrayed, his free hand coming up to grip his heart in fake shock.

“Let me at least finish first,” you protest. He obliges, although he doesn't look very happy about it. “You know that summer 2 years ago I went away to camp?”

“Yeah, worst summer ever.”

“Well, I did sort of… get with someone, that summer,” you say, avoiding Sunghoon’s wide eyes as he gasps loudly.

“What? Who with? How come you didn't tell me?” he exclaims, letting go of your hand. He sits up on the bed and crosses his arms over his chest like an annoyed child. 

“Because of this exactly.”

“What’s this?”

“Your reaction right now!” you say, sitting up as well, both of your knees grazing his. The simple touch sends a shiver down your spine that you can only hope he takes no notice of.

“Wouldn’t you be a bit upset if I told you I ‘got with’,” he air-quotes, “a random girl two years ago?”

“No? Especially not if it was two years ago?”

You both look just as confused as the other, obviously not on the same wavelength. He furrows his eyebrows and glares at you. “Well, I am.”

You throw your head back in laughter and place your hands on his knees, but when you come forward again, you overestimate the distance between the both of you and find yourself mere inches from his face. The laughter immediately dies in your throat, and you feel it go dry when your stunned reaction elicits a smirk from him. You don’t know how long you stare into his eyes, all you know is you snap out of it when his gaze drifts down to your lips once more. You’re closer now than you were before, and having him so close makes your mind spin with all the possible outcomes of such proximity. You lean back on the bed, pulling away your hands from his knees to hold yourself up on them.

“There’s no reason to,” you say, hoping that breaking the silence will dissipate some of the tension in the air. You keep going back and forth between familiar and dangerous and you don’t know how long you’ll be able to handle that atmosphere. “It’s not like anything grand happened. We made out a bit and held hands. We never spoke after that summer, otherwise you’d have known about it.” 

Sunghoon lets out a low hum. His eyes are still trained on yours, and you wished he’d look away because you can’t seem to do it yourself. He still doesn’t say anything, so you speak up again. “You say that like you’ve never had girlfriends, by the way. Surely you’ve done more than just kissing.” Silence again, and you can’t decipher the look he’s giving you. “So, I don’t know what you’re so scared about, because it’s not like you have zero experience. I’m sure the girls at uni will love you, Hoon.”

He sighs and finally tears his eyes away from yours, and you’re not sure if you’re seeing things because of how dark and late it is or if there’s an actual blush creeping on his cheeks. “Sure, I’ve had a couple girlfriends, but you know they’ve never lasted long,” he says, looking down at his lap. “We made out… I guess I-” he gives you a quick glance, “I’ve touched their boobs and they’ve touched my… you know…”

You can’t help but giggle at how shy your friend is suddenly being. “Can’t even say the word ‘penis’, Hoon?,” you tease, and his eyes snap back up at yours.

“Of course I can. Penis! There.” You look at each other for a few seconds before bursting into laughter, Sunghoon hushing you so you don’t wake up his parents, but his hushes are louder than your laugh. After a couple minutes, you calm down and wipe your tears away, grateful for the break in the tension between you and Sunghoon.

“Anyway, yeah, I guess I don’t have that much experience. Which is why I brought it up in the first place.” And just as quickly as it’d left, the tension is back again.

You look around the room because the weight of Sunghoon’s gaze on your face is unbearable. You release a shaky breath when you feel his gentle hand on your knee, and your eyes drift to it, but you can’t get yourself to look him straight in the eyes. 

“Don’t you think it’d be good to get experience before leaving for college, Y/N?” he asks, and you can tell he’s trying to sound confident, but his voice comes out breathier and shakier than he must intend it to.

“I don’t know… I don’t think it’s necessary,” you say, eyes still trained on his hand resting on your knee. He squeezes it a bit, making you finally look up at him. Is it just you, or did the room get hotter all of a sudden?

“Not everything you do has to be out of necessity, you know.”

The both of you stare at each other for a few moments. This shift in your relationship was bound to happen; you’d been feeling it more and more recently. You didn’t use to think twice about Sunghoon taking your hand in his, nor did you feel those stupid butterflies eating away at your stomach every time his gaze lingered for a second too long. You’d tried to reason with yourself that it was just teenage hormones doing their stupid job, and that you were doomed to feel some kind of attraction for your extremely handsome best friend at some point in your life, but that if you ignored it hard and long enough it would go away.

Well, now that Sunghoon’s lips are barely inches away from yours and your skin is on fire under his hand, it definitely isn’t going away.

“What would you do if I kissed you?” Sunghoon asks, eyes fluttering down to your lips. You think he’s looked at your lips more than the rest of your face in the past hour.

“I’d slap you,” you lie, gaze mirroring his.

“Would you really?” he says, and your hesitation makes him smirk slightly.

“No,” you breathe out, and it’s the answer he’s been waiting for, the answer he needs to finally press his soft lips against yours. 

You don’t even have the time to savor the moment, though, because the warmth of his lips is gone as quickly as it came. He pulls back, a surprised look in his eyes, as if he can’t believe what he just did. The tension above you breaks and rains down on you like small pieces of confetti that settle comfortably on your head and shoulders. There’s a knot in your stomach but instead of twisting your insides in nervousness, it feels warm and makes you giddy for what’s to come next. Sunghoon’s surprised expression transforms into a grin at the sound of your laughter, and he can’t help but chuckle along with you.

You scooch closer to him, and his other hand comes to rest on your second knee. You can tell he’s not going to do much more, so you lean in bit by bit, and peck him softly on the lips. You both giggle again and you blame the fact that you want to feel his lips on yours again on the late hour of the night. You peck his lips once, twice more, giggling inbetween, but when you peck them a third time, he doesn’t let you pull away and keeps his lips on yours. The sudden added strength takes you aback, but it doesn’t take you long to yield to his touch and kiss him back. 

Sunghoon moves his lips slowly against yours and it’s surprisingly easy to fall into his rhythm. You don’t have the most experience with kissing, but something about doing it with your best friend reassures you and your whole body relaxes as you focus on the feeling of his lips moving in cadence with yours. The knot in your stomach stays there and tightens when his hands ride up your thighs and settle on your hips, holding you snugly there. You’re only wearing shorts and his palms against your bare skin make you release a shaky breath in Sunghoon’s mouth. You pull back for a bit, surprised at your own reaction, but nothing has prepared you for the way your best friend looks at you.

His pupils are dilated, dark; his glossed-over eyes bore right into yours. Your breath was already shallow from the kiss, but it’s his gaze that renders you completely breathless. Sunghoon tightens his grip on your hips and leans in for more, but you put a hand on his chest to stop him, making his eyes snap back into focus.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Y/N. I don’t know what took over me. Are you okay?” he asks, as short of breath as you are, but worry laced in his voice.

“No- Yes- I mean, yes, I’m fine, everything’s fine, I just-” you shake your head, trying to gather your thoughts. “I’m just…”

“Tell me. You can tell me,” he says, rubbing gentle circles into your hips with his thumb, and the unfamiliar yet intimate gesture makes it even harder to concentrate. 

“We- we’re best friends, right?” you ask, voice trembling, You ask, even though you know the answer, just because you’re afraid the line the two of you have just crossed is already miles behind you, and you won’t be able to retrace your steps.

“Yeah, of course we are,” Sunghoon reassures, head tilting to the side in confusion. 

“And best friends… Do they… Well, it’s normal for best friends to kiss, right?” you say, trying to calm the overpowering urge to kiss him again.

Sunghoon chuckles and tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear. “I don’t know about that, Y/N.”

“Oh,” you breathe.

Sunghoon quickly catches on to your hesitation. “But who cares about what best friends usually do and don’t do?” he says, holding your face between his hands to make you look up at him. “I liked kissing you, just now. I really, really liked it,” he admits, red dusting his cheeks. “Did you?”

You nod, too shy to put just how much you enjoyed kissing Sunghoon into words. “Do you want to do it again?” he asks and chuckles when you nod again, eyes already on his lips. This time, you don’t stop him when he leans in and let him press his lips to yours again. His words have reassured you and you sigh into his mouth, making him smile into the kiss. 

His hands ride up a bit and settle on your waist, bringing you a bit closer to him, and you circle your arms around his neck. The shyness of the first kiss is completely gone, and you’re both gaining more and more confidence, letting everything go and focusing solely on where your bodies meet. He tilts his head, deepening the kiss, and you push your body onto his, a sudden need to feel him against you, to feel his strong arms encaging you. 

You pull away at the same time to catch your breaths, smiling at each other when you see how lustful the other’s expression is. Sunghoon’s eyes have glossed over once more, and you’re sure yours have too. “C’mere,” he whispers, beckoning you to him. You climb onto his lap, one knee on each side of his hips. “Is this okay?” he asks, but you don’t answer, you just lean in and kiss him again, holding his face in your hand as his hands roam your back over the thin fabric of your t-shirt. Your kisses are curious, the both of you trying to figure out what feels best as you tilt your heads from one side to the other and let your inquisitive hands travel each other’s bodies. Yours find purchase in his hair, and you revel in the sighs that escape his lips whenever you pull and tug at the strands. 

As the kiss gets hungrier and needier, his hands fall down to your lower back, and then to your ass. He just cups it for a while, but after a few moments, grabs it harder and brings you close to him, making your core rub against  the hardness that had been building in his sweatpants for a while now. The friction is unexpected and you can’t help the loud moan leaving your lips at the feeling. It’s a feeling you know from your own hand in the privacy of your dark room, but Sunghoon making you feel that way is so foreign that it snaps you out of the daze you’re in. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, was that too much?” Sunghoon scrambles for words, but you’re already pulling away, and he doesn’t know what to do to keep you close.

You sit back on the bed, holding your knees close to your chest. You look at your best friend in front of you who’s looking at you with a worried expression. Something in you craves to reach a hand out to him, to feel his cheeks and jawline under your palms again, to find out if he’d shiver at your touch and if goosebumps would form on his skin. He’s been your best friend for eight years, and you’ve always thought you knew everything about him, the same way he’s supposed to know everything about you. But you realize in this moment that there are things you don’t yet know, melodies to be discovered, treasures to be unearthed. Your fingertips are burning to find them all. 

The sound of your name resonates inside your mind and it takes you everything not to fall back on him again. You furrow your eyebrows, confused by all those things you’re feeling. What was it that just took over you, that lit your insides up so?

You straighten your back suddenly and take in your surroundings. Sunghoon’s room is still the same old room you’ve always known, the same blue walls, the same posters he only ever changes when he finds a new interest and lets go of an old one. The same pictures from when you were 10, 12, 15, recent ones now that you’re 18; the same figure skating trophies and medals on his shelves. You turn to look at your best friend. The same soft, round cheeks contrasted by a sharp jaw; the same almond eyes, round with worry at your sudden movement away from him; the same two moles you’ve always found so comforting, for some reason. You almost reach out to touch them, to give you some sense of balance, to reassure you that things aren’t changing as much as it feels like they are. But you’re scared electricity might fry your fingers if you touch him right now. You’re scared you won’t be able to take your fingers off of him, no matter how much it stings. His face is the same as always before, but there’s something else to it, something you could probably figure out if you spent more than three seconds thinking about it, but you’re not sure you want to figure it out.

“Is everything okay? Did- Did I do something wrong?” he asks, voice laced with concern. 

Before he can put a reassuring hand on your knee, you get off of the bed, and hurriedly say, “No. I just- I think I should go home.” You look everywhere but at him.

He sits up at your words, concern turned into confusion. “It’s 3 a.m., Y/N, why do you want to go home all of a sudden? You’ve stayed over plenty of times before.”

“I know, I just…” you trail off, trying to come up with an excuse. “I’ve got cramps. I think my period’s coming,” you lie. It’s better than whatever truth is threatening to bubble up.

“Oh. Right.” He scooches a bit, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Is there anything- like- can I do anything?” He sighs, steadies himself. “You don’t have to go, is what I’m trying to say.”

A few months ago, when you had finally wrapped your head around the fact that your best friend was an attractive man and that he made you feel things friends weren’t supposed to make you feel, you’d told yourself it was all just a phase that would pass soon. But feelings this strong surely cannot go away that easily.

You take a deep breath in and tear your eyes away from him. “I think I should go home,” you repeat. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Hoon.”

You turn around and start walking away, but Sunghoon is quick on his feet and stops you from going out the door. “Do you actually have cramps? Or are you just scared that our friendship might change?” He sounds out of breath, like asking this question is taking him all of his energy.

You avert his gaze and try to push past him, but he’s much stronger than you. Puberty sure played its trick on him. You sigh and look down at your feet. “I’m tired, Hoon, let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

But if there is one thing your best friend is, it’s stubborn. “I don’t wanna talk about it tomorrow. I wanna talk about it now. Did it feel nice?” he asks, and his resolute tone of voice makes you look up at him.

“I- I mean-”

“Y/N,” he starts, wrapping his arms around you and leaning in a bit, his familiar scent filling your nostrils. You have to close your eyes. “Answer me. Did it feel good?”

“Yes,” you answer without thinking. 

“Is that why you’re scared?”

“Yes.” Your eyes flutter open when you feel his fingers graze your cheek. He leans in again and traps your kiss in a much softer and intimate kiss that makes your head spin and your thoughts cloud. Before you can get carried away, you pull away again, and ignore how beautiful he looks when his eyes stay closed for a couple of seconds longer. He only opens them once you tell him once again you should go home, that you need some time to think.

“Let me at least walk you there. It’s dark,” he pleads, his grip on your waist still tight.

“Hoon, I live right next door, I’ll be fine.” You let him kiss you once more and he makes you promise to call or text him tomorrow.

When you leave, Sunghoon plops back down on his bed, arm resting on his forehead as he plays back the events of the night. Had he done something wrong? Something that made you want to get as far away from him as quickly as possible? He’d tried to be gentle and to make sure you were okay with everything, but he couldn’t help but get carried away when he heard those sweet sighs of yours. He thought he was going to combust when he heard you moan, and he wanted to hear it over and over again, but you’d jumped from him like he’d told you he had killed someone.

He hopes you were telling the truth when you said you were just scared about your friendship changing. He hadn’t wanted to push and get you to stay; he knew it was weird, seeing each other in a different light all at once. He wasn’t completely oblivious; he’d felt that same shift in your relationship those past few months, just like you had, although you’d never spoken about it to each other. He knew he could never go back to seeing you as just a friend when he’d jerked off one day and you were all he could think of. He kept imagining the sounds you’d make and the way your hands would feel on him, and he’d gotten so close to getting that today, but he must’ve fucked something up and now his chances were ruined. He curses himself for letting you slip through his fingers just when he thought he finally had you.

You don’t get a wink of sleep that night. Your mind is reeling with everything that happened in Sunghoon’s room. Your fingers unconsciously keep coming up to touch your lips and feel the ghost of his touch there. Your skin turns hot at the simple thought of how perfect his lips had felt against yours, and you toss and turn in your bed as you consider what might’ve been, had you stayed with Sunghoon. 

But it’s all happening too quickly, and even though you’ve been curious in more ways than one about your best friend for the past few months, you hadn’t expected to kiss him and to enjoy it so much on a random summer night. Your thoughts only seem to calm down and your eyes finally close just as the sun starts to rise.

--

The next day, Sunghoon wakes up in the early hours of the afternoon and checks his phone right away. A couple of notifications, but nothing from you. A text from Jake in their group chat with Jay asking to hang out at Sunghoon’s pool, to which he replies that they can come whenever. He taps a quick one out in the shower, memories of your scent and your lips on his getting him to finish quicker than he’d like to admit. He’s in the middle of a late breakfast when Jake and Jay spawn at his door, swimming trunks already on. Still nothing from you.

It doesn’t take Jay and Jake long to figure out that something is up with their best friend. It’s not like he does much usually, but today especially, he makes no effort to entertain them. He laughs at their jokes, but it feels like he laughs because he hears other people laughing rather than because he genuinely finds them funny. He barely even reacts when the inflatable pool ball hits him right in the face.

His friends don’t say anything until they’re all seated at a table by the pool, sipping on some ice-cold Coke. The air is still warm but the sun is low in the sky, hidden behind the house. Sunghoon is still lost in his thoughts, unblinking eyes fixed on a random point in the distance. Jay and Jake exchange a look before the former breaks the silence.

“Is everything alright, Hoon? You look out of it today.”

Jay’s voice brings him back to the here and now, and his eyes jump back and forth between his two friends who are looking at him expectantly. “Huh? Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just tired. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night,” he says, leaving some of the truth out, but his friends know him better than he gives them credit for.

“Are you sure? I feel like there’s something you’re not telling us. You usually act like a little bitch when you’re tired, you don’t get all…,” Jake shakes his hand in front of his face, “distant like that.”

Sunghoon bites his lip, debating whether he should tell his friends about you or not. No matter how stupid they may be, they also know both of you quite well, so they might prove not completely useless, he thinks.

“Y/N and I kissed last night.”

It’s almost comical, how Jay and Jake bring their head forward in astonishment, how wide their mouth gets, how their eyes look like they might pop out of their sockets, and how they say “You what?!” at the same time. On a normal day, Sunghoon would've laughed.

“We kissed,” Sunghoon repeats, eyes drifting down to the ground in front of him as he rubs his neck in embarrassment.

“Fucking finally!” Jay exclaims.

“Told you it was gonna happen. No way you two were going to stay just besties forever,” Jake teases, punching Sunghoon in the arm. “How was it?”

Sunghoon sighs and leans back in his chair, letting his head hang back. “Really fucking amazing,” he chuckles. His friends holler for him, snickering like 12-year old boys who just saw a hot girl walk past. 

“God, I saw this coming from miles away. I don’t know why you kept on insisting nothing was gonna happen between you two,” Jake says, beaming.

“I really didn’t think anything would… I just… Started seeing her differently recently, I guess.” Sunghoon shrugs, sheepishly smiling to himself.

“So, what happened? Did you guys just kiss or…?” Jay asks, raising his eyebrows suggestively. Jake giggles at the insinuation of sex but has a curious glint in his eyes when he waits for Sunghoon’s answer.

“Yeah, um, we just kissed cause she- she sort of ran away?” Sunghoon admits, wincing at the recollection.

“You what?!” Chaeyong’s voice rings out in the food court of the mall where you’re currently sitting, halfway through your strawberry milkshake.

“Keep it down, would you?!” you scold her, smiling apologetically to the people staring at you and your friend.

“If it was so good, why the hell did you run away, Y/N?”

“I just- I don’t know… Freaked out, I guess…” you mumble, cowering under the harsh look she gives you.

“Well, have you talked since?” You don’t reply, just guiltily avoid her gaze. “Y/N!”

“I know, I know! I just… don’t know what to do. ‘Hey, nice making out with you last night, bit weird since we’ve been best friends since we were 11, but that’s fine, right?’ Ugh! That’s so stupid,” you complain, flopping back in your chair.

“That’s exactly what you should say. Going MIA on him will just make things weirder. Plus you’ve never gone more than 24 hours without speaking so one of you will eventually cave in. It should be you,” she says, looking at you with a raised eyebrow as she takes a sip from her milkshake. 

You scoff when she gives you a ‘you know I’m right’ look. “I’ll think about it on the way home and text him. There.”

And you do think about it on the way home; but you don’t get the opportunity to send the text, because as soon as you get off the bus at the stop right across from your house, you see Sunghoon sitting on the bench of your porch, looking around nervously and rubbing his hands on his denim shorts. You chuckle to yourself; who knew he got so distressed from not speaking to you for a day?

He stands up when he sees you approaching and raises his hand in a quick wave. “Hi, Hoon,” you greet, and you can feel his whole body relax when you hug him. So, you don’t hate him, he thinks. You sit down on the bench together. “Sorry I didn’t text you. I didn’t know what to say after… last night,” you admit, hugging your knees to your chest as you sit facing him.

“Yeah, I figured,” he chuckles, smiling shyly at you. “I was scared you’d never want to see me again.”

You look at him with wide eyes, mildly offended, and punch his arm. “How could you think that?!”

“Well, you did sort of run away from me last night,” he says, lightly punching your arm in return.

You tut in defeat. “I did, didn’t I?” 

“Yeah. I’m just glad you didn’t walk past me straight into your house just now.”

You chuckle and rest your head on top of your knees. “That would’ve been a bit much, even for me.”

Sunghoon lets out a puff of air through his nose in response, and then the two of you sit in silence. You’re contemplating what to do next when your friend pulls you from your thoughts. “Should we, um…” He shuts his eyes tightly in reflection for a second before opening them again and looking straight at you. “Should we just pretend like last night didn’t happen? Would that make you feel more comfortable?”

His words take you aback and your eyes widen a bit; you hadn’t even thought pretending nothing happened last night was an option, because you didn’t think you’d ever be able to actually get it out of your head. Even now, if you stare at Sunghoon for too long, your gaze will naturally drift downwards or you’ll get a flashback of his large hands around your waist. But apparently, if he can offer to pretend like the previous night wasn’t a thing, then it must not have been such a huge deal to him. You quickly try to hide your disappointment and nod at your friend. “Right. Yeah. Sure.”

Silence makes its way between you two again. It makes the late afternoon breeze a bit chillier and the physical distance between you and Sunghoon feel much bigger than it actually is. Wanting it to go away quickly, you ask, “Do you wanna watch a movie, then?”

Sunghoon’s never looked so relieved about watching a movie, and he immediately accepts your offer. You get some popcorn ready while he searches for a movie to watch. He clicks on a horror movie that looks like it’s got a cliché storyline and awful acting, but you’re happy for any sort of distraction when Sunghoon is sitting so close to you.

You and Sunghoon always sit close-by when you watch something together, knees and shoulders brushing against each other. Tonight isn’t any different, except that your skin burns everywhere it touches his. You can smell the faint scent of chlorine in his hair, and it’s so intoxicating you want to bury your face there and breathe it in.

You’re thirty minutes into the movie and still nothing’s happened when Sunghoon puts his arm around you, letting his hand hang over your shoulder. The sudden warm contact makes you take a sharp intake of breath as memories of the previous night come flooding once again. You don’t know what you were expecting, but Sunghoon simply rests his hand there and doesn’t do anything more for another thirty minutes, except for squeezing your shoulder when there’s a small jumpscare, making you chuckle at him. This isn’t much more than what you’re used to with him, but knowing your friend, he must be thinking the ball is in your court. So you scooch a bit closer into his side and rest your head on his shoulder, the scent of his skin even stronger now that your nose is so close to his neck. You feel his chest raise and relax as he sighs deeply and tightens his hold around your shoulders. His small reactions to you spur you on and you decide to wrap an arm around his waist and you feel him flinch oh-so-slightly at your touch in such a sensitive spot. He starts to rub circles into your shoulder and rests his head on top of yours, and your whole body relaxes into his. This is so much more than what you’re used to with him; and yet, you so readily melt under his touch.

You can barely focus on the movie because of how close Sunghoon is. When a particularly scary ghost jumps on the screen, you flinch and hide your face in his neck, and he giggles at your reaction, hand coming up to stroke your hair comfortingly. It only takes you a few seconds to realize what position you’re in, and you release a shaky breath as you slowly lift your head towards Sunghoon, only to find him already looking at you, seemingly having had that same realization. When his eyes drift down to your lips, you know you’re done for.

You call out his name, and he’s already answered ‘Yes?’ before you’ve had time to finish uttering the second syllable. “I don’t think I want to pretend last night never happened,” you admit, holding his waist a bit tighter.

“Good. Me neither,” he breathes out before leaning down and trapping your lips in his, the kiss releasing all your pent-up frustration of the day. The world seems to melt away with his lips on yours, the movie already long forgotten. Sunghoon pulls you into his lap and you slide your palms up from his waist, against his chest and to his shoulders before wrapping your arms around his neck, bringing your body closer to his. His hands are sitting on your hips, fingers lightly pressing into them and your lower back. Now that you both seem to know what you want, it’s so easy, just falling into this kiss.

His tongue darts out to lick your bottom lip and you gladly open your mouth for him, letting his tongue explore it. You haven’t kissed someone like this in ages, maybe ever, but Sunghoon takes the lead and effortlessly gets you to follow his rhythm. When a flick of his tongue against yours feels particularly nice, you arch your back and press your chest into his, making him smirk into the kiss. This time, when he brings your hips down onto his, letting you feel his erection against your clothed core, the feeling doesn’t make you want to run away; instead, you want to feel it again and again.

You fall into a nice pace of rubbing yourself against him, eliciting hushed moans and loud breaths from the both of you. You can’t concentrate on kissing him and grinding down on him at the same time, so you drop your head down to bury your face in his neck, leaving a few pecks there but mostly moaning against his skin, enjoying how your hot breaths make him shiver.

You can’t keep a whine from escaping your lips when he bucks his hip into yours and his tip brushes directly against your covered clit, instantly bringing a hand up to your mouth. “Fuck, Y/N,” he breathes. “I know we gotta keep quiet ‘cause of your parents but the sounds you’re making are so fucking pretty. I wanna hear them over and over again.” His words make you whimper against his neck and you feel your slick starting to pool in your panties.

“H-hoon. This feels so good,” you moan, breathing warmly against the shell of his ear.

“I know, right? Feels so good,” he chuckles, hands grabbing at your ass to bring you harder down onto him. His actions are about to elicit another moan from you when, all of a sudden, a loud jumpscare in the movie makes you jump away from the boy underneath you and yelp in fear, which in turn makes him scream in surprise. You look at each other, panting and eyes open wide, hands clutching at your hearts, until you burst into laughter. The fun moment is short-lived, however, as your mom rushes down the stairs not ten seconds later, frantically asking if everything is alright. 

You sit up straight at the sight of your mother and clear your throat. You’re thankful for the dark of the room which hides your and Sunghoon’s swollen lips and flushed faces from her view. “Sorry, mom, we were just watching a scary movie. We’re fine.” She sleepily nods and walks back up the stairs, and when she’s back in her room, Sunghoon and you exchange a look and erupt into another fit of smaller, quieter giggles. 

That night, after Sunghoon’s gone home, the both of you get yourselves off in your own beds, the strong memory of each other’s lips and hands bringing you both to your releases. Without even realizing it, you moan out Sunghoon’s name as your orgasm hits. The window from your room doesn’t face his; but still, your heart is beating so loudly that you’re afraid the sound might carry from your open window to his. You get up and close it.

--

Now that you and Sunghoon both know you want to kiss each other, you do it everywhere: in his pool, his back pressed against the wall; on the sunchairs when you were supposed to be drying off; on your beds in the middle of the night, none of your parents or siblings suspicious of anything; in front of your house, because even though he was supposed to just walk you home, he couldn’t keep himself from tasting you one last time; in the backseat of his car after an evening with your friends and he drove you two home.

You spend a good two weeks of just kissing before your body starts to crave something more. At some point, Sunghoon’s hands resting nicely on your waist or sometimes, if he’s feeling bold, grabbing at your ass, start to not be enough anymore. You knew you wouldn’t be satisfied with just kisses and sweet touches when one day, his hands slowly but surely slid up your naked belly before grabbing onto your bikini-clad breast, lighting your whole body up on fire. He’d slipped his hand underneath your swimming top and rolled your nipple between two fingers and you had felt his dick twitch under your core when you let out a loud moan at the new yet so pleasurable feeling.

You know what it is that you want, but it makes you feel dirty. Your fingers have made you finish a hundred times before, but wanting Sunghoon to make you feel that way is a whole other story. Is that even what he wants? Would he be weirded out if you asked him about it? Is there even the sliver of a chance that maybe, just maybe, he has those same thoughts about you, and wants you to make him feel good as much as he wants to make you feel good?

If his grunts and the way he ruts into you when your make-out sessions get particularly steamy are any indication, then the answer to those questions would respectively be yes, no, and yes. 

You’re lying on a sunbed one afternoon, letting the sun dry off your wet skin from the pool, when you finally muster the courage to tell Sunghoon about your wishes. After all, he is your best friend, and you know you can talk to him about anything. Even when that ‘anything’ involves his fingers inside of you and his dick in your mouth.

“Sunghoon?” you call out, turning your head to look at your best friend. He’s bathing in the sunlight without a care in the world. His skin has tanned a bit since summer started three weeks ago and his muscles are even more defined after all that swimming and working out he’s been doing. You want to reach out a hand, to feel the taut skin of his abs and chest under your palms, and to maybe then slide your hand down until you feel his hard-on underneath his swimming trunks. Your chairs aren’t far apart and you could do it from where you are, but you’d rather ask him first.

“Yeah?” he answers without turning towards you.

You take a deep breath in before you start talking again. “You know how you said it could be good for us to get… experience before going to college… And how we’ve been kissing these past couple weeks…”

“Yeah, I know,” he chuckles.

“Well… people do more than just kissing, right?” you ask, voice slightly shaky. This seems to pique his interest as he turns to look at you.

“Yeah?” 

You hope you’re not just imagining the enthusiastic tone in his voice. “I think… I think we should try that too, don’t you think?” you ask, eyes not leaving his as he sits up on his chair and turns his knees towards you, fully facing you now.

“Yeah, I agree. I completely agree.” He stares at you for a few moments as if in disbelief. “Do you want to- Should we- Let’s go up to my room, yeah?” he offers, standing up and reaching his hand out to you. You gladly take it.

You and Sunghoon are a giggling mess as you practically run up the stairs, unable to get to his room quick enough. As soon as the door is closed behind you, you wrap your arms around each other, your lips finding his immediately as he walks you back to his bed. When you feel the back of your knees hit it, you detach yourself from him and lay on it, elbows holding you up as you look up at him expectantly.

“Fuck,” he whispers, leaning in to hover over you. He traps your lips in a short but sweet kiss before pulling back and murmuring against your lips, “Have I ever told you how pretty you are, Y/N?”

You beam at his words but decide to tease anyway. “You always go on and on about how pretty you are, but never about me.”

He giggles and pecks your lips again. “Well, I’m telling you now. You’re gorgeous.” You kiss him to hide your flustered face, pulling him so close to you he’s practically laying on top of you. Your hands are a bit more curious than usual, your kisses hungrier, the both of you anticipating what’s to come. 

You grind against each other, the feeling of his erection against your barely covered core enough to send your mind into a frenzy. You forget everything around you when you feel Sunghoon pull back in the slightest, far enough so that he can look at your face and gauge your reactions but not too much that you still feel his hot breath on your lips. One of his hands is holding the back of your head as the other travels downwards, stopping for a second on your breast to massage it lightly before continuing its journey. It ever-so-slightly brushes against your core, making you buck your hips up into his touch, but his hand is already gone leaving you whining and pouting and him chuckling at your cute reaction. “You want it that bad, huh?” he teases.

You scoff, not wanting to let your friend know the effect he has on you. You press your palm against his clothed erection and he hisses at the unexpected contact. “So do you, Hoon.”

When he presses his lips to yours again, you both smile into the kiss. You cup his jaw and tangle your fingers through his hair, and his hand slips from under your head and joins his other hand on your thigh, grabbing at both of them, fingers slightly digging in your skin. He’s so, so close to where you want him most, and he seems to have noticed your growing impatience by the way you squirm underneath him. Seeing you so needy for him only makes him needier for you; he has more experience than you, so you probably expect him to take the lead, but the truth is, he has no idea what the fuck he’s doing.

“Y/N?” he murmurs, face buried in your neck as he leaves a trail of wet kisses there.

“Yeah?”

“What do you want me to do?”

The question takes you a bit by surprise. You pull away to look at your friend. His eyes are completely glossed-over, and yours are probably the same. “Oh. I don’t know. I just… want you to touch me, I guess,” you say, voice a bit quiet.

“I don’t know how to do that,” he admits sheepishly. He kisses your neck and cheeks before pecking your lips. “Could you- could you show me? How you do it? And I can show you how I do it?”

You take a second to take his words in. Was he suggesting that you touch yourself in front of him, and that he do the same?

This was like a dream come true.

“Yeah, sure.”

Sunghoon giggles in response, and you can’t help but crack a smile too, even though the idea of getting yourself off in front of your friend, no matter how appealing, is still a bit nerve-wracking. “You first,” he says, a mischievous glint in his eyes, and you roll your eyes at him.

You sit back against the headboard of the bed and slip a hand underneath your swim bottom, the other hand coming up to cover your eyes in an attempt to escape Sunghoon’s heavy, lustful gaze. “None of that. I wanna see you,” he says, pulling your hand away from your eyes and resting it on a pillow next to you. “And if you keep these on, I won’t be able to see anything,” he says, looking down at your bikini top.

Before you can protest, he comes to sit on his knees in front of you, kissing your neck and letting his hands roam your back. “I wanna see all of you.” It’s so easy, untying your string bikini, he almost thinks you wore it on purpose for him to take it off. You avoid his gaze as he takes your top off of you, leaving you half-naked in front of him. “So pretty,” he whispers, and you can’t help but look at him, slick pooling between your legs from the fascination he’s looking at your breasts with. He trails kisses down your neck until he reaches them, taking a nipple in his mouth and swirling his tongue around it, then looks up to see your reaction. You never knew your nipples were this sensitive, and you can’t help but arch your back at his touch and moan loudly, hand flying up to tug at his soft hair. He releases your nipple with a pop and moves sideways to pay the same attention to the other one, but Sunghoon is impatient and doesn’t waste too much time on it; he knows he can come back to your boobs later anyway. Right now, you’ve got a hand between your legs, and that’s what he’s dying to see.

“Can I take this off, too?” he asks, looking up at you as his fingers hook on the sides of your swimming bottoms, waiting for you to nod. His eyes don’t leave your glistening core as he pulls the thin fabric down your legs, discarding it somewhere on the floor of his room. He lays on his belly and kisses the inside of your knee as he holds your thighs in his large hands, still transfixed by your pussy when he says, “Show me how you do it, please.”

You both take a sharp breath in when you start moving two fingers in gentle circles over your clit, already wet from making out with Sunghoon. Your fingers are nimble and know exactly what to do after years of doing this, but the pulse in your core is even stronger now that your best friend is watching your movements this intently. He looks like he’s scared to blink in case he might miss something. You can’t take your eyes off of his face; you’ve never seen him so fascinated by something, so eager to learn. It makes you want to put on a show for him.

A surge of confidence hits you out of nowhere as you slide your digits down your folds, gathering some slick before sliding them back up to your clit and rubbing it a bit faster, a bit harder, your moans growing louder and higher in pitch. With your free hand, you tug at the base of Sunghoon’s hair and make him look up at you. You release his hair and bring your pointer finger up to your mouth, sucking on it and swirling your tongue around it, and Sunghoon’s mind is taken back to that day a couple weeks ago when you had sucked on those lollipops. Oh, how things have changed since then. Not that he’s complaining. “Fuck, that’s hot,” he breathes out, eyes zeroed in on your lips and mouth slightly agape.

You smirk at his reaction, stomach on fire with the feeling of having this kind of power on him. When you’ve wet your finger enough, you bring it down to your slit, circling around your hole before entering it, releasing a loud moan for good measure. Sunghoon is mesmerized by the quickening with which your finger slips in and out of you, the fingers on your clit never relenting. He doesn’t even realize he’s released one of your thighs to palm himself over his shorts until you notice it yourself and tut in disapproval.

“Come and help me, Hoon,” you say, and the boy snaps out of his daze at the sound of his nickname. He nods slowly, changing his position so that he’s laying between your legs, head dangerously close to your core. You slip your other finger out of your hole and he takes that as a sign to replace it with his own. One hand still gripping your thigh, he imitates your previous actions as he gets his pointer finger wet with his saliva before pressing it between your folds, right underneath your clit where your fingers are still rubbing circles, sliding it down towards your slit, and finally pushing it in. 

“So warm… So wet, too,” he whispers in wonder, making you cover your eyes with your forearm out of shyness.

“Oh my God,” you moan, arching your back and letting your head drop to the side on the pillow. Sunghoon’s finger is much thicker and longer than your own, and it stretches you out and hits a deep spot inside you you never could, no matter how much you tried.

“Like this?” he asks, eyes curious as they bounce back and forth between your face and your entrance sucking his finger in.

“Yes, yes, just like that, you can also- oh- you can also curve it upwards a bit- fuck, yeah, just like that, Hoon, you’re doing so well,” you say, the praises just flying out of your mouth. 

This seems to instill some confidence in him, as he cocks an eyebrow at you and speeds up his actions. “Yeah? My finger making you feel good, Y/N?”

“Oh, shut up,” you bite back, but immediately let out a long whine when he easily inserts a second finger in your soaking pussy. He curves them inside you just like you told him to, and the feeling of his fingers filling you up and your own quick ones on your clit are creating a familiar knot in your stomach that is so close to breaking. That is, until Sunghoon pulls your wrist away from your clit.

“Y/N… Can I?” he asks, and you’re not sure what he’s planning, but nod anyway. He wastes no time before pressing his tongue flat down on the sensitive bud, and you actually feel like your soul might leave your body. Fingers knuckle-deep inside you, he licks and sucks at your clit, and the warmth of his tongue against your folds is what makes you tumble over the edge, tightly gripping his hair and bucking your hips into his mouth.

“Oh my God… Oh my God, Hoon, please, don’t stop, please,” you beg, voice getting higher and whinier as you cum all over his tongue. He continues eating you out until it gets too much and you have to tell him to stop. He hikes his body up yours, pecking you sweetly on the lips when he reaches them.

“Your turn,” you announce and hook your legs over his hips to straddle him. You’re about to lean in for a kiss when you notice how lovingly he’s looking at you: his eyes are soft and a small smile is playing on his lips. It takes you aback, but you’d be lying if you said butterflies didn’t spread in your stomach. “W-why are you looking at me like that?”

His grin gets a bit wider. “Did I make you feel good?”

“Y-yeah…,” you admit, averting your gaze from him.

“I’m glad. You taste good, by the way. Sweet.” You want to kiss the devilish smirk off of his face.

You scoff at your friend, glaring a bit. “Whatever. Sit up,” you order, but it just makes him smirk more.

“Yes, ma’am.”

You look up at him to check for confirmation, and when he nods, you hook your fingers under his swimming trunks, taking them off of him along with his boxers underneath. His already fully-hard cock springs free and slaps against his stomach, and you curse yourself for your reaction that will surely just inflate his ego, as if it wasn’t already massive. Your mouth hangs open, eyes zeroing in on his length, flushed red from lack of attention and what you can only guess is precum leaking at the tip. It's straight from a porno.

“Like what you see?” Sunghoon teases, making you look up at him, and you can only stupidly nod. You take the position he was in earlier, laying your head on his thigh and caressing the other, letting it ride up to rub his inner thigh and the tiniest bit over his cock, making his smirk vanish as he takes a shaky breath in.

“Show me how you do it,” you say, echoing his words from earlier. He gulps, finally realizing that he was going to have to masturbate in front of your curious eyes just as you had. He spits on his open palm and spreads the precum over his length with his thumb, lubing himself up before gripping the base and starting to move his hand up and down. You watch as his head falls back against the pillow when his palm grazes over his tip and his movements pick up some speed.

You rub his palms over his thighs, itching to get closer to his cock and make him feel as good as he had done to you earlier. Tentatively, you reach out to grab his balls in your hands, massaging them softly, feeling satisfied when a loud moan leaves his throat. “Oh, f-fuck, that feels good, Y/N,” he breathes out, voice much higher than you’re used to. If he thought that felt good, then nothing could’ve prepared him for the feeling of your soft and warm tongue kitty-licking his balls, then taking turns sucking each one into your mouth and releasing them with a pop. “Where the fuck did you learn how to do that?” he asks, involuntarily bucking his hips into your face.

You can’t help but giggle, and Sunghoon thinks he might come from the sweet sound contrasted with your lewd actions alone. “I read a lot of fanfiction,” you explain, and he doesn’t question it. If Wattpad taught you how to suck dick, then so be it.

You wrap your hand around his and tell him to keep going so you can get an idea of what pace and movements he likes, and you graze your fingernails over his abs and chest with your other hand, chuckling at how sensitive he is when you lightly pinch his nipples. Sunghoon takes his hand off of himself, laying both of his hands palms up next to him on the bed, so you decide to literally take things into your own hands. Trying to recreate what he did before, you spit into your palm and wrap your fingers around his tip, bringing your hand down in a swirly motion to the base of his shaft. You do that a few times, asking, “Like that?” to get confirmation from Sunghoon.

“Just like that, baby,” he says, not even taking notice of the pet name; but you do, and your face immediately flushes, surprised at how much you like it.

“Baby?” you repeat, but he’s too lost in his pleasure and just hums in response. His reaction eggs you on, and you lick a long stripe from his base to his tip, swirling your tongue around it and humming at the bitter but not unpleasant taste of precum there. When another moan escapes his throat, you take his tip in your mouth, at first just shallowly thrusting your head, but then trying to take more and more of him. 

You’re so focused on what you’re doing that you don’t even realize how quickly he’s panting and how his grunts start to get whinier until he’s moaning out your name. “A-ah, Y/N, feels so good, ‘m gonna cum, fuck-”

He goes silent as he shoots his release down your throat, eyebrows deeply furrowed and mouth open wide in pleasure. There’s so much of it and you can’t swallow it all, so you pull your head back, catching your breath, and a hot string of cum hits your chin and your throat. Sunghoon takes a look at you and the sight of you with some of his cum makes his dick twitch before he plops back down on the bed. You giggle as you take tissues from the bedside table (cause of course he’s got tissues next to his bed) and wipe away his seed, then lie down next to him, brushing away the hair that’s sticking to his forehead with sweat and peppering his face with soft kisses.

He opens his eyes and smiles, turning his head to look at you before engulfing you in a bear hug, sweaty bodies sticking together but neither of you minding it. “That was so good, Y/N. What the fuck,” he sighs, pecking your forehead.

You hum, nuzzling your nose into his neck. “I know, right? Who knew you could use your mouth for other things than saying stupid shit,” you tease.

He pulls back and gives you a look that tries to be stern, but you know he’s joking. “Do I need to remind you again, young lady?”

You giggle and peck his lips, forcing him out of character as his dimples appear on his cheeks. “Later, definitely.”

And after that day, he makes sure to remind you time and time again of how good his mouth feels on you. You should’ve seen it coming with how amazing of a kisser he was; but truly, there was nothing like cumming on your friend’s tongue.

--

You’re relieved to find that not much has changed, after all; you and Sunghoon still play around in the pool, watch stupid movies and hang out with your friends like always. Sure, there are stray hands here and there, or looks that last a little too long and mean a little too much, but if anything, it just makes your friendship more playful and exciting. 

You’re both open with what you like and don’t like, so it doesn’t take either of you to figure out exactly how to make the other come undone embarrassingly quickly. (The shortest amount of time it took him was 2:38 seconds - yes, he timed it - and he hasn’t let you live it down since.) You like it when he presses his large hand down onto your lower tummy while he eats you out, or when he sits you between his legs and whispers all sorts of things as his fingers work their magic inside you and on your clit. He likes it when you get down on your knees in front of him and look up at him as you suck him dry, or when you sit in his lap and kiss his neck and play with his hair while he plays video games. And don’t even get him started on when you palmed him over his sweatpants while you watched a movie with Chaeyong, Jay and Jake, making sure that the movements under the blanket went unnoticed by them. He wanted to punish you after they left, he really did, but you took him in your mouth right there in the living room and gave him an orgasm that had his thighs shaking for five minutes afterwards. You were pretty proud of yourself for that one. 

You also find out that he hates it when you tease and edge him, which only makes you do it more; the only problem is that, if you do that, he’ll make you ride his thigh and won’t help you at all. His proud smirk and snide praises combined with the feeling of his thick thigh underneath your core were more than enough to get you to your end, though.

And truly, nothing has changed, especially not Sunghoon’s special talent in pushing boys away from you.

“What do you mean, Lee Heeseung is coming back?” he heatedly asks, slamming his glass of lemonade down on the outdoor table so hard you’re scared it might break.

“It’s the summer, of course he’s coming back. He just stayed behind for a bit to enjoy a few weeks of the city without college, and now he’s coming back here,” Jake explains, shrugging.

“Do you know when he’ll be here?” you ask, far too much excitement in your voice to Sunghoon’s taste.

“Just in a couple days.”

Sunghoon has smoke coming out of his ears when he sees how much you perk up at the news of your old crush being back in town for summer. He likes the boy, but he hates that you like him. And since Heeseung is friends with Jay, Jake, and by association Sunghoon, begrudgingly so, he’ll definitely see lots of him in the upcoming months. And if Sunghoon sees Heeseung, then you’ll see Heeseung, too. And that, Sunghoon doesn’t like.

You notice something is off with him that afternoon because of how uncharacteristically quiet he is. Sunghoon, ever the loud introvert, is always arguing for no reason and laughing louder than everybody around him. So when he merely chuckles at his friends’ numerous displays of stupidity in the pool and doesn’t even say anything in protest to you getting on Jake’s shoulders to play against Chaeyoung and Jay, you know something is definitely up. You also have a good idea of what that something might be, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t find it endearing.

You stay behind when your friends leave in the early evening. Without a word, you and Sunghoon pack away the inflatable toys in the pool cabin and clean up the table, putting the dirty glasses in the sink. You do the dishes while he prepares sandwiches for the two of you, which he insisted on doing after he heard your stomach grumbling. You watch the latest Kurtis Conner video as you eat and can’t help but notice that he doesn’t even chuckle at any of the jokes or skits when he’d usually be clutching his stomach in laughter. 

When you’re done eating, you take a resolute breath and pause the video, but Sunghoon doesn’t even notice, only snapping out of his daze when you call out his name.

“Huh?” When his eyes find you, he almost looks surprised to see you, as if he’d forgotten you were there.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” you ask, slightly frowning. “You look so out of it today.”

“Huh? I’m fine, nothing’s wrong,” he says dismissively and presses play, but you quickly pause the video again.

“I’m your best friend, Sunghoon, I know when something’s the matter and I know when you’re lying. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but don’t pretend everything’s fine when we both know that’s not true.”

He peers at you for a moment, cursing you for knowing him so well. He crosses his arm and averts his gaze, pouting like an angry child. “I hate it when you’re right.”

You giggle and make your way around the counter to him, standing inbetween his legs and wrapping your arms around his neck to make him look up at you. His hands come naturally up to your waist. “I just…” he starts, then immediately stops himself with a sigh., “You’ve always had a crush on Heeseung. But these are our last couple months together, and I don’t want somebody else taking up your attention…”

He buries his face between your breasts to hide his blush, and you can’t help but giggle again. “Stop laughing at me!” he protests, but the muffled sound of his voice just makes you laugh more. You stroke his hair and press a gentle kiss at the top of his head.

“Sure, I’m happy Heeseung’s coming back. But there’s no one I’d rather spend my summer with than you, Sunghoon, you should know that.” He leans back to look up at you with puppy eyes and a small pout. You cup his face, admiring how cute he looks like this, and smile softly down at him.

“Really?”

“Really,” you answer, and he leans in for a kiss.

It’s a soft one. It’s a patient kiss, neither of you urging to get somewhere else, to do something more. It reminds you of that kiss in his room a few weeks ago, when you were still curious and discovering each other. From then on, your kisses had become more feverish, more eager, more playful. But now, you’re taking your time. For now at least, neither of you is going anywhere. So your lips melt together slowly, and when you take breaks to breathe, you look each other in the eyes and smile before leaning back in.

It’s when you sigh against his lips, eyes still closed as you pull away, that it hits him. I could do this forever, he thinks.

I could sit here with my arms around her waist and her lips against mine and the smell of chlorine and the sound of her laugh forever and I’d never get tired of it, he thinks, but immediately afterwards, he realizes he won’t get to do this forever. Summer will end, you’ll both head off to college, and you’ll only get to see each other every few months until another summer comes. And who knows what might happen until then?

You might meet someone and realize Sunghoon isn’t all that; hell, he might meet someone, but he highly doubts anyone could even come close to the way you make him feel.

“Hello? Earth to Sunghoon?” you quietly joke, looking down at him with an affectionate look in your eyes. You press the pads of your fingers to his two moles before replacing your fingers with your lips, giving each one a quick peck. “You were up on the moon for a minute there.”

Sunghoon hums softly, smiling as he lets himself melt under your touch. “Sorry. It’s just really hot, isn’t it?” he says, a stupid excuse he uses as a blanket to cover his feelings. There is some sweat beading at his hairline, which helps make his lie more believable, but you don’t need to know it’s not just because of the summer heat.

Slowly, your smile turns mischievous, and Sunghoon can tell you have an idea in mind. “It is pretty hot… Wait here.”

He watches as you fill a tall glass with ice from the dispenser in the fridge and pop an ice cube in your mouth, a devilish smile on your face, and laughs when that smile is replaced with a frown as the coldness hits you and you spit it back into the glass, laughing along with him. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks between giggles.

“I got the idea a few days ago when we were having popsicles…,” you say looking down at the glass between your hands, slightly embarrassed. “You kissed me and your mouth was really cold but it felt nice.” Sunghoon hums, egging you to go on. You lift the glass up to his cheeks, applying just a bit of pressure to the soft skin. “I thought this could be refreshing.” 

You take the ice cube back in your mouth, sucking on it but not letting it melt completely before pressing your lips against Sunghoon’s and opening your mouth just a bit so he could feel the cold of the ice cube. You feel his smile into the kiss as the ice cube swirls between your tongues, sending shivers down your spine. 

“Very refreshing indeed,” he murmurs when the ice has completely melted. He gets up and takes the glass in one of his hands, leaning down to your level and says “C’mon” with the same mischievous smile as you on his face.

You two hurry up the stairs, and when you get to his room, he hands you the glass before throwing himself on his back, laying on his back with his hands behind his head. “Show me what you had in mind.”

You straddle his hips and take an ice cube from the glass, rubbing it over his lips before pushing it inside his mouth, the cold making him hiss. You quickly counteract that by pressing your lips to his, the contrast of your warm tongue and the freezing ice turning him on more than he would’ve thought.

When the ice has melted, you take another piece and brush it along his jaw, down his Adam’s apple and around his nipples. The cold temperature makes him squirm but he doesn’t shy away from it, even closing his eyes to focus solely on the feeling. While you play with the ice cube, you also leave warm kisses all over his skin, reveling in its slightly salty taste from the thin layer of sweat. You let the ice cube melt between his abs and watch him wriggle as he sucks in a sharp breath, then grab another one, starting off where the previous one stopped. You circle his navel while your fingers play with the hem of his swimming trunks. He pulls them down himself and you chuckle at his eagerness. “I should’ve known you liked the cold, with all those years of ice skating you did,” you tease.  

He’s almost fully hard, and it only takes a few kisses and trailing the ice cube down his inner thighs to have his dick fully erect. He’d only been letting out small sighs and hisses until now, but when you grab another ice cube and circle it around his sensitive tip, he throws his head back into the pillows and moans loudly. You push your luck and drag the ice cube down his shaft, his thighs snapping together when it reaches his balls. You put it in your mouth and let it melt so that your tongue is still cold when you swirl it around his tip, already tasting precum there. But before you can take him further in your mouth, he calls out your name.

“Wait. I don’t wanna cum just yet. My turn.”

He shakes his shoulders in excitement as you switch positions, you taking your t-shirt and bikini top off and laying on your back and him sitting down with one knee on each side of your thighs, an ice cube in his hand and a giddy smile on his face.

He brushes it over your lips before pushing it just a bit into your mouth, holding onto it with two fingers while you suck on it, gazes locked in each other. Just as you did earlier, he trails it down your throat and your chest until they reach your nipples, marveling at the thin wet trail it leaves in its wake. He licks this trail as he circles one of your nipples with the ice cube, and you don’t know if you should focus on his warm tongue or on the cold ice cube. Once it’s melted, he takes another one and circles your other nipple with it, his mouth coming to wrap around the now cold one. Your hands fly up to grab at his hair, your back arching into his touch as you moan and pant loudly.

He sucks and licks at your nipples until you’re calling out his name, begging for more. As nice as his mouth or an ice cube around your nipples feel, your pussy is throbbing and desperate for attention. “Sunghoon… Please,” you whine.

“Please what?” he teases, looking up from your breasts with a smirk.

You whine again, knowing he knows full well what you want. “Please…”

He trails the ice cube down your stomach, circling your navel a few times where it melts before slipping two cold fingers underneath your bikini bottoms. “Is this what you want, baby?,” he asks as he rubs his fingers between his folds, and you whine at the feeling of having him so close to your hole and to your clit but not quite there either. He smirks when you nod frantically but whine at the loss of his fingers against you as he takes your bottoms off and reaches for another ice cube.

You release a loud moan and arch your back off the bed when the ice cube touches your clit. “Fuck, Hoon!”

He rubs the ice cube up and down your folds, your heat melting it much faster than your skin. He takes another one and brings it to your entrance this time, circling around it before pushing the ice cube in and staring with wonder as it melts quickly. He holds your hips down so you stop bucking them up, whimpering at the amazing feeling of the ice against you. He replaces the ice cube with his fingers inside of you and his tongue on your clit, sucking expertly at the sensitive bud and lapping at your juices. And while it feels good - God, does it feel good - and you let Sunghoon know just how nice it feels with your moans, whispers of his names and the way you hold onto his hair, you’re craving something more.

It’s something you’ve been wanting for the past few days, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it. No matter how nice Sunghoon’s fingers and mouth felt, they didn’t make you feel close to him enough. You wanted to be so close to him you didn’t know where you ended and where he started; you wanted to feel him. 

You pull him up by the face, asking him to come here and getting lost in his lips as soon as they reach your level. God, Sunghoon’s kisses. You could drown in them. But still, that craving, that need for more. And now that his body is pressed up against yours and you can feel his erection against your thigh, so close to your core, you think you know what it is that you want. “Hmm, please…”

“You keep asking me for something, but you don’t tell me what it is.”

“You. I want you, Hoon, please,” you beg, murmuring against his lips as you wrap your legs around his hips and bring him even closer, his cock now pressing against your cunt.

“M-me?,” he asks, leaning back just a bit, but you pull him back in right away, resting his forehead against yours.

“Yes, please. I need to feel you inside me.”

Your words are enough to get a moan out of Sunghoon. “Fuck, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this,” he pants, planting kisses all over your face and neck. Usually, you’d giggle at the ticklish sensation, but right now, you’re so drunk on pleasure, it just makes your breath even shallower and your core wetter.

“How long?”

“God. Since the second time we kissed probably,” he replies, reaching for a condom in the drawer of his bedside table. You think back to that moment six weeks ago (how has it been six weeks already?, you think), after you and Sunghoon had made up and made out on his couch in front of a horror movie. He’d wanted you for that long? And he’d waited for you to say something since then?

“Today’s your lucky day, then,” you tease in an attempt to alleviate the need for him that takes over your bones, but his gaze when he looks back at you ruins any effort. If anything, it just makes you need him even more. You feel like you might explode if you don’t have him right now.

You watch as he clumsily wraps the condom around his member, clearly never having done this before, but you wouldn’t be of any help, so you let him figure it out on his own. You let your head fall back as he rubs his tip up and down your folds, gathering your slick on his dick before aligning himself at your entrance and giving you a long, deep kiss.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks, forehead on yours.

“Yeah. Are you?”

“Yeah, I am. But I’m also scared.”

“Scared of what, Hoon?” you ask, opening your eyes to look at him. You caress his cheek and cup his face in your hands, watching softly as he lets his head rest on your palm.

“I’m scared of hurting you. I heard it hurts the first time. And I’m scared…” he closes his eyes and frowns a bit. “I’m scared it’ll feel too good. That I’ll always want it. You.”

You take a small moment to think, your thumb brushing over his cheek in what you hope is a comforting manner. “You won’t hurt me, Hoon. It only hurts if you’re not ready… And I’m plenty ready. I know you’ll take it slow.” You smile softly when he nods, turning his head to kiss your palm. But if sex is as good as you’ve heard it is, you’re also scared that it might be the best thing you’ve ever experienced and that you’ll never get enough. You and Sunghoon have been meeting up almost everyday this summer and it has more often than not ended up with one of you between the other’s legs; you could never get bored of the things he made you feel or of knowing you were making him feel those exact same things. If you couldn’t live without his fingers, how could you live without his dick?

How could you live without him?

You tried to snap out of those thoughts, reassuring yourself that even before all of this you couldn’t imagine yourself living without Sunghoon, and that there was no reason this should change anything. “And don’t be scared of that, silly,” you say, making him smile. “I’ll always be here, Sunghoon. I’ll always want you, too.” 

“Fuck, okay,” he whispers, kissing your lips once before pulling himself up on his palms, hovering over you. “Tell me if you need me to stop, yeah?” he asks and waits for you to nod before finally pushing in.

You instantly moan when you feel his tip inside you, and Sunghoon stops, frantically asking if you’re okay. It takes some convincing to get him to push himself further in. “It feels so good, Hoon. Please keep going.”

You tell him to not stop until he’s fully inside you, and he obeys, even though he wants to stop when he sees your frown and your sharp intakes of breath. When he’s buried to a hilt, he can’t help but collapse on top of you, burying his face in your neck and wrapping his arms tightly around your waist. “Y/N,” he drawls out. “Feels so fucking good. So tight,” he murmurs against your neck.

“Mmh. Give me a minute, baby.” Your hands caress up and down the expanse of his back and you feel him relax on top of you. As you adjust around his length, the stretch starts to feel more and more pleasurable, until pleasure is the only thing you feel. “Hoon?”

“Yeah?” he says, kissing and nibbling softly at your neck and earlobe.

“You can move, now.”

Sunghoon doesn’t need to be told twice and ever-so-slowly slides out of you, leaving only the tip in before he slides back in. His thrusts are slow but deep, and it’s everything you’ve ever wanted and more. He’s barely started but you’re both already whimpering messes, holding onto each other tightly as pleasure like neither of you has felt before takes over your entire bodies.

As you both get more comfortable, his pace picks up just a tiny bit and you tentatively raise your legs higher so that they’re hooked around the back of his knees instead of laying on the bed. The new angle only adds to the intense pleasure, but you don’t even realize you’re crying until Sunghoon stops mid-thrust, wiping your tears with his thumb and worryingly asking if you’re okay and if it hurts and if he should stop. You open your eyes and smile, instantly calming his nerves. You bring his head closer to yours and kiss him like you’d stop breathing if you didn’t. “It feels so fucking good, Hoon. So, so good.”

He sighs out of relief and resumes his actions, heart swelling with pride that he’s making you feel so good, you’re crying. He’s always hated seeing you cry or hurt in general; but knowing what kind of tears these are, he thinks you look so pretty with tears streaming down your face. His hands grip your thighs a bit tighter as he quickens his pace, already addicted to the feeling of your warm walls taking him in so well.

He slips out a few times but you’re always quick to guide him back inside you. He lifts his body up a bit to get a deeper angle, hoping it’ll get him to stop slipping out, and he’s blown away by the sight underneath him. He thinks you’ve never looked so gorgeous as you do now, legs spread wide for him, cheeks flushed, brows furrowed and mouth agape for him. He kisses your tears, the salty taste bringing a smile to his lips. “So perfect,” he whispers against your mouth. “You look so beautiful.”

Sunghoon takes your legs and wraps them higher around his hips, the new angle hitting a spot inside you that’s making you see stars and has you moaning his name like it’s the only thing you know how to say. You feel that familiar tension build up inside your stomach much faster and much stronger than it usually does.

“Fuck, Sunghoon, I’m gonna cum,” you warn, and a harsher thrust inside you is what pushes you over the edge, the sensation crashing into you and making your thighs shake. An orgasm has never hit you this hard before.

You’re clenching around him like crazy and Sunghoon gasps as you milk him dry, his own orgasm hitting him all at once. He shoots his release inside the condom and stills inside you, breath completely taken away by the sudden, overwhelming sensation.

He lays on top of you for a moment as you both catch your breaths, trying to make sense of how something can feel this good without killing you instantly. He apologizes when his pulling out makes you wince and kisses the top of your head. He rolls onto his back, pulling you with him so that you’re now almost lying on top of him, head against his chest as his arms wrap themselves around you. You leave kisses all over his chest and neck and his hands caress your back.

“That was amazing.”

“I know, right?” he responds immediately, his enthusiasm making you laugh.

“Thanks, Hoon,” you say timidly, voice muffled against his skin.

“For what?”

“For making me feel this good.”

He chuckles. “No need to thank me, pretty. If anything, I should thank you for letting me make you feel good, and on top of that making me feel good.”

You hum at his words and you both stay there for a bit longer, enjoying each other’s warmth. Something blooms inside your chest, and you don’t know whether to let it grow or to squash it down. It feels nice, almost too nice, and you’re scared it might get ripped away from you and it won’t feel so nice then.

Friendship, sex, love. In those weeks spent with Sunghoon, those previously clear lines have blurred to a point they were all one big messy ball of feelings and not three distinct things you could tell apart. Has sex turned your friendship with Sunghoon into something romantic? Or is that just an illusion, and being so intimate with your best friend has messed up your once platonic vision of him? But was your vision of him ever platonic?

Haven't the two of you always been teased about liking each other for a reason? After all, you and Sunghoon didn't grow up together, and he’s never felt like a brother to you. He has always been your male friend; you’ve always been aware that he was your friend who was also a boy. When you'd moved in the house next to his, you hadn’t instantly clicked; it took a while for the ice skating prodigy to warm up to you, but his parents had warmly welcomed yours into the neighborhood and quickly became friends, so it was only a matter of time before he’d open up to the idea of you being around. Constantly.

You’d walk to and from school together, do homework together, go on family trips together, cheer each other on at your respective competitions. After his ice skating lessons, when his coach let him have the whole place to himself for a bit more practice, he’d tie your ice skates for you and drag you onto the ice rink, holding you by the waist or shoulders as he skated backwards in front of you, but also laughing at you when you inevitably fell. He’d tease you for getting second place at the science fair or for getting your arguments torn apart during Model United Nations, but the way he’d be a little nicer to you or share his food more often that week wouldn’t escape you.

Being a handsome young ice skater, Sunghoon had developed quite the loyal following of boys and girls alike who would come to see him at his competitions. He thrived off of the attention, but no matter how much he enjoyed his fans’ admiration, you were always the one he’d skate to after having won first place, hugging you tightly over the barrier separating the ice from the bleachers. Especially during your younger teen years, Sunghoon wasn’t one for skinship or PDA, so it always meant that much more to you that even after his most important wins, you were the first thing on his mind. It never failed to make your stomach flip, and all the death stares from his fans in the world couldn’t have changed a thing.

You were already close, but you became practically inseparable after Sunghoon’s injury. During the competition that would have gotten him a place at the Youth Winter Olympics had he won, his nerves got the best of him and he didn’t land his triple axel, hurting his ankle in the process. Ten years of dedication and hard work, ruined in mere seconds. To say that it destroyed him would be an understatement.

You were the one to bring him back up. You listened to him when he needed to vent, held him when he needed a shoulder to cry on, cheered him up when he needed to smile. He didn’t even need to tell you what he needed, you seemed to just know. You reminded him that he had a lot more value than his medals and trophies and that he didn’t need them to be complete. His family and friends tried their best to make him feel better, but their words never reached him quite like yours did.

Slowly but surely, his confidence came back. He’d lost his fans, but he’d gained a friend he knew would always be there for him. His dimples would appear more often, his laugh would resonate louder. His injury had made the two of you grow closer, creating a bond that would only strengthen over time.

And yet there were moments when being friends wasn’t enough. When calling him your best friend didn’t feel right. You had other friends, friends you were close to; sure, maybe not as close as to Sunghoon, but close nonetheless. And you didn’t feel that way around them.

Their laugh didn’t make your heart skip a beat. You didn’t want to bury your face in their necks and breathe in their scent when they hugged you. You didn’t want to know every single detail of their day. And you surely didn’t feel a pang of jealousy in your chest when they danced with another girl at your school ball.

You also didn’t crave their lips on yours every single day since it had happened for the first time and didn’t want to see what they sounded or looked like while getting the life sucked out of them through their dick.

Everybody told you it was obvious you were ‘more than friends.’ Why did romantic love have to be ‘more’ than platonic love? Why were there levels to it? You didn’t like the idea of taking your relationship with Sunghoon ‘one step further’; that wasn’t the way it felt to you. Rather, it felt like having to change everything you knew and create something new. Something where you could see him laugh and tell him about your day, but where you could also kiss him and graze his skin with your fingertips. Something that only you could share with him and only he could share with you. But you were afraid the friendship would fall apart if things didn't work out. So, instead of taking the risk of changing everything, you made sure things would stay the same. You’d tell the butterflies raging in your stomach to settle down and you wouldn’t let yourself fall into his touch in case it’d be like falling from the highest mountain.

That is, until he kissed you. Until this moment, right now, lying in his arms, ear right over his heart so you can hear it beat for you. You look up at him. His eyes are closed and a soft smile rests on his lips. He looks so peaceful. He always looks pleased when you’ve just been together, but right now, he seems to be in such a serene state, it almost makes you laugh.

Now that you’ve given in to your feelings, you’ve realized just how strong they were this whole time. Nothing has ever felt better than being in Sunghoon’s arms, than being able to see him at his most vulnerable state and to give all of you to him. All those things you didn’t know about him just six weeks ago, you know them by heart now. You’re sure there’s other things to find out, and you’ll make sure you will.

But summer won’t last forever.

A wave of sadness slaps you right in the face, bringing you back to reality. There’ll come a time where you and Sunghoon won’t be able to lounge around all day or lazily make-out at your will. You’ll go your own ways and not see each other for months at a time. The thought of that is unbearable, and you feel like looking at Sunghoon for a second longer might rip your heart into a million pieces.

When you sit up, tearing yourself away from his grip, he immediately opens his eyes, asking what’s wrong.

“Just need to go to the bathroom. I heard you can get STIs from not peeing after sex,” you half-lie. He nods and falls back into the bed. 

You rush to the toilet, needing to get far away from Sunghoon as quickly as possible. Even your pee smells different - guess that’s what having a dick inside you will do to you. You wash your hands and look in the mirror: your skin is darker in some spots, surely Sunghoon’s work. So not only did he mess with your thoughts, he also had to make your body all weird, too?

You splash your face with cold water, hoping it will bring you back to your senses. You and Sunghoon have been best friends for years. There’s no point in changing all of that now, is there? You’ll be leaving soon enough, anyway. Why ruin a perfectly fine friendship for a summer fling?

Those are your thoughts as you head back to Sunghoon’s bedroom, ready to tell him that this whole thing was a mistake and you should just pretend it never happened. But your resolve crumbles at your feet as soon as you step inside the room.

Sunghoon’s got a couple of snacks ready as he browses through Netflix in search of an appropriate movie. “How about Twilight?” he says when he feels the bed dip under your weight next to him. He kisses your forehead and pulls you down on the bed with him so that you’re lying back against his chest.

Screw it, you think. Whatever this is, it’s much more than a summer fling.

--

The rest of the summer goes by in a flash. No, you don’t try to make Sunghoon jealous by flirting with Heeseung; if the mention of the latter’s name was enough to get your friend mad, then purposefully twirling your hair or batting your eyelashes at the older boy just might make Sunghoon white-boy-punch a hole into a wall. And it’s not like Heeseung would try coming onto you, either, with how clingy Sunghoon gets when he’s around, always an arm around your waist and a glare that could kill Heeseung.

Sunghoon gradually opens up to Heeseung being around, even though it takes you reminding him almost daily that he’s the one whose arms you wanna end up in over anybody’s. After a couple weeks, Sunghoon stops looking like he's on the brink of starting a fight every time Heeseung so much as talks to you or hands you a glass of lemonade, and finally relaxes around him.

You spend countless sleepless nights with Sunghoon. You’ve probably memorized every single one of his moles by now, and you’ve made sure to kiss all of them. He holds you against him like he might lose you at any given moment. The only nights you don’t fall asleep in each other’s embrace are when either one of you is sleeping over at your friend’s house. On those nights, sleep always takes hours before washing over you, the lack of warmth keeping you awake.

Your friends and you spend entire days at the lake or by Sunghoon’s pool, not a care in the world. You rest your head on Sunghoon’s shoulder as you watch the fireworks Jake and Jay bought go off. Sunghoon grills your marshmallows for you, blowing on them so they cool down before handing you the stick. You try to ignore how the night air gets slightly chillier and how the sun sets slightly earlier, but by the last days of August, it becomes too noticeable. When September rolls around, you’re sure there’s a small crack in your heart.

You know Sunghoon feels the end of summer too. His kisses are deeper and his lips linger over yours a second longer. He frowns when he kisses you and hugs you, like he’s trying to remember what it feels like. His usual playful demeanor when you’re in bed together is gone, instead seemingly hellbent on making you feel good and almost begging you to say his name. As if you could say any other name. As if you could say anything else.

Neither of you mention your departure until the night before you leave. After spending the evening with your friends, you lie together in bed, the side of your face resting against his chest so you can feel his heart against your ear. He’s tracing patterns with his fingertips on your back, and it takes you a while to figure out he’s spelling his name over and over again, as if to etch it in your skin. When, once in a while, he takes his hand off of you to reach for his phone, you can still feel his fingers caressing you, ghostlike against your skin.

The air around you feels heavy, pressing the both of you down into the mattress. You wish the bed would eat you alive so you could stay there, warm against each other, as long as you like. You know you can’t leave without talking first, but the words won’t come to you. Instead, they float around the bed, weighing your heart down into your stomach.

“So,” you start. You're unsure what to say, but you know this conversation has to happen, one way or another. In the end, you settle on, “Excited to leave?”

Sunghoon scoffs lightly, his motions on your back coming to a stop. “Not really, no. It’s not like I’m leaving that far, and half of our school is going to our uni.”

“Maybe, but there’ll be tons of other people. Tons of other girls, too,” you add after a short pause.

“Don’t do this, Y/N, please.”

You sit up at his words. He covers his eyes with his forearm and takes a deep breath in, sensing an incoming argument. “Do what?”

“This. Getting mad at me when I haven’t done anything.”

“I’m not mad at you,” you protest, frowning down at him.

“No? Then what’s this?” he says, smoothing down the lines between your eyebrows and on your forehead with the pad of a finger.

“Whatever.” You nudge your head away from his touch. It burns. “It’s not like I’m wrong, anyway. You’re gonna have a bunch of girls at your feet, and you’ll know what to do with them, right? Now that you’re not a virgin?” you question, avoiding his gaze.

“Y/N…” he sighs, shutting his eyes tighter as if in pain.

“What? This was the whole reason why, right? Get experience with me so you could fuck girls better, no?”

“Y/N!” he says, raising his voice enough to let you know he’s upset but not enough to scare you. He sits up, looking at you with hurt and disbelief in his eyes. “What’s this all of a sudden? It’s not like I forced you into this! We agreed on it together!”

“So you agree? That this summer was just about getting experience and now you’ll use it on other girls and pretend like we,” you gesture between the two of you, “never happened?”

“What do you mean ‘agree’? I never said any of this! Don’t put words into my mouth!”

He watches as you get up from the bed, arms crossed and pacing his room. He calls out to you a few times, but you don’t stop to look at him until he speaks your name with a sternness you’ve never heard before from him. “What?” you snap.

“I don’t get why you’re acting like this out of nowhere! We both knew summer was gonna end at some point, and why we were doing this! Why are you blaming me now?”

“Because… because…” you sigh, scrambling for an excuse. Why were you doing this? The thought of Sunghoon doing what he did to you to another girl, making her feel as good as he had made you feel, kissing her like he had kissed you, made you sick. It made you see red, it made you want to make him wear a shirt with your face on it so everybody knew he was yours.

Sunghoon gets up and stands close in front of you, too close. You close your eyes. If you see his moles, you might reach out to touch them and let yourself fall even more. If you fall, you’ll need to get up, but his scent makes your knees weak.

His hands find your face, holding a little too gently, you think. Your small ones wrap around his wrists and grip them, a little too harshly, he thinks. 

You take a step back and finally look into his eyes. There’s hope in them; hope you’ll say what he wants, what he needs to hear. That you want him like he wants you. That you wish summer wasn’t over. That you’ll keep him in your heart until you can see him again. So, when what you say next is none of the above, he feels his heart sink down to his feet, leaving a murky puddle there.

“I can’t do this.”

You rush out of the room, practically running home. You fight your tears back until you slam your bedroom behind you, pathetically sinking to the ground as you let out a loud sob. You don't have the energy to get up, and cry into your hoodie's sleeve right there on the floor.

When you’ve calmed down a bit, you get up and lay in your bed, hiding your whole body underneath the covers. Maybe this is for the best, you think. If you end it like this, you won’t have the knowledge of whether he’ll wait to have you back or he’ll move on like nothing happened. That way, you can do whatever you want, not caring about what he’s up to. 

But even now, your hands subconsciously reach out towards a person that’s not there and your feet hang over the edge of your bed as though to get up and run to him anytime. You curl in on yourself to stop your body from aching for him. It doesn’t work very well.

Sunghoon stays where you left him for a few minutes, too stunned to move. Should he run after you? Should he let you cool off for a bit and talk to you in the morning? Would you be mad at him if he didn’t try to see you now or would the mere sight of him just make you angrier? He plops down on his bed as these questions run through his mind, butting into each other and making everything more confusing. 

He thinks back on everything that led to this, and his mind settles on that day a few days after graduation where his thoughts had dropped to the lowest pits of hell. If only you hadn’t brought those two damned lollipops.

--

The next morning, Sunghoon wakes up as if somebody had slapped him awake. He doesn’t bother to brush his teeth or eat anything before running over to your house, almost forgetting to put shoes on. He finds you in your room, packing the last of your things into an already full suitcase. He stands at your door, panting as his hands rest on his knees.

“You haven’t left yet. Thank God.”

“God, Hoon. It’s not that far between your house and mine. How are you so out of breath,” you say, glancing at him from the corner of your eye.

He walks to you and kneels in front of you, taking you in his arms before you can say anything. “Talk to me, please. Don’t leave like this. I’d never forgive myself if you left and you were mad at me, Y/N.”

You thought you’d cried so much last night that there was not a single drop of water left in your body, but you thought wrong. Your eyes immediately well up at his words, and he leans back when he hears a soft sniffle escaping you. Only then does he notice how puffy your eyes from all your crying.

“No, no… Have you been crying? I’m so sorry, pretty, please don’t cry,” he pouts, pulling you back into his embrace. It hasn’t even been half a day, but you missed his warmth so much, it only makes you cry harder.

After sobbing against his chest, possibly staining his shirt in the process, you pull away and in your light-headed, dehydrated state, spill your heart out. “It’s so stupid,” you sob. “We’re not gonna see each other for months and I’m gonna miss you so much and I don’t want you to be with other girls. I want you all to myself and I don’t want to be your friend that you fucked for a summer just so you could get experience, it was a stupid idea in the first place, if you wanted to kiss me, you should’ve just kissed me. But you didn’t just kiss me and now I’m scared that this all meant nothing to you but everything to me and that I don’t want to be friends anymore but you do and I’m mad that it took me all summer to say this even though I’ve known it for years but I didn’t want to admit it to myself but also you didn’t say anything and I’m mad about that too. Because there’s no way you don’t feel like I do but maybe you actually don’t and-”

Whatever you were about to say dies out against Sunghoon’s lips as he presses his lips to yours, interrupting your rambling. He pulls away, looking at you with a huge, stupid grin. He’s so stupid, you think. I love him so much.

“Fucking hell, Y/N. I’ve been waiting for you to say this so bad, you have no idea.”

You punch his chest, frowning at him. Those stupid tears won’t stop. Everything is so stupid. “Then why didn’t you say it first?”

“Because I didn’t know how to. You know I’m bad with words. And I was scared it’d make things weird.”

“I don’t want things to be weird,” you pout.

“I don’t want things to be weird, either. I want things to be nice and happy.”

You giggle. “That’s so stupid.”

“Right? It’s so stupid,” he repeats, kissing you again.

“Your breath smells,” you complain when he pulls away.

“And you have tears on your lips. Tastes salty,” he teases.

“Yeah, thanks to who?”

“Sorry.” He smiles and kisses you again. He holds you against him for a while, enjoying this last moment together. As long as he can see a smile on your face before you leave, he’ll be fine.

“I’m gonna miss you so much too, Y/N. And forget about those non-existent girls. There’s no one I’d rather be with than you.”

“How do you know? You haven’t met any of them yet,” you say, voice muffled against his t-shirt.

“I’ve met other girls before. None of them compare to you,” he says, and you immediately gag at how cliché it sounds. “What?! It’s true,” he giggles.

“You’re not gonna go and date a random guy, are you?”

“Of course not. None of them compare to you,” you say, lowering your voice to imitate his.

He helps you finish packing, and when you’re done, you lay together on your bed, not saying much because not much needs to be said. Your parents struggle to tear you away from each other and from your bed when it’s time to leave. He helps your dad put your baggage in the trunk of his car, telling you to not lift a finger so you watch him go to and from the car, leaving a kiss on your forehead every time he walks past you. You notice with a smile that he doesn’t carry much at once, making him have to go back-and-forth quite often.

After saying goodbye to your family, your dad waits in the car as you and Sunghoon hang back awkwardly, kicking small pebbles on the pavement. He takes your hand in his, making you look up at him, then takes the other hand, then hugs you close to him.

“I’m gonna miss you,” you say, as if that wasn’t obvious. You’re trying hard to fight tears from falling again, but it’s like there’s an ocean behind your eyes, water somehow never running out. 

“I already miss you,” he says, and that’s enough to get you to sob again, which makes him start crying too. You’re crying, he’s crying, your mom is crying from the porch as she watches the two of you, it’s a mess.

You force yourself away from him, cupping his face in your hands. “We’ll see each other soon, okay? And college will be fun. You won’t even have time to miss me. But make time to think about me, yeah? And text me.”

“I will. I’ll think about you all the time, I already do,” he says.

“Okay,” you whisper and hug him one last time, very briefly, pressing a kiss to his cheek. You’re about to walk away but he doesn’t let go of your hand and pulls on your arm to bring you back to him.

Pressing his forehead against yours, he whispers, “I love you,” and you sob.

“I love you, too.”

This time, when you walk away, he lets you go. He watches as you get into the passenger’s seat and as the car drives away, as it takes you away from him. You watch him stand there in the rearview mirror, until his silhouette becomes smaller, and smaller, and smaller, until you can’t see him at all anymore.

--

Summer went and fall came as they do every year. Dead leaves are falling but it’s a new start for you. It’s a new town and you don’t know anybody, but you click instantly with your roommate and make new friends throughout your first week there. You realize everybody’s in the same boat, and they’re all eager to meet people and are curious about college life. You love your classes but complain about them nonetheless. You eat more ramen than you’d like to admit and turn up hungover at a 9 am class on a Thursday. You pull all-nighters at the library and develop a caffeine dependency. You’re a college student.

You and Sunghoon were very dramatic when you left, you soon realize. You call almost everyday. He’s not there with you and you miss him but at least you don’t have to pretend you’re not stupidly in love with him anymore. Because it’s stupid, being in love, it really is. You wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Your first semester passes by almost too quickly, and before you know it, you’re on the drive home, already one eighth of the way through university. You’re excited to go home, but Sunghoon’s finals last a week longer so you wait around for him. When you complain about it, Chaeyoung tells you to get a grip. “You haven’t seen him in three months, I’m sure you can handle another week.”

And you can, but barely. You were about to explode but then he’s back and you’re in his arms and his hair is still so soft, his scent is still so comforting and his moles are still there. You kiss them both before you finally press your lips to his, and it makes you feel so alive, you could die right then and there.

You lie on his bed and talk for hours as if you didn’t keep in touch the whole time and it’s like you never left. It’s like summer never ended and you’ve just been lying in his bed the whole time, college just one big fever dream. 

But his skin doesn’t smell like chlorine anymore, and he’s not in his swimming trunks. It’s fall, almost winter, and you’re kissing Park Sunghoon. You realize you can kiss him whatever the season and you find comfort in that. It was a big day (you cried a lot when you saw him) and you’re tired so you think you’ll kiss for a bit and that’ll be all but then he whispers “I missed you so much” against your neck and a fire lights inside your stomach. Oh, how it burns. You think it might consume you whole, but you don’t dislike that idea.

In a flash, you’re on top of him, his shirt is off, your shirt is off, but it’s not enough so you take your pants off too and Sunghoon is confused as to why you’re going so fast, but follows you anyway. “What’s going on?” he asks when you’re done with the taking off of your clothes and have moved on to kissing and biting at his neck like it’s your first meal in ages, because it is.

“I missed you too,” you simply answer, and he smirks as he nods slowly, now understanding your eagerness.

“Missed me that much, huh?” he teases, letting his head fall back against the pillow so you have better access to his neck.

“Shut up. Kiss me,” you order, and he doesn’t need to be told twice. Your kisses are ravenous and desperate, very fitting for two horny people in love who haven’t seen each other in months. But the pulse in your core makes you too impatient to stay anywhere for too long, and really, it’s not your fault if you’re grinding down onto Sunghoon’s clothed erection, it’s just that he smells too good and you missed him too much.

Sunghoon laughs at you for being so impatient to hide just how impatient he is. His giggles keep him from moaning loudly enough to wake the whole house, and you laugh as you tell him to stop laughing.

“I’m serious. I missed you so much. Need you so bad,” you say as you get rid of your underwear and quickly do the same for his. He gasps when he feels you take his dick in your hand and brush its tip between your folds, both out of pleasure and out of surprise.

“Shouldn’t I get you ready? Stretch you out a bit?” he asks, his hands roaming up and down your back as he sits up on the bed so that you’re straddling his lap, and you shake your head no. You’re probably already embarrassingly wet from your short makeout session, anyway.

“I don’t care if it hurts,” you say, lining his tip with your entrance. “Need to feel you.”

You sink down on his cock, the both of you releasing loud moans at the long-awaited feeling. He lets you adjust to his size for a minute, but as soon as you move your hips just a bit, signaling to him that you’re ready for more, it’s over for you. He wanted to be patient and take his time, he really did, but you feel so warm around him and your small whimpers are so pretty that his resolve of letting you take the lead is thrown out the window. He pounds into you at a rapid pace that has you biting his shoulder to keep yourself from screaming.

You had imagined your first time back with Sunghoon so many times before. It usually involved a nice playlist in the background, fairy lights and candles lighting the room, hours of foreplay and sensual lovemaking, with a nice bath afterwards. Sometimes, when you were particularly needy for him, you imagined something closer to what was actually happening, where you’d rip each other’s clothes as soon as you got to the bedroom and fucked like animals (a bit much, admittedly, but you really missed him).

What you definitely hadn’t expected, however, was that you’d both cum in less than five minutes. What could you do, though, when he was hitting your g-spot over and over again, his length stretching you perfectly as he whispered in your ear how much he’d missed you and how good you felt? And what could he do when you took him in so well, clinging onto him as you told him how much you’d missed him and how good he felt?

You finish at the same time, hole clenching around him and milking him dry. He doesn’t pull out for a while, letting you collapse onto him as you both catch your breaths, just like you had that first time. “That was a bit quick,” he pants, and you can’t help but laugh. 

You pull back to look at his face. It’s so pretty and stupid. What a stupid face that you love so much. Do you love it because it’s stupid or is it stupid because you love it? You think that that’s a stupid question, and you kiss the mole on his nose, then the mole on his cheek, right next to his nose.

“We have all night to go slower.”

“We have all Christmas break,” he corrects.

We have the rest of our lives, you think, and you think that might be a bit much, but you say it anyway. Sunghoon hums and says, “yes, we do,” and you think maybe it’s not all that stupid.

Maybe it’s the greatest thing that’s ever been.

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[ktempestbradford]

I have been on a Willy Wonkified journey today and I need y'all to come with me

It started so innocently. Scrolling Google News I come across this article on Ars Technica:

At first glance I thought what happened was parents saw AI-generated images of an event their kids were at and became concerned, then realized it was fake. The reality? Oh so much better.

On Saturday, event organizers shut down a Glasgow-based "Willy's Chocolate Experience" after customers complained that the unofficial Wonka-inspired event, which took place in a sparsely decorated venue, did not match the lush AI-generated images listed on its official website.... According to Sky News, police were called to the event, and "advice was given."

Thing is, the people who paid to go were obviously not expecting exactly this:

But I can see how they'd be a bit pissed upon arriving to this:

It gets worse.

"Tempest, how could it possibly--"

source of this video that also includes this charming description:

Made up a villain called The Unknown — 'an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls'

There is already a meme.

Oh yes, the Wish.com Oompa Loompa:

Who has already done an interview!

As bad (and hilarious) as this all is, I got curious about the company that put on this event. Did they somehow overreach? Did the actors they hired back out at the last minute? (Or after they saw the script...) Oddly enough, it doesn't seem so!

Given what I found when poking around I'm legit surprised there was an event at all. Cuz this outfit seems to be 100% a scam.

The website for this specific event is here and it has many AI generated images on it, as stated. I don't think anyone who bought tickets looked very closely at these images, otherwise they might have been concerned about how much Catgacating their children would be exposed to.

Yes, Catgacating. You know, CATgacating!

I personally don't think anyone should serve exarserdray flavored lollipops in public spaces given how many people are allergic to it. And the sweet teats might not have been age appropriate.

Though the Twilight Tunnel looks pretty cool:

I'm not sure that Dim Tight Twdrding is safe. I've also been warned that Vivue Sounds are in that weird frequency range that makes you poop your pants upon hearing them.

Yes, Virginia, these folks used an AI image generator for everything on the website and used Chat GPT for some of the text! From the FAQ:

Q: I cannot go on the available days. Will you have more dates in the future? A: Should there be capacity when you arrive, then you will be able to enter without any problems. In the event that this is not the case, we may ask you to wait a bit.

Fear not, for this question is asked again a few lines down and the answer makes more sense.

Curious about the events company behind this disaster, I took myself over to the homepage of House of Illuminati and I was not disappointed.

I would 100% trust these people to plan my wedding.

This abomination of a website is a badly edited WordPress blog filled with AI art and just enough blog posts to make the casual viewer think that it's a legit business for about 0.0004 seconds.

Their attention to detail is stunning, from how they left up the default first post every WP blog gets to how they didn't bother changing the name on several images, thus revealing where they came from. Like this one:

With the lovely and compact filename "DALL·E-2024-01-30-09.50.54-Imagine-a-scene-where-fantasy-and-reality-merge-seamlessly.-In-the-foreground-a-grand-interactive-gala-is-taking-place-filled-with-elegant-guests-i.png"

"Concept.png" came from the same AI generator that gets text almost, but not quiiiiiite right:

There are a suspicious number of .webp images in the uploads, which makes me think they either stole them from other sites where AI "art" was uploaded or they didn't want to pay for the hi-res versions of some and just grabbed the preview image.

The real fun came when I noticed this filename: Before-and-After-Eventologists-Transformation-Edgbaston-Cricket-Ground-1024x1024-1.jpg and decided to do a Google image search. Friends, you will be shocked to hear that the image in question, found on this post touting how they can transform a boring warehouse into a fun event space, was stolen from this actual event planner.

Even better, this weirdly grainy image?

From a post that claims to be about the preparations for a "Willy Wonka" experience (we'll get to this in a minute), is not only NOT an actual image of anyone preparing anything for Illuminati's event, it is stolen from a YouTube thumbnail that's been chopped to remove the name of the company that actually made this. Here's the video.

If you actually read the blog posts they're all copypasta or some AI generated crap. To the point where this seems like not a real business at all. There's very specific business information at the bottom, but nothing else seems real.

As I said, I'm kinda surprised they put on an event at all. This has, "And then they ran off with all our money!" written all over it. I'm perplexed.

And also wondering when the copyright lawyers are gonna start calling, because...

This post explicitly says they're putting together a "Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory Experience" complete with golden tickets.

Somewhere along the line someone must have wised up, because the actual event was called "Willys Chocolate Experience" (note the lack of apostrophe) and the script they handed to the actors about 10 minutes before they were supposed to "perform" was about a "Willy McDuff" and his chocolate factory.

As I was going through this madness with friends in a chat, one pointed out that it took very little prompting to get the free Chat GPT to spit out an event description and such very similar to all this while avoiding copyrighted phrases. But he couldn't figure out where the McDuff came from since it wasn't the type of thing GPT would usually spit out...

Until he altered the prompt to include it would be happening in Glasgow, Scotland.

You cannot make this stuff up.

But truly, honestly, I do not even understand why they didn't take the money and run. Clearly this was all set up to be a scam. A lazy, AI generated scam.

Everything from the website to the event images to the copy to the "script" to the names of things was either stolen or AI generated (aka stolen). Hell, I'd be looking for some poor Japanese visitor wandering the streets of Glasgow, confused, after being jacked for his mascot costume.

HE LIVES IN THE WALLS, Y'ALL.

[fireinmoonshot]

death wish love | tyler owens x fem!reader

Pairing: Tyler Owens x Fem!Reader Summary: As members of rival storm chasing groups, you and Tyler Owens have hated each other since the start – well, you were supposed to. Little do you know, Tyler has been head over heels for you for months, and it's only when he nearly loses you that he realises he's done with pretending to hate you. Warnings: Descriptions of injuries, mentions of blood, tornadoes (of course), Tyler is actually painfully obvious with his crush but thinks he's not at all. Word Count: 6.7k (I don't know how that happened) A/N: I had this idea for a fic a few days ago and when I was listening to the Twisters soundtrack as I wrote, I realised that the song Death Wish Love fits it perfectly. I did not intend for this to be so long, but it somehow just happened. It's probably one of the longest things I've written on this blog, so I hope anyone that reads it really enjoys it. I had so much fun writing it and playing around in the Twisters universe! I will definitely be writing more for Tyler.

One of these days, Tyler Owens was going to get his shit together and ask you out. There were, however, several things in the way. The most pressing being the fact that your storm chasing groups were rivals and had been for years.

The fact that you hated his guts would be the second. 

He was unaware that you didn’t hate him quite as much as you made out to, though. It was just that you had a reputation to uphold. Being the unofficial leader of The Thunder Team, your friends and fellow storm chasers all expected you to dislike the Tornado Wranglers just as much as they did.

And you had – in the start. 

You were just beginning your PhD, fairly fresh in the world of storm chasing and the rivalry between your teams had been there from the very beginning. To your team, the Tornado Wranglers were nothing more than a bunch of stupid kids who didn’t even have the correct knowledge to be chasing these tornadoes.

To you, they had slowly become something of a wonder. You didn’t think it was necessary to have a PhD or education under your belt in order to storm chase. As long as you loved it, that was enough. And you never doubted the love that the Tornado Wranglers had for it. 

But still, the rivalry continued. It was always a competition. Who could get to the tornado first? Who could get closer? Who had better instincts when it came to choosing which one to chase? Who could get more attention on social media with their photos and videos?

The Tornado Wranglers had an advantage on that one.

That never stopped your team trying, though. Which is exactly what they’re doing as you walk towards them from where you’ve just parked your car. They’re all crowded around the van in the motel parking lot. Robbie, one of your closest friends, is filming Ally talking about something, probably regarding the EF1 tornado you’d chased today. 

You stop far enough away that you aren’t going to end up in the background of the video, and that’s when Tyler Owens sidles up beside you, arms crossed over his chest.

“Not interested in going viral?”

You glance up at him and notice he’s already looking at you with a cocky grin on his irritatingly handsome face. “No, figured I’d leave that to you and your team. Shoot any fireworks up a tornado today? I didn’t see you out there.”

“I didn’t realise you were looking.” 

There’s something strange in his tone of voice, but when you look at him again, there’s nothing in his face to give away the reason. 

“I wasn’t,” you huff. “It’s just that I see your giant red truck everywhere when I’m trying to get good photos of the tornadoes and it’s quite obvious when you’re not there.” 

Tyler smiles to himself. “Why don’t you come chasing with us one day, then? My truck won’t end up in your photos if you’re taking photos from inside it.”

You laugh. “That is the last thing I would want to do.” A lie. You’ve thought about it several times in the past.

“Sure, sure. You keep telling yourself that and one day you might actually believe it.”

You narrow your eyes at him but make no move to walk away from him. Your team are still filming and you’d rather stay away until they’re finished, even if it means standing with Tyler Owens until they are. 

“You guys gonna stop by the rodeo tomorrow night?” Tyler breaks the silence. 

You shrug your shoulders. “Depends on how tomorrow goes. You?”

He nods. “Yeah, we probably will, even if tomorrow doesn’t go to plan. You know my team. We love a night out.”

The weather tomorrow was predicted to be a good one for storm chasers – thunderstorms with heavy rain and likely a tornado as well, if the conditions were good enough. You were all hoping that they were. 

“My guys are less likely to go if they know your team is going, you know?” You look at Tyler, noticing the way that he’s watching your team, who are now laughing at something that Ally had said for the video. “We are still rivals.” 

“Did you think I needed a reminder?” He chuckles.

“Why? Am I being too nice to you?”

Tyler grins, one of those ones that makes you feel a little funny in your stomach. Like butterflies – but you don’t get butterflies from people you dislike. 

“Oh, darlin', you’re always a delight.”

You roll your eyes. “Want me to get you a shovel so you can start digging yourself a hole?” 

He holds up his hands in mock surrender and laughs. “Sorry, sorry,” he grins. “You wanna grab one for yourself so you can help me? I’d love the company.”

You open your mouth to reply about how much you’d love to help just as you catch Robbie’s eye. He’s quick to call out your name, beckoning you over, and you have no choice but to listen to him and leave Tyler. You’ve already stood here talking to him long enough and the last thing you want is your team thinking that you’re colluding with the Tornado Wranglers. 

“Gotta go,” you nod your head towards your group. “Good luck tomorrow.”

Tyler bids you good luck as well and watches as you head over towards your group, all of them eyeing him as you reach them. He tips his hat at Robbie, who is watching him with judging eyes, and turns on his heel, heading back to his own team to get a well needed beer.

—

When Tyler gets back to his team, he realises that they were all watching him. They all give him questioning looks as he grabs a beer out of the cooler. 

“What? I got something on my face?”

“Yeah, it sure is written all over your face,” Boone says.

Tyler frowns. “What is?”

“Oh, don’t try and lie to us, Ty,” Dani adds.

He shakes his head and takes a seat on one of the fold up chairs beside his truck. He’s smart enough to see what they’re getting at – the way he’d been there talking with you for so long. His friends are smart too. But hopefully not smart enough to see through the facade Tyler puts up to try and convince them that he still dislikes you. 

“Her, Ty? Really? She’s from the Thunder Team.” Boone stares Tyler down.

Tyler has no choice. “Okay, no,” he sighs and takes a long swig of his beer. “We were just talking, and I was just messing around with her.” He was also trying to get the courage to ask you to the rodeo, just the two of you, but he’d chickened out at the last second. “She definitely still hates us, judging by her reaction.”

Truth is, Tyler Owens has been harbouring a secret crush on you for the better part of a year now. It had snuck up on him. He’d hated you at first, thought you were just another stuck up storm chasing student, especially when he found out you were studying for your PhD. But after spending so much time around you, something had changed and all of a sudden, you had a hold over him that you didn’t even realise you had. 

It drives Tyler insane. 

The way he feels when he looks at you is definitely not the way he should be feeling about anyone, letalone the leader of a rival storm chasing team. But here he is. 

The passion he’d seen in your eyes when you’d been chasing storms. The way you talked about them in your captions on social media when you posted photos you’d taken. Even the way you made time to learn more about them through school while being on the road so often.

He was well aware that he was supposed to hate you. And yet, he couldn’t find it in himself to do it anymore.

“You sure that’s all it was?” 

“A hundred percent, Boone.”

He’s thankful when the conversation moves away from you and the Thunder Team. It lets him sit in his own thoughts for a few minutes until he’ll undoubtedly be brought back into the conversation for one reason or another. 

He’s unable to stop his eyes from drifting over to you and your team. You’ve taken a seat on the back of a truck, watching safely from behind the camera as Robbie films Ally again. He tries hard not to smile at the look on your face as you watch your friends, laughing along with the others. The last thing he needs right now is for one of his team to catch him grinning at you like an idiot, especially after convincing them that there’s nothing going on.  

He realises, then, that he’s already in way too deep.

—

The last thing you expect when you wake up the next morning is to find out that your team made a bet with the Tornado Wranglers when you had gone to bed. 

It’d been raining for most of the night, the ground covered in mud and puddles. The sky was dark and you could just feel that the conditions were perfect for a tornado. You had a good feeling that today would be the day.

Until you learnt about the bet.

“I knew I shouldn’t have left you guys alone.”

Robbie laughs, nearly choking on the piece of bacon he’d been eating. You’ve all come to a nearby diner to fuel up on both food and gas for your cars before what was supposed to be a long day of storm chasing. You have a feeling that it won’t be now that the bet exists.

“Okay, technically it was their fault,” Ally offers.

“Explain.”

“So, we’d had a few drinks, and they had clearly also been drinking, and Harry and I were heading over to the bathrooms to clean up before going to bed – because dental hygiene is important!” Ally begins, forgetting all about her half eaten plate of food. “We were almost there when they called out to us – I forget their names. The blond guy and the one with the mustache, the cute one. Anyway, they suggested a bet. Whoever could hold their liquor the best gets to choose which direction the other team chases in today.”

You stare at Ally. “And you said yes.”

She winces, and then shovels a fork full of eggs into her mouth, nodding so she doesn’t have to give you a proper answer. 

Your team is usually quite well behaved. But even the best of people could get taken advantage of, and you’ve seen it many times first hand with the Tornado Wranglers.  They can hold their liquor very well and wake up the next day with very little consequences from doing so. You’re honestly surprised Ally is even functioning. Harry, on the other hand, you haven’t seen all morning. Unsurprisingly, your team had obviously lost.

“Which direction are we going, then?”

“That’s the catch,” Robbie interjects. “They choose for us before we go. They get to look at the radar first and decide which way is going to be best. And naturally, they’re going to send us in the direction far away from the best chance.” 

You groan and let your head fall into your hands, beginning to ponder your options. You can either deal with the bet and get sent in the entirely wrong direction, or…

Without a second thought, you’re pushing yourself up from the table and heading towards the door of the diner.

“Where are you going!?” Robbie calls after you.

“I’m going to fix this mess!” 

—

Tyler greets you with a smile that is way too cheerful for both the time of the morning that it is and the situation.

“To what do I owe the pleasure on this fine morning, darlin'?” He asks, leaning up against his truck. He’s holding a coffee in one hand. Good to know he’s human. You’re not surprised that he doesn’t look hungover at all. The man practically resembles a God. 

“Wouldn’t call it a pleasure, honey,” you sigh, deciding to use a nickname just like he always uses for you. You cross your arms over your chest as you stop in front of him. “This bet you made with my team last night. I want it called off.”

Tyler’s breath catches in his throat at the sound of the word honey coming out of your mouth, directed at him. He clears his throat, trying to ignore the way it feels to hear you calling him that. “No can do, I’m afraid. We Tornado Wranglers don’t back down on bets.” 

You narrow your eyes at him. “I’m asking nicely.”

“I think you can ask a little nicer. Maybe throw a please in there,” he says. “You know it wouldn’t look good for your team, though, right? Half the other teams know about the bet.”

For a few moments, you simply just stare at him, hoping he’ll budge. He doesn’t. He stands there staring at you, too, leaning against his truck in an effortlessly attractive way, smiling at you in that same way he always does. It’s like he reserves this specific smile just for you. 

You take a step towards him, testing the waters, and notice the way his breath hitches this time at your close proximity. Did he dislike you that much that you getting this close to him set him on edge? Or was it something else?

“Nothing can change your mind?”

Tyler shakes his head. “I already told you. We don’t back down on our bets.”

“Tyler.” It’s a rare occasion where you call him by his first name, but you figure it can’t hurt to try it. You can see his eyes soften a little at the sound of it. “If you do this, you’re going to send us right off the trail and ruin our chase.”

“Who said I’d send you in the wrong direction?” 

“I’m smarter than you give me credit for.”

“I don’t know, darlin'. I give you a fair bit of credit for being a genius,” he took a sip of his coffee. “You’re the one with the PhD. I didn’t study that much.”

Something about hearing those words sets off that feeling inside your stomach again. You push it down. “I don’t have my PhD yet.”

“No,” Tyler shakes his head. “But you’re close, aren’t you? That’s more than most people around here can say regarding their education on these things.” He points a finger towards the sky, which is rapidly darkening. 

You sigh. He’s right about that. You are close to finishing your PhD, and not many of the other storm chasers around you could say the same. 

“Just tell me which direction we’re going in, Owens.”

He looks at you for a moment. “I’ll give you a choice,” he says, and for a moment hope sparks in your chest that you’ll get to choose your direction – until he continues speaking. “I’ll let this bet go if you make another one with me.”

“What sort of bet?” You cross your arms over your chest.

“Not regarding our teams. Just you and me.”

You’re about to respond when you hear the sound of the van, playing music rather loudly – Harry’s choice – pulling into the motel parking lot behind you. You sigh and turn around to look at them, irritated that this is the second time in less than 24 hours that they’ve interrupted you and Tyler. 

“No luck?” Ally calls out from the passenger seat. 

Behind them, Robbie pulls up in his truck. 

You shake your head and turn back around to face Tyler. There’s no time to make another bet with him now that your team is here and they’re all ready to go. 

“East or west, Owens?”

Tyler turns around and looks at the sky around you. You figure he’s already done his research on the conditions in every direction and that he’s just messing with you, pretending to decide on the spot. Any good storm chaser would have been watching the radars all morning – which you had been, before you found out about the bet. 

“East.” He says, turning back around to face you. “There are two possible formations, so let’s see which one develops. Or, you can ditch your team and come join us for the day. My passenger seat practically has your name on it, darlin’.” 

A small part of you finds yourself wanting to say yes to him. To tell him that you’d love nothing more than to get in his truck and see what a day with the Tornado Wranglers is like. But the reasonable part of you wins out. 

“You’re going to regret making this bet with my team, Owens,” you take a step back from him, giving him his space again. 

“I gave you the choice of another option, but you didn’t take it.”

You ignore him and turn around, heading towards the passenger side of Robbie’s truck – your usual spot when storm chasing. Tyler laughs at your reaction and then gets into his own truck before pressing his hand to the horn, making you jump at the sound, obviously using it to call his team from inside. You shoot him a look over your shoulder and in return, he sends a wink your way.

“May the best team win,” Tyler flashes a grin.

“Oh, we will!”

—

As much as Tyler hates to admit it, he had sent you in the wrong direction. There were two possible formations, that was true. But it looked very clear that the one to the east wasn’t actually going to develop into anything, and he was sure you would’ve figured that out once you got on the road and actually checked the conditions yourself.

He hates disappointing you. He saw the look on your face as you tried to convince him to call off the bet, the way you wanted to make sure today was a good one for your team. But it isn’t entirely out of competition that he sent you in the wrong direction.

Subconsciously, he did it to try and keep you safe.

If you’re out of the way of the tornado, then it’s a weight off of Tyler’s chest. He wouldn’t admit that to his team, but it felt good to think about himself. That you’d be safe. Besides, he had tried to get you out of it by making another bet with you, but he knew that you wouldn’t humour him the second he saw your team arrive. 

He presses his foot down on the accelerator, watching the clouds ahead of them. Something is going to form. He knows it. He just hopes it’s a good one, something worth chasing. 

In the passenger seat, Boone is keeping a good eye on the clouds to the east. He’s filming as well, live streaming as usual. 

“You were right, Ty,” Boone says, pointing the camera out the window towards the east. “That one’s gonna give us nothing. It’s already disappearing.”

Tyler lets out a breath of relief. You’re out of harms way and even though he knows you’d be annoyed at him if you ever found out, he can’t seem to find it in himself to feel bad about the fact. He had felt bad about the bet when you’d been talking to him, but now he realises that keeping the bet was a good idea.

“This one’s gonna be a good one, I can feel it,” he says, eyeing the clouds above them. 

Then, it happens – the tornado forms right in front of them. It’s already huge, bigger than any tornado Tyler has seen in the past few months.

Boone whoops in the seat beside him, moving the camera to film the tornado through the windshield. 

“Just look at that beauty!” He exclaims. 

Tyler can’t keep the smile off of his face as they drive closer to it. He stops the car once they get close enough, anchoring it to the ground as usual, watching as it gets closer and closer to the truck. 

“Oh, this is gonna be fun,” Tyler yells, straight to the camera that Boone is holding in his face. “Let’s do this!”

It’s only a split second later that his heart drops to his stomach. He watches as the tornado, once coming right towards them, veers off course. It’s heading east. And it’s growing in size. 

He looks out of the passenger window and in the distance, he can see your truck. It’s white, so bright under the dark sky. You’re going to be right in its path.

He sent you in the wrong direction to try and get you out of harms way, and instead he’s sent you in the exact direction the tornado is heading. There’s no way you can get out of its path in time. 

Tyler suddenly feels like he can barely breathe.

“Turn the camera off, Boone,” he commands, and then he’s removing the anchors from the ground and pressing his foot down onto the accelerator before he can even really think about it, even though there’s no way he can reach you in time with how quickly the tornado is moving towards you.

Boone, thankfully, listens, ending the stream, putting the camera down and picking up the radio to try and reach you. He’s realised what’s happening. Tyler tries to ignore the panic he feels when there’s no answer.

He can’t lose you like this. Not now. Not when he never really even had you. Not when you didn’t even know the way he felt about you. He’d been an asshole, a fool, making that bet. If he hadn’t, none of this would have happened.

“Please be okay, please be okay.” He mutters it under his breath like it’s a mantra. He doesn’t care what Boone thinks. If he says it enough, maybe he can make it come true.

—

You’ve seen tornadoes before. You’ve been close to them before. But you’ve never had one quite this size coming straight at you. You hadn’t expected this. 

When Tyler sent you east, Robbie had checked the radar and noticed that the cells out here were much less likely to form a tornado compared to the ones west. You’d gone anyway, figuring you’d try your chances, leaving Ally, Harry and the rest of your team a little further back, trying to get as close as you could before you realised your tornado was going to amount to nothing at all.

You and Robbie had been watching the tornado forming west of you, wishing you had been able to chase that one rather than do what the Tornado Wranglers told you. 

And then, it changed course.

“Get out of the car! We need to run!” Robbie undoes his seatbelt as he speaks and it doesn’t take you long to follow suit, undoing your own and jumping out of the truck.

He takes off at a run ahead of you just as the rain begins.

Your heart is beating faster in your chest than you think it ever has before. Your legs burn at the pace you’re running, your feet sinking into and skidding through the muddy paddock thanks to the heavy rain last night and the rain growing even heavier now. It slows you down, but your adrenaline pushes you faster. You can’t stop, not now. Not when there’s a possible EF4 on your tail, getting closer to you with every breath you take.

You make a mistake, then, deciding to look back at it. 

The sight of it only makes you run faster, but when you turn back, fear strikes through your system as you realise you can’t see Robbie anymore. 

The wind isn’t strong enough to have pulled him back into it, not when he was running ahead of you, but you can’t help but think of the worst possible scenario as your gaze narrows in on a gully just ahead of you. Maybe he made it there before you and now he’s just waiting.

The wind from the tornado picks up trees and branches and other debris, sending things spinning through the air. You feel something slice across your leg and cry out at the sudden pain, but there’s no time to inspect the damage as you slide down the small hill into the gully, the mud going everywhere as you hit the bottom. 

You don’t even have time to scan for Robbie as you press yourself down onto the ground of the gully, covering your head with your hands and pressing your face into the ground. You try to ignore the feeling of the mud and dirt on your skin, the throbbing pain in your leg, the rain pelting down on your back, soaking you to the bone, and try to keep breathing steadily despite being out of breath from the run and the adrenaline. 

You can’t panic now. If you panic now, you’re dead. 

The tornado gets closer and you can hear it. Hear the wind rushing through the air, hear the sound of trees being ripped out of the ground. Hear the crashing sound of the truck being picked up and thrown by it. 

Everything is okay,  you tell yourself, like a mantra. Everything is going to be okay. Because if you tell yourself enough, maybe it will come true.

—

By the time Tyler gets to the place where your truck had been, the tornado is gone and so is your truck. He barely even has time to put his own truck into park before he’s jumping out of it and calling your name. 

Boone is quick to follow him.

Tyler’s eyes narrow in on something in the distance – the remnants of your truck. It’s sitting upside down, the cab crushed in and all the glass broken. Even some of the wheels are missing. His heart almost stops.

No, you would have been smart enough to get out. You wouldn’t have stayed in the truck. He knows that. He believes that. It was one of the first things any storm chaser learnt – never stay in your car, it’s better to take your chances outside of it.

He stops in the middle of the field and takes a long, deep breath to try and calm himself down when he hears the sound of someone yelling out.

“Hey, I need some help over here!”

It’s a male voice, not belonging to you, which is the first sign that makes Tyler realise something is wrong. He recognises Robbie immediately, even though he’s drenched in rain and covered in mud and blood.

Boone runs off towards him and Tyler follows.

“Where is she?” He cuts in as Boone begins asking Robbie where he’s been hurt. “Were you with her? Where is she?” 

He knows he’s being a little irrational. He should be kinder, especially when he’s the reason Robbie was even in this tornado in the first place, but his mind is narrowed in on you, on making sure you’re okay. He’s never been more terrified that he’s lost you in his life.

“I don’t know,” Robbie shakes his head. “She was behind me, and then I jumped down into this little dam and she never came in after me.” 

Tyler doesn’t let him say anything else before he takes off running. He knows Boone can handle Robbie. His only concern is finding you. He calls out your name again and again and again, willing you to respond to just one of them.

He only hears silence.

—

The second you wake up, you push yourself up, getting your face out of the mud and opening your eyes, trying to adjust them to the sudden brightness now that the tornado has disappeared. 

You’re vaguely aware of the sound of someone calling out your name, but it sounds fuzzy, far away. Your head is spinning and you’re pretty sure you could be imagining it.

You put a hand up to the side of your face, feeling the sticky sensation of blood on your hands. Something must have hit your head and knocked you out during the tornado. You can only remember something hitting your leg as you’d slid down into the gully. How long have you been lying here? Minutes? Hours? Days, even?

Looking around, you can see the devastation caused by the tornado. There are trees and branches everywhere, and with the rain, it’s made it even muddier – and probably impossible to climb out of, especially with your injuries. You finally allow yourself to inspect your leg, noticing a deep cut across your shin, ripping your jeans. Your leg starts to throb as you finally allow yourself to recognise the pain. 

With a deep breath, you try and push yourself to your feet. It’s slippery down here thanks to all the mud and rain, and you manage to stand for just a second before your leg buckles and sends you crashing back down. At least it’s a fairly soft landing.

You curse under your breath just as you hear movement above you. Your eyes flicker towards the direction of the sound, and when you see Tyler Owens appear at the edge of the gully just to the right of you, you nearly feel like you could cry.

“Tyler!” You manage to call out to him, though your voice is weak.

His head spins towards your voice, eyes widening as he sees you. You must look like a mess, covered in all the blood and dirt, but you knows he doesn’t care. Especially with the way he slides down into the gully and stumbles towards you, getting covered in mud himself in the process.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” He falls to his knees in front of you, his hands moving to cup your cheeks and move your head from side to side. He’s quick to check the wound on your head where the blood is coming from. “You’re okay, darlin’, it doesn’t look too deep.”

You can see the panic in his eyes as he scans you, scans your whole body looking for injuries. You can also tell from the look on his face when he looks at your shin that your injury there is worrisome. 

“It’s my fault,” Tyler shakes his head, refusing to move his hands from your cheeks. It’s as if you’ll fade away if he lets go. “I shouldn’t have told you to go east. I was just trying to get you out of the way of the tornado cause I felt that yours wasn’t gonna develop, but then ours changed course and it was heading straight towards you and I couldn’t get here fast enough and god, the idea of losing you, of never seeing you again, of never asking–”

“Tyler!” 

He stops talking, having not even realised that he had let the situation get the better of him and had been rambling on. When he meets your eyes, you’re shocked to see that there are tears in his. 

“You never call me by my first name.”

“I didn’t think I’d be able to get your attention if I didn’t.”

Your reach up and take one of his hands off of your face and weave your fingers between his. You don’t really know what you’re doing, exactly, but all you know is you need to comfort him. That and you’re shaking like a leaf and the feeling of holding his hand is like an anchor to the world. A reminder that you’re alive. 

“I’m still here, Tyler. I’m all right.”

“You’re not,” he shakes his head. “You’re hurt, and it’s because of me–”

You take him by surprise as you reach up and place your own hand on his cheek. It’s only when you touch his face that you remember your hand is covered in blood and mud, but when you try and take it away, Tyler places his hand over the top of it. His eyes flutter closed and he lets out a long breath that feels to you that it’s something like relief.

The two of you stay there like that for what feels like an eternity but is really just a few minutes, soaking in the feeling of each others skin and coming to terms with the realisation that you’re alive. 

“It’s not your fault, Tyler,” you mutter softly. “You couldn’t have known that tornado was going to change course and head straight for us. Just because that bet ended up landing us in the path of a probable EF4 doesn’t mean you’re the one to blame for it. I don’t blame you.”

He blinks his eyes open and stares at yours for a moment. 

“Now, what were you saying about asking me something?” You try to change the subject.

There’s a look of something in Tyler’s eyes that you can’t quite place, but it drops off of his face instantly at your words and he lets out an awkward laugh. “I don’t think now’s the right time, darlin’,” he says. “Some other time, when you’re not bleeding and injured. We need to get you out of here and to a hospital.”

You shake your head, ignoring the fact that the movement makes you a little dizzy. “I could have just died and I would have never known what it is you wanted to ask me. So I want to know what it is right now.” You’re surprised at how strong your voice sounds, even though you don’t feel strong at all right now.

Tyler sighs and you can see by the look on his face that he’s giving in to you. “I was trying to get the courage to ask you out, was trying last night actually but I chickened out. You can be quite intimidating sometimes, you know that?”

For a moment, you just stare at Tyler. 

“I thought I was the one who hit my head. Did you hit yours too?”

He lets out a soft laugh. “Something like that.”

“You need another reminder that we’re supposed to hate each other?”

Tyler shakes his head. “I think I’ve had enough reminders to last me a lifetime. But I’m done with pretending to hate you. With trying to convince my team that I dislike you so much. I know they know the truth. It doesn’t matter, even though you can’t stand me.” 

You meet Tyler’s eyes and in them, you can see that he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t hate you, nor dislike you, nor anything similar. With the way he’s looking at you, the way he was calling your name, the way he panicked so much when he thought you were seriously hurt… he really was trying to ask you out. Just the thought of it makes that feeling rise in your stomach again, and for the first time you recognise the feeling for what it truly is – butterflies. You don’t get butterflies from people you hate.

“I don’t hate you, Tyler.”

You can see the surprise flash across his eyes.

“You don’t hate me?”

“You annoy the hell out of me and you drive me insane sometimes. But no. You fascinate me, and you make me laugh, and even though every member of my team hates you and your stupid red truck, I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to be in the passenger seat with you, driving head first into a tornado, and I nearly said yes when you asked me earlier.”

Tyler chuckles. “My truck is not stupid.”

“Does your passenger seat really have my name on it?”

“Embroidered it myself.”

You laugh, then, a real, full laugh, and Tyler can’t help but laugh as well at the absurdity of the situation. You’ve just survived a devastating tornado, you’re injured in more ways than one, Tyler Owens has just told you he likes you and you’ve come to the realisation that you like the fact that he does. And maybe, you like him a little bit too.

“We’re not gonna make it to that rodeo tonight, are we?” You ask, once the laughs subside.

Tyler shakes his head. “Rain check for the next one?”

“That’s how you’re asking me out?”

He doesn’t get a chance to reply before you both hear your names being called and look up just as Boone and Robbie appear at the top of the gully. Tyler turns around to look at them. They look relieved to have found you both, and you feel just as relieved to see that Robbie is alive and well, only a little battered just like you are. Even if you’re a little disappointed that your moment with Tyler was interrupted. It seems that happens more often than not lately.

“Is she okay?” Boone asks Tyler.

He nods. “Yeah, but she’s injured. We’re gonna need a hand out of here.”

“We got you,” Boone says.

—

“So, when are you asking me out properly, Owens?” You ask.

It’s been a week since the tornado and a week since you found out that Tyler Owens had been wanting to ask you out for months. Boone had stayed true to his word that day, using a rope and Tyler’s truck to pull you both up out of the gully.

Tyler had barely left your side since – even in the truck ride to the hospital. He usually hated letting anyone drive his truck other than himself, but that day he’d thrown the keys to Boone so he didn’t have to take any of his attention off of you. He’d stayed with you in the hospital as well, even when the rest of your team turned up to check on you and Robbie.

You were surprised at how quickly your teams had dropped their rivalry after the tornado. They’d clearly seen the way you and Tyler acted around each other, how things had changed after the tornado, even though both of you refused to give them details on what had happened when Tyler had found you in the gully. 

It was something both of you were glad for.

“You can’t just ask me that,” Tyler says, kicking his legs up on the desk in the small motel room. Luckily, he’d taken off his muddy boots when he’d come inside to check on you. He had insisted you go back home to recover from your leg injury, but you’d refused. 

“I can’t?” You ask from your spot on the bed, resting your leg up on some pillows. It had luckily not been too bad of an injury, just a reasonably deep cut that needed stitching and wrapping. You still had to be careful not to rip the stitches, which meant no storm chasing and only resting for the time being. 

Tyler nods. “You made me admit the truth to you while we were both covered in mud and blood in the bottom of a wet, muddy gully. I’m not going to ask you out while you’re sitting on a motel room bed with an injured leg and stitches in your forehead. I’m classier than that.”

You snort. “You, classy?”

“From time to time,” he shrugs a shoulder.

You jokingly roll your eyes at him. “I’ll believe it when I see it. You know, you never actually explained what the other bet you wanted to make with me that day was. Was that something to do with asking me out as well?”

Tyler’s face broke out into a grin. “Maybe.”

“Of course,” you can’t help but laugh at the silly look on his face. “Are you at least going to ask me before I get swept up in another tornado?”

“Darlin’,” Tyler stands up and crosses the room until he’s standing right beside you. One of his hands reaches down and picks up yours, weaving his fingers in-between yours. “If you get swept up in a tornado, I’m going to be right beside you. I’m gonna be beside you for as long as you let me. For as long as I get. As long as I get, okay?”

He repeats it like a mantra. Because if he says it enough, he’s certain it will come true.