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sunsetchicane · 2 days ago

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Postcards - Part 3 [LN4]

lando norris x [travel] journalist fem!reader

find the series here

word count: 5.2k

summary: The one where you're in Paris and you can't stop thinking about him and you find yourself giving him a call.

warnings: angsts again (sorry! I swear it's turning around), swearing, innuendo, unedited!

author's note: hey...sorry this took so long??? college is crazy guys. but anyways, I'm a little rusty so be gentle lmao. please enjoy and I'll see you guys SOON!! feedback, comments, likes whatever you feel like is so much appreciated. Lots of love [xoxo elle]

Lando

Nov. 2022

The lights of Abu Dhabi blind Lando as he stands next to his car and removes his helmet from his head. Ending P6 was respectable, a good end to a mediocre at best season. His head swims with the noise that swallows the track and the flashing lights that light up the night race. Another season was officially in the books. There’s always a bittersweet feeling that hits all the drivers as they jump out of their cars for the last race of the season, letting the months past become another chapter of history. An excitement for the break ahead and the promise of a new season buoys their spirits, but it’s a hard goodbye nonetheless.

Lando absentmindedly walks around to congratulate everyone, shaking hands and sharing smiles. Though, his heart isn’t in it. His focus splintered the second he left the car. Thoughts drift towards you. They always do. There’s never a day that passes that you aren’t on his mind, on his heart.

Flashing cameras surround him, capturing this moment. He thinks of you.

Journalists with microphones tucked into their hands yell words into a camera lens. He thinks of you.

Faces flashing in and out of sight, bodies swarming around him as his eyes search the crowd. He’s looking for you.

But you aren’t there. There was no reason for you to be there. The last time you spoke, the London night surrounded you and held you together. To this day, when he closes his eyes, he can still feel your lips on his. Somedays, he makes it through with just this memory alone spurring him on. He promised to see you in Monaco, but every time he called your office, you were gone. Every time he showed up at your cubicle, it was deserted. A layer of dust collected over everything.

A thin layer of dust covering a framed picture of Big Ben lit from behind by the setting sun.

After so many futile attempts of trying to find you, to connect again, he slowly stopped trying. There was an obvious truth behind the estrangement of your paths: you were avoiding him.

At first, he rejected the idea, claiming to only himself that you wouldn’t do that. He was convinced that you felt the same way that he did. There was something between the two of you that was beyond anything he had ever felt. Your passion inspired him. Your humor warmed him. Your presence set him at ease in such a way that the whole world could be burning and he would be perfectly content to just hold you in his arms.

He’d never felt that way about anyone. Not even close.

So for a long time, longer than he would ever admit, he clutched onto hope.

But with each passing week with not a single word from you, faith began to slip. With every message that went unanswered and phone call that went straight to the voicemail of your office phone, his grip on you loosened.

He’d be the first to admit his lack of maturity. He wasn’t ashamed of still being a kid. Instead, he wore it like a badge of honor, making it part of his personal brand. If it wasn’t for you, he would never have thought twice about growing up to be the man that you deserved. But now that you’re gone, slipping into memory, he’s found himself back in his comfortable corner of immaturity.

So, after hurrying through all of his post-race interviews and duties with the team, he finds himself taking solace in the night life of Abu Dhabi.

Alcohol had never really been his thing, but recently the appeal has been becoming more and more obvious to him. Round after round is poured down his throat, burning every memory of you away for the night. Intoxication holds you at bay, at least for a while.

“Slow down, mate.” Max laughs into his ear while Lando tosses back yet another shot of something. He’s had enough that everything tastes the same now.

“I’m celebrating!” Lando slurs, shoving Max square in the chest. They stumble together, laughing as they nearly fall over. The world is a haze of flickering neon lights. Music and voices blend into a loud hum, everything becoming one to drunk ears.

Lando collapses haphazardly onto the couch in the club, quickly followed by Max. With hooded eyes, they watch the dance floor in front of them. The mass of the crowd seems to move as one, enchanting Lando’s drunk mind. The night coalesces and crests like a wave, ebbing and flowing as one singular, living thing. Everything seems interconnected and endless. If he could, Lando would stay in this feeling forever. Nothing hurts, nothing is joyful, everything is completely numb.

“I miss her.” He says, but the usual pain that accompanies those words is nowhere to be found.

“I know,” Max says, his head falling back while he closes his eyes.

“I hate her.” Lando says emotionlessly. Max doesn’t respond. It isn’t true. They both know that it isn’t. But for tonight, they can pretend.

Lando can pretend that it doesn’t matter that he pushes himself off the couch when he catches the eye of a girl that looks somewhat like you. He can pretend that he doesn’t think about you as he dances behind her, his hands gripping her hips to hold her close. He can pretend that he doesn’t wish it was your neck that his lips trail up towards her jaw. He has to pretend when he finds himself asking her to leave with him.

And when he finds himself that night, tangled up with a girl who’s name he doesn’t bother to remember, he gives up pretending and thinks only of you. Of your lips, of your body, of the way it would feel to have you around him. Your voice calling out his name in the quiet hours of the morning.

He hates you.

He hates not having you.

This isn’t the first time that he’s tried to heal his sorrow with momentary pleasure. No, in fact, he’s done this a handful of times and each time he tries he hopes that this will be the girl to erase you from his life. But she never is. He’s a fool for trying the same thing over and over again expecting a miracle.

“Stay,” she mumbles into her pillow, a delicate hand draping across his chest. It’s cold against his hot skin. He turns his face away from her so she can’t see him cringe. Gently, Lando slides her hand away and returns it to her side.

“Can’t,” He says while sliding to the edge of the bed and away from her. For a few moments while he rubs the sleepiness from his eyes, he listens to her groan and complain. He’s so tired. With a huff, he stands and collects his clothes that are strewn about the luxurious room.

As he pulls his clothes on, he listens to the soft rustling of silk sheets and the steady in and out of sleeping breaths. But everything seems a thousand miles away, so cold and distant. In the slight hours of the morning, nothing feels real. He’s numb and tired. He’s cold and exhausted of feeling the same pain from the moment he wakes up to the time he finally is graced by merciful sleep.

Spiraling thoughts plague Lando’s mind as he wanders the slips into the back of an uber. Glossy eyes scan the world as it streams by him in the back window of some random car. How many times has he lived this night? Every car ride back to his apartment or hotel room feels the same, blending into one continuous stream of dull memory.

Stumbling into his hotel room, he heads straight to his bed without a second thought. Discarding his clothes onto the floor for the second time tonight, he can’t help but wish he’d been here sooner. There isn’t solace for him in someone else’s bed, and when he’s alone he doesn’t have to pretend there is. He’s sick of playing pretend and putting a mask on for himself, for his friends, for his team, and the millions of people watching him under a microscope. The truth and the pressure of that truth has weighed on him for months.

He’s heartbroken. He’s suffering. And there’s nothing to be done about it. He hasn’t had the chance to heal and he doesn’t know when he will–if he will. Because when he thinks of you, it’s like a knife of what could have been to the chest; and when he blocks you from his mind he feels guilty and hopelessly alone.

A spinning ceiling and tears in his eyes coax him to sleep.

He dreams of you, of course. Even sleep can’t free him of you.

You

The City of Love and Lights has been a whirlwind for you over the last few days. This new piece on an up and coming grunge artist hailing from the infamous streets of Paris has become larger than you originally thought. Night and day, you’ve been chained to your laptop, cranking out a story worthy of its subject matter.

Tonight, you’ve decided to dive into your work at some random cafe down the street from where you’re staying. Headphones on and phone turned off, you’ve been plugged in for hours. Countless cappuccinos have been downed since you came in which could be three days or minutes ago, you wouldn’t know. Only when the noise at the bar grows from a quiet, sporadic chatter to a distracting, constant hum of voices, do you look up from your work.

The sun has set, giving the streets a chance to live up to the name “City of Lights.” People and cars whiz past you, everyone on their way somewhere. The crowd at the cafe has gone from a few coffee sippers to a mass of people huddled around the bar ordering drinks for them and their friends.

Realizing you’ve lost yourself in your work, you rub the heels of your hands against your tired eyes. With a sigh, you fold up your notes and tuck them away into your bag along with your laptop. You gather up your empty dishes and mugs, placing them in the bin above the trash.

Just as you turn towards the exit, ready to slip to your bed and sleep for hours and hours, cheering rises up around you. A name you take care to avoid ripples through the crowd. A small group of people are huddled around the bar, chests pressed to backs, heads leaned in, trying to get a glimpse at something.

Biting hard on your bottom lip, you fight yourself. Your eyes flicker out to the darkened streets of Paris and then back to the group of people who must be watching the season’s final race. As much as you hated yourself for it, of course you kept up with the Formula One season. It was the only connection you had to Lando. Distant, impersonal, and safe. You could keep your eye on him, see his face every once in a while, but not fall in again. At least that’s what you told yourself every time you went out of your way to stream a race, no matter where you were.

It had been ages since you saw him in London. Some days it feels like a lifetime ago, and most times it feels as fresh as yesterday. You wake up with the feeling of his lips on yours, his arms wrapped around you.

And maybe it’s the romantic in you that you’ve tried to kill and bury your whole life, but the thing you miss most about him is his stupid smile. There’s such complete joy behind that smile. It lights you up in your darkest moments, lifting you up and warming you. There isn’t anything that you wouldn’t give to be able to see that smile just one more time.

But you can’t. So, you turn your back on the crowd of Formula fans and walk out onto the street.

As you walk, you try to distract yourself by taking in the scenery or by thinking of your story. But of course every train of thought leads back to him. You know Lando would love Paris. He wouldn’t admit it, of course. He would rather die than let anyone know how much of a romantic he is. The two of you are similar in that way.

At least you think so. So much time has passed, you can’t really say that you know him at all. Sure, you’ve spent a little time together, but life is constantly changing. You don’t know who he is today, what he hates today, what he loves. All you’ve ever gotten of each other is fleeting moments. And you’re to blame.

Countless times you’ve gone over it in your head. Playing every single scenario out over and over, trying to find the one where it could work between you two. But every time, you come to the same conclusion: it never will.

Even if you could convince yourself not to run at the first chance, which you always will, your lives are too different. His job would be pulling him one way while yours would be pulling you to the opposite corner of the world. Constantly in motion, but never intersecting. No matter how much you want it to, his and your futures won’t bend to fit. It tears you apart.

When you’re not traveling or writing for work, you find yourself filling pages with his name and the pain that comes with it. Your messy, ink blotted notebooks are filled cover to cover with insane ramblings of a broken heart. You can’t bring yourself to think of anyone else that way. When you try, it falls short and you do what you do best: you run.

The walk back to your hotel is blessedly quick. Being alone with your thoughts right now is torture, especially with idle hands. Everything seems a little bit easier when there’s a pen held in your fingers.

Walking through the lobby, you try to keep your head down, not wanting anyone to bother you tonight. Bee-lining for the elevator, you wish you were already in your room. But, as the button lights up under your finger and the numbers above the doors make their descent, you can’t help but wonder what solace a lonely hotel room would bring you. Trapped in a shoebox of a room with nothing but an empty bed and a full mind. A premonition of staring at the ceiling for the next few hours, slowly driving yourself insane flashes in your mind’s eye.

Glancing over your shoulder, you look at the small bar off to the side of the lobby. It’s blessedly empty, only a few randoms sitting quietly here and there. Abandoning the elevator, you walk over to the bar.

Drinking at a hotel bar isn’t an unfamiliar low for you. It might be sad and slightly pathetic, but it’s better than any other option you have right now. Actually, drowning your sorrows in Paris doesn’t really sound half bad, right? It could be an interesting anecdote in the long, melodramatic tale of your life post-Lando that you could tell Bobbi. She would laugh and commiserate with you over shitty frozen pizza that her son loved and a sweet wine that she loved.

With that thought, you order three vodka shots and a Diet Coke. Dropping your bag and coat in the seat next to you, you haul out the book you’ve been trying to chip away at when you have enough focus to read. Then you crack open your Coke and take two of your shots. Tossing your head back, you relish the burn of the liquid as it slides down your throat, but quickly chase it with your Coke to ease the pain.

Leaning forward onto the bar, you pry your book open and try to focus on the words inked onto the pages.

Within minutes, your fingertips are buzzing and your face feels flushed. The words in front of your swirl and sway. Pausing your “reading,” you toss back your last shot, grimacing at the taste. Still, you tap the bartop with your fingers, signalling the bartender that you’re in need of his services.

The bartender is quick to place a new shot in front of you. Reaching out, you play with the small glass between your fingers while you continue to read. You don’t know how long you sit like that, your head battling between the effects of the alcohol and your desperation to focus on your book.

Suddenly, a rhythmic buzzing pulls your already splintered attention away from the stupid book. You rummage through your bag, looking for your phone. When you find it and turn it over, you're met with a blank screen. There are a few random notifications from earlier that day, mostly work emails you hadn’t been bothered to respond to yet.

“Salut,” The bartender says as he presses his phone to his ear. You watch as he turns away from the bar and mumbles into the receiver of his cellphone. Shamelessly, you watch the hushed conversation of the young, brunette bartender play out. He’s splashed in the soft orange light that filters through the rows of bottles against the wall of the bar. He laughs quietly while leaning his hip against the counter. The white button up of his uniform, his dark hair, and tanned skin are reminiscent of someone you’ve been trying to avoid thinking about all night. It’s surprising you’ve just noticed now.

You don’t have to speak perfect French to know what he was talking about on the call, or who was on the other end. He was swaying and smiling, his fingers brushing across his lips while his eyes lit up with the fireworks you could practically hear going off in his chest.

A sharp pang of loneliness erupts in your chest.

You take another shot and wait. Abandoning your book, you trace the grain of the wood bartop with featherlight fingers. Time slows and your vision goes a little bit hazy. A sweet peace crashes over your consciousness. Your thoughts begin to slide together so you can’t identify where one thought starts and where a feeling ends. Everything feels delightfully airy and heavy at the same time, making your reality feel a little less real.

“Can I buy a bottle?” You ask suddenly. You weren’t really sure if you said it outloud or not, but when the bartender walks over to you with a bottle of vodka he’d been giving you shots from and tells you the price, you don’t even hesitate as you toss a few bills on the counter, covering everything. He bids you a goodnight as you snatch up the bottle along with your other belongings and make your way back to the elevator.

The walk feels much easier the second time. You feel so much lighter, so much better. Your thoughts are far away, not plaguing you like they were earlier. Laying on your empty bed and losing yourself in an overly expensive pay-per-view movie sounds far more appealing than it did an hour ago as well.

You take the elevator to your floor, stumbling to your door. Fumbling with your key, you open the door, toss your stuff on the ground, and flop onto the bed, bottle in hand. Almost instantaneously, you turn on the television and peruse the movies. You buy The Proposal and lean back into your pillows while the title sequence plays.

As you take another burning pull from the bottle in your hand, you think distantly that you should be ashamed of yourself. Drowning your sorrows alone in a hotel room in Paris. The word pathetic echoes around your head. You try to kill the thought with yet another swallow of alcohol.

With a hazy mind, you watch as a badass, albeit definitely bitchy, Sandra Bullock string along a charismatic and endlessly sarcastic Ryan Renolds.

“She’s not that bad,” You say into an empty room as she tears her jerk employee a new one. “She’s just career oriented.”

Projecting much? Your subconscious whispers to you.

You tip the bottle back.

And that sequence continues to happen as you watch the movie. Every time something touches a little too close to home, you drink. It’s like some sad drinking game that you’ve forced yourself to participate in.

By the time the credits roll, you’re plastered. Eyes trained to the ceiling, you try to sling together a single coherent thought. But you can’t. Everything in your mind seems to pop up quickly and then slip away before you can grab a hold on it.

Everything except one thought, one name. Lando.

Your drunken mind whispers his name. You want him right now, right next to you. The thought of his big hands in your hair, against your skin, between your legs, is nearly enough to be drunk on alone. And nothing is stopping you now, not even yourself. Intoxication has given you the freedom to do whatever you damn well please.

Fumbling for your phone, you don’t even really think about what you’re going to say. Instead, you open up your contacts and press on his contact for the first time since you made it. He’d called your work phone months ago and left his number. You’d debated even saving his contact, but you couldn’t stop yourself. Though, you’d never messaged him, never gave him a call. Until now.

Clicking on the call button, you don’t flinch as it begins to ring. It rings…and rings…and rings. His voicemail message sounds like heaven to your wary ears.

“Landooo, it's…uh…it's me. I’m in Paris on assignment. I bought you a postcard, don’t worry. Listen, I don’t really know why I’m calling. Actually, that’s not true. We both know exactly why I’m calling.” A hiccup breaks up your monologue before you continue.

“Give me a shout whenever you have the chance, alright? Wanna hear your voice, babe. Good nigh–oh! Good job this season, by the way. Ok, good night, Lan.” You slur into the receiver. There are a million things you want to say, but you know you can’t. Not tonight.

Sleep takes you just as you end the message.

–

“Holy shit.” Fear seizes your chest as you pick up your burning hot phone. It’s nearly dead, but alive enough to show you just exactly what horrible decision you made last night. Lando Norris’ name in red is at the top of your recently called list. You called him last night, which is a horrible grievance in and of itself. What’s worse is that you have zero recollection of what you said. And you don’t trust drunk you to keep her cool.

“Shit, fuck…shit, shit, shit!” You cry as you dig the heels of your hands into your aching eyes. Your mind races with the million and one things that you’ve wanted to say to Lando in the last months, ranking them from most to least pathetic. You can only hope that you were too drunk to make any sense and he’ll disregard the strange phone call from a number he doesn’t know. He must get dozens of phone calls a week, so there’s no chance that he’ll end up listening to your message. Right?

With a hangover made worse by your intense worrying, you crawl out of bed. You’re unsurprised to find you’re still dressed in your clothes from the day before. Not sparing a glance in the mirror, you strip bare and take a steaming hot shower. Unfortunately, the sting of the water does nothing to burn your spiraling thoughts away.

As you get dressed, you glance at your phone laying face down on the bedside table. You’d plugged it in before getting in the shower, but hadn’t turned it all the way off. Something kept you from ignoring the damn thing. Curiosity killed the cat and it’s well on its way to killing you too. A twisted, borderline masochistic part of you hopes that he finds your message, no matter how humiliating it is. The truth is that you do miss him and maybe it takes a little bit of liquid courage (foolish courage) to do something about it.

Questions go unanswered as you do everything to avoid opening your phone. Notifications are still silenced, so you would be none the wiser if it was ringing off the hook or completely bone dry. Instead, you fiddle with a coffee machine, do your makeup, iron out your schedule for the day, and send a few emails from your laptop (which you don’t have your number connected to for the sake of a nonexistent work-life balance).

By the time you’re done, a solid couple of hours have passed. It’s time that you check your phone. You’ve been avoiding the inevitable for too long. Plus, you’ve undoubtedly missed a message or ten about work-related happenings.

Standing up, you push the desk chair you’ve been perched in back with your legs. A slow breath fills your lungs as you flex your hands by your sides and then shake them out. Nerves prickle down your neck, spilling into a shiver that runs the length of your spine. You’ve always been balls to the wall and nothing so trivial should force you to quiver in a corner with your proverbial tail between your legs. A string of affirmations flood your mind as you turn on your heel and trudge over to the bed.

The affirmations break down into a waterfall of nervous swears as you take your phone in your hands, pulling it off the charger. It feels oddly delicate in your hands, as if you’re deactivating a bomb. Holding your breath, you slide the control center down and turn your notifications back on. When you return to your home screen, you’re bombarded with a constant stream of notifications from a variety of apps. Your mind goes blank as you skim over everything, looking for the green icon of a message or phone call. Everytime you see one, your heart jumps so far up your throat you think you might vomit. But everytime, it’s just a colleague or your manager or an acquaintance you’ve made while traveling.

Not a single message from Lando. Not a voicemail, not a missed call, not even a short text telling you (rightly) to fuck off.

Your heart drops into your stomach and the nausea you’d warded off this morning comes back at full force. Managing expectations hadn’t worked. All your worrying had been for nothing. And you’d been a fool to hope. With everything you’ve done to him, effectively ghosting him until just now, months after you’d promised to see him, you’re in no position to be upset that he couldn’t be bothered to respond to you. Let alone the fact that he’s a world famous driver that probably doesn't blink twice at a number he doesn’t know before deleting and blocking it.

You know you should be relieved that he didn’t listen to your message. Though, some undeniably masochistic part of you wished deeply that he had. Was it unfair of you to force him into the battle that you’ve been waging with yourself over the last year. One day you were willing to give everything up just to see him, then the next you assured yourself that you’d made the right decision by staying away. You were a loose cannon and you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if you hurt one of the only people you cared so much about.

And maybe you did. Maybe he got your message and he chose to ignore it because he was in pain over you.

Or worse, he didn’t care to respond anymore.

Your mind reels and spins and a pain grows in your chest so severe you think you might have a heart attack. Tears prick at your eyes, blurring your vision of your stupid hotel room that holds everything too close. Memories suffocate you as you hold a phone filled with every notification you don’t want to see and lacking the one that you need.

After a few minutes of much needed cathartic sobbing, you stand up and begin cleaning up your room. Packing is what you’re best at. You’ve perfected it over the years. Everything you own could be stuffed into a few suitcases at a moment's notice. Even your apartment back in Monaco was sparsely decorated and home to only a few dishes and necessary furniture. Traveling from place to place for your job was no different. Rarely did you switch up what you packed into your favorite suitcase. Everything had its spot within. Everything knew where it was supposed to be and where you could find it. It was one of the only constant things in your life. No matter how much you needed constant change, you had this one consistency to keep you grounded.

It’s worked for your entire life. But now, as you pack everything into its place, it seems slightly duller, more futile.

Once everything is packed away and your room has been scoured corner to corner for anything you might have forgotten (which you know you hadn’t), you sit on your bed with your suitcase and stare absentmindedly at your laptop screen.

You wonder how many dozen times this exact scene has played out in your life. Something comes up that scares you or you can’t handle, you pack a bag, you sit at the edge of whatever you’d been sleeping on recently, and you wonder where exactly it is you plan on going next.

It’s always been exciting to you, adventurous and whimsical. But now it feels hollow and pathetic. You feel hollow and pathetic and all you want to do is go home.

But where’s home? You’ve made sure that you don’t have anywhere to call home because it’s always been exactly where your feet are.

So, you decide to go to the next best place.

With a few swift clicks, you buy yourself a train ticket to Nice, Italy. You’re going back to Monaco.

Lando

With his headphones over his ears, he sits in the back of the jet while everyone else sleeps. For what seems like the thousandth time, he presses play on your message again. You’re drunk, he can tell. The voicemail is all slurred words and hiccups, but he can’t find it in himself to care.

When it ends, he’s angry. Angry at you for calling out of blue because it wasn’t fair. Angry at himself for not picking up. Angry that he isn’t there to make sure you’re alright. Angry because he shouldn’t care this much.

But when he plays the message once more, his anger melts away. Relief floods in at hearing your voice for the first time in months.

He doesn’t know why he hasn’t responded yet, or why he didn’t immediately return your call. Instead, he’s decided to play it safe and protect himself for a little bit longer. His plan is already in motion, it has been since before he got on the plane back to Monaco.

He’s going to find you if it’s the last thing he does. He’s going to get real, concrete, honest answers out of you. The game is ending on his terms.

taglist: @sarx164 @f1fantasys

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asahicore · 7 months ago

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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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#enhypen x reader #sunghoon x reader #enhypen smut #sunghoon smut #enhypen angst #sunghoon angst #enhypen imagines #sunghoon imagines #enhypen au #sunghoon au #enhypen fanfiction #sunghoon fanfiction

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