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http-joons · 15 days ago

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same but different — ft. phainon

phainon is always changing. he’s twelve, he’s sixteen, he’s eighteen, and he’s twenty-three. and he’s changing. but he’s still your phainon and you still love him

word count. ❤︎ 10.4k words — girl (gn) what ze hell

before you read. ❤︎ female reader ; childhood friends to lovers ; modern/non canon au ; reader saves him from a bully when they’re young ; reader has a bad date (with someone else) ; very tame violence (phainon fights some assholes for her) ; love confessions ; loss of virginity ; awkward first times ; car sex/semi public sex (it’s dark) ; use of condoms (be safe!) ; finger sucking ; vaginal fingering ; slight hand jobs ; vaginal sex ; proposals (you say yes!) ; phainon is a bit of a crybaby (affectionate) ; not proof read pls tell me if there’s errors

commentary. ❤︎ THAT ART IN THE HEADER SENT ME INTO A SPIRAL BRO . so here’s the result ig

You meet Phainon when he’s twelve.

You’re new to the neighborhood, and so is he, starting over at school at the same time and learning the halls and classrooms in the same way—he seems to take being the new kid well. The teachers like him, and he’s friendly and easy to get along with, and most other boys like having him on their teams for sports because he’s agile and decent at catching a ball. You? Well…you don’t adjust as well.

You move not far from your old home, but far enough that everything feels different. He moves from some small town that no one has ever heard of, and all in the matter of a few weeks, he worms his way into your life and doesn’t let you know a single ounce of peace. You’re still eleven at the time, but he’s only two months, one week, and four days older than you, and you’ll be the same age soon enough.

But it doesn’t really matter that he’s older, anyway, because he cries like a god damn baby.

The older kids can be mean. Especially when twelve-year-old boys who still haven’t hit that growth spurt that most teenage boys seem to hit, like Phainon, are right there. Despite being quick on his feet, he’s especially small and scrawny for his age, shorter than you by a couple of inches—which is a little pathetic, you think. He’s supposed to be older.

It happens on a Monday—the start of you and Phainon. Phainon and you. Something weird possesses you on a random Monday before you turn twelve, and you step between him and a taller, broader, acne-painted older boy after school, and before thinking, you glare as you hiss out, “Leave him alone, weirdo.”

The boy doesn’t look too happy—and if you had an ounce of common sense, you’d take that as your cue to leave. But you don’t. You stare him good and hard in the eye as he grits out, “Mind your business.”

Phainon is still on the concrete, flat on his ass in a pathetic sort of way as tears coat his pale, soft cheeks and glisten in his eyes. They’re blue. Very blue. You glance at them for a quick second and realize too late that looking into them was an awful mistake. He looks like a kicked puppy, and something stirs in you and makes you turn abruptly, drawing your hand back before it snaps, and a loud, hard clap rings through the air.

You freeze, processing what you’ve done. Phainon’s breath hitches. The boy—some asshole whose name you never learn—turns his head, slow and stunned, the side of his cheek where your palm landed blooming red.

This is it, you think. This is how you die. This is where your body will be found face down in the dirt behind your new school that you didn’t even want to come to, and your parents will find you lifeless and limp. They’ll mourn you, like any parents would, and they’ll wonder why it has to be this way—why they have to bury their daughter and not the other way around. You’ll be dead in a few moments, and your poor, unsuspecting parents will have no choice but to blame stupid, annoying, crybaby Phainon for getting you killed in the first place. All because he’s too weak to fight his own fights and stick up for himself.

Except…nothing happens.

The boy just glares, rubbing his cheek, and grits out, “Lucky you’re just a brat and not like that little punk. I don’t hit girls.”

And just like that, he storms off. Heavy, angry stomps trailing behind him as he leaves you to let out a shaky breath of relief and marvel at your luck—you don’t typically run into people with standards when it comes to who they pick on. But, all things considered, you survived, and your parents won’t have to pay for your tombstone. You count your blessings and thank whoever’s looking over you.

And then you glance down at Phainon. He’s still sitting there, looking at you like you just parted the sea.

“You’re pretty pathetic,” you mutter.

“You’re pretty cool,” he says in awe.

“You should learn how to throw a punch or two.”

He grins, tears long forgotten as he stands up, brushes his hands on the front of his pants, and wipes his nose on his sleeve. You wrinkle your own nose at the snot stain he leaves behind.

“That’s okay,” he beams, “you can always just slap the bullies across the face like that for me, right?”

“No,” you gape, “I’m not your baby sitter—”

“I’m Phainon!” he holds a hand out to you. You look at it with a raised eyebrow before curling your lips in disgust.

“And I’m going home,” you say flatly.

You turn on your heel and start walking home promptly. You don’t want to make friends with the other new kid—especially not since he seems so much more well-adjusted to his new environment than you. (It’s a sort of bitterness only someone so young would feel. Being eleven and just on the cusp of twelve isn’t the age where rationality and logic are factored in with most decisions. Maybe, if you were older, you’d realize your bitterness has nothing to do with Phainon and everything to do with your inability to let go of your homesickness from moving.)

But Phainon is hard to shake off. He jogs after you and falls into step beside you as he pipes up, “You live down the street. I saw your moving trucks. My mom said I should be friends with you because you’re new too!”

“I don’t want to make friends,” you grumble out.

“Why not?” he looks bewildered, “being new and friendless is no fun.”

“Because I’m not staying here for long,” you snap, “I’m gonna save up and move back as soon as I get the chance. I don’t need to make friends somewhere that I’m not staying for long.”

He looks skeptical. It only makes you angrier as you throw him a sharp glare for having the audacity to not take you seriously, and he at least has the sense to quickly put his hands up in surrender as he murmurs, “Okay, okay! I believe you. But we can still be friends until you leave, right?”

“Whatever,” you roll your eyes. He walks you home. You feel a little less lonely on the way back.

(In the end, you never move away like you said. He never stops being your friend. You can’t say you hate it even if you never admit it out loud.)

— — — — — — — — — —

Phainon is sixteen when you first realize he is no longer that puny, bite-sized little runt that got bullied by the older kids for being new. He doesn’t need saving anymore.

(He still cries as easily, though—it just happens with a little more dignity. He cries during movies and when he’s stressed from school and maybe after a bad day, but he doesn’t do it so easily in front of other people anymore.

Still, he always does in front of you.

Pathetic, you always call him. So mean, he always pouts. And then you hug him and he hugs you back and you remember the little boy you grew up alongside for the last four years. The one who’s two months, one week, and four days older than you, even though it doesn’t feel like it.)

It happens on a Friday night.

You go on a date. It’s your first one ever, in fact. Your father isn’t too happy, but your mother is ecstatic, and after a couple of convincing words from her, he reluctantly allows it to happen as long as you know your curfew and keep your location on at all times. You’re excited.

Until you’re not.

You think the date is going rather well. Really well. You like the boy, and he’s handsome and funny, and he listens to you when you ramble about the things you like. It’s a good date. Your mother bought you a new dress, and it’s your favorite color, and you even do your makeup a little nicer than you usually do. Everything feels right. Everything feels like it’s going how it should, and some naive part of you starts to dream about a high school romance that blossoms into something serious. Maybe at the wedding, you’ll speak about this date. How your father was against it, but your mother was thrilled. How you tried on seven dresses before this one, and had started to get antsy until you tried it on and knew it was the one. How you watched a YouTube video or two to learn how to do your eyeshadow properly, because you’re not used to doing it the fancy ways that older girls seem to do.

It’s all going well. Until your date politely goes to the bathroom and you wait for five minutes, which turns to ten, which turns to fifteen, and then at twenty minutes, your waiter comes and holds an apologetic look on his face as he informs you that the bathroom is empty after you insist for the third time that your date is just taking a while in there.

It guts you.

You don’t even know how or when he managed to slip out and leave you alone and stupidly waiting, but he does. Long gone are your dreams of a sweet high school romance and a big, happy wedding where you smile and remember the silly old days when you’d get dropped off to your dates by your mother ten minutes early as you anxiously check your makeup in the mirror. (And yes, maybe later you’d look back and laugh at how naive you were to think one silly date would snowball into all of that, but you’re sixteen. And at sixteen, your world feels like it’s the only thing that exists, and your problems feel like they’re bigger than they are.)

In the end, the only thing you can think of doing is calling Phainon. He comes in ten minutes flat, waiting outside in his father’s car that he’s allowed to use on weekends only and nothing more. (He’s sixteen and you’re still fifteen, so he’s licensed and you’re not. He likes to brag. You don’t typically find it as amusing as he does. Right now, though, you’re grateful. )

You get in the passenger seat, and before he can even ask, you burst into tears. He makes a face that you can’t quite discern. But he’s not happy—you know that much as easily as you know Phainon.

“What happened?” he asks softly, “It didn’t go well?”

“It was,” you sob, “I-I th-thought it was! We were talking, a-and laughing, and…and he asked me things and then…h-he went to the bathroom and he just disappeared for like…like half an hour! And the waiter checked the bathroom a-and he wasn’t there…and it was so embarrassing!”

He’s silent. For a long time, Phainon is quiet and he doesn’t say anything. It’s unlike him. He never lets the silence go on for long before he fills it with something. Whether it’s stupid or sweet or funny or annoying, Phainon always has something to say to you. He never runs out of things to talk about. It’s always been like that. He’s never had a problem talking your ear off and keeping you company and following you around and filling the silence with his voice. You never realized how deep it had gotten over the years until you watched some old videos back. The first time he was gone for a whole summer, you didn’t realize how quiet the world was until the only way you could talk to him was over text.

But he’s quiet now, and he just lets you cry. Softly, he reaches out and brushes tears from your cheeks gently as he murmurs, “Your makeup is pretty tonight. You shouldn’t ruin it, you know.”

“There’s no point,” you sniffle, “it’s not like anyone is gonna see it now, anyway.”

“I’m seeing it,” he insists, “just because some weird asshole doesn’t appreciate a nice smokey eye doesn’t mean I can’t.”

“This isn’t a smokey eye look.”

“Whatever it is,” he shrugs, “it looks good. You’re pretty.”

He says it easily, like it’s not weird or awkward or makes him shy to point it out. He says it so plainly, it’s like some passing observation he makes and doesn’t have to think too hard on. You’re pretty. Even when you cry your makeup off, he thinks that.

“I don’t want to go home,” you whisper, “my mom is gonna be sad and my dad will get angry when he knows what happened to me, and I just…don’t feel like dealing with that mess.”

“Then don’t,” he offers.

You raise a brow, sniffling as you reach into the compartment and grab the tissues that you know are there, and blow your nose. He stifles a smile at the way it’s loud. “What am I supposed to do then, just sit in here?” you ask blandly.

“Why not? We can drive for a while. In fact, we can get milkshakes.”

“Are you buying?” you perk up.

He snorts, looking at you in amusement as he mumbles, “Don’t I always have to?”

You beam at that. It’s true—he does always buy.

He takes you to a drive-thru and buys you a milkshake like he always does when he drives you somewhere. You add in a side of fries and he lets you, paying without a complaint and handing you your order as it comes through the window. It’s nice. It feels like it always does when it’s you and Phainon, and you forget the shallow asshole who broke your heart on your first date not even an hour ago. He parks in the parking lot and you sit and share your fries, and when he dips his in ketchup, you wrinkle your nose—and when you dip yours in your milkshake, he wrinkles his.

“I’m never going on a date again,” you mumble.

“Don’t say that,” he says softly, “you might miss out on a super handsome and nice guy some day who’s waiting for you.”

“That sounds like something my mom would say,” you snort.

He cracks a grin, chuckling as he offers, “Well, that’s probably why I’m so smart. You should listen to me more.”

“I don’t know about that one,” you tease, “you’re still the same crybaby from middle school.”

“I’m not a crybaby!” He gasps, “Quit saying that! Being emotionally intelligent and being a crybaby are not the same thing, you jerk!”

“Is that what you like to call it?” You laugh, throwing your head back against your seat. He stares. For a good, long moment, he stares as you laugh, and you never catch it. (He wonders sometimes if you will. If some day he’ll stare and you’ll finally notice that he only ever looks at you.)

“Yes,” he grumbles, “I am, in fact, emotionally intelligent. And women are really into men who are smart about their feelings.”

“I’m sure they are,” you give him a sarcastic nod. “And I bet they—”

“Hang on,” he says, stopping you.

You pause as he interrupts your sentence, and before you can even blink, his door is opened and then closed, and Phainon is gone. He’s left the car and he’s walking over to some group of boys who leave the fast food place you’re parked outside of, and you can’t figure out what on Earth would make him leave so abruptly to go over and—oh.

Your eyes widen as you realize.

Oh.

Something in your heart sinks deep into the bottom of your stomach as you realize your date is standing there among the group of boys with a bag of food in his hands and a drink. Something else in you gets a lick of anger that starts to burn in the pit of your stomach as you think about how he left you to pay for his meal while he’s here buying himself a whole new one after ditching you. And then your eyes widen when in a quick second, Phainon has swug his arm and landed a solid punch right in the jaw and knocked the guy onto his ass as he towers over him. You blink once, then twice, and then you quickly take your seatbelt off and climb out of the car as you rush over.

There’s a chorus of deep, angry voices back and forth and you can’t make out more than a few words at a time as everyone speaks over each other—Phainon, your asshole date, and his asshole (by association) friends.

“Yo, what the fuck—”

“He had that coming—” (Phainon.)

“Who the hell are you—”

“What’s your fucking problem man—”

“You get off on being an asshole, or something?” (Also Phainon.)

Maybe if you weren’t so worried, you would think about why Phainon’s voice is the only one you can make out so easily in a mess of all these other voices. Maybe if you weren’t worried about a group of boys outnumbering him as they approach him and try to beat him to a pulp, you might think more about the implications of that and what that means.

But you don’t. You can’t. Not when you have to go and save him, just like the day you met him, from boys who are stronger than him and can knock him to the ground easily.

Except he doesn’t need you to save him. Phainon…holds his own against three boys who come swinging at him, and…he does surprisingly well. He shrugs off each guy one by one and lands a punch when he needs to, and soon enough, when they realize that he’s a little too strong for any of them to properly take on, they call him a few names and leave a few empty threats before they leave. You stand a short distance away and watch, blinking as you process the whole exchange.

Finally, with a shaky breath, he turns to face you with a guilty look on his face.

“Sorry, I know I probably shouldn’t have done—”

“When did you get strong?” you interrupt, flabbergasted. “You can fight?”

He looks almost a little offended. “What do you mean? Why do you have to say that like I can’t be strong?”

“I used to save you from the older boys all the time,” you gape, “and all you ever did was cry! Since when do you know how to throw a punch?”

“I was twelve!” He sputters, looking at you in equal parts disbelief and equal parts embarrassment. “I’m way bigger now! I’m taller than you!” (He is.)

“You’re still a crybaby!”

“Am not!”

“You fought four guys and won,” you breathe out, like the concept is something you still can’t quite wrap your head around. (You can’t.)

He shoots you a glare and grumbles, “I am grown now, okay? You don’t have to keep acting like I’m the scrawny kid you saved in middle school.”

“You are the scrawny kid,” you argue.

“Am not! Look, I’ve been working out!” He flexes his arm, and sure enough, there’s a bulge of muscle forming at his bicep, and it makes you stare in disbelief as you take in the way Phainon has really changed. You never notice it because he’s with you every day, and every single day has started to leave its mark on him, but you’re too caught up in knowing him the way he is to think about knowing him the way he isn’t anymore.

But he’s stronger now. His voice is deeper, and he’s taller, and he has some muscle to him. You look at him properly for a moment, and it occurs to you for the first time that the chubbiness of his round face and baby cheeks are gone and they’re replaced with a strong, sharp set of cheekbones that carve his face perfectly. His hair is longer, too—and you think it suits him better this way. He parts his hair in a way that looks less childlike and more mature.

But his eyes are still the same. Same shade of blue. Same puppy look as he stares at you, mildly offended. Same soft, delicate orbs that look you in the eye, always, and never look away.

“Oh my god,” you mutter, “what is happening to you? This is freaky.”

He cracks a smug grin before he teases, “I’m growing up. Try not to fall in love with me—pretty soon, I’ll be a heartthrob.”

You bite back a grin and give him a scoff. “I doubt that. You’re about as interesting as cardboard.”

(You lie. In the end, you go against your own words, and you do fall in love with him. It’s hard not to. It’s hard not to fall in love with him, the more time passes every day. You never admit it, but you notice every little thing about him that changes from then on.)

— — — — — — — — — —

You’re eighteen when Phainon and you don’t just kiss, but share your first time. It’s on your birthday. There’s something there between the two of you that you both know is there. It’s impossible not to notice it.

You leave for college in two months, and he might not be going to the same one as you, but it's close enough that you can see him whenever you want. (Whenever you want—it’s what he had said when he first told you he wasn’t picking the same college as you. The look on your face was enough to voice your devastation without actually using any words, but he only laughed and murmured, I’ll be close by. You can still see me whenever you want, yeah?)

It happens in his car. It’s no longer his dad’s old one that he had to ask for permission to use only when his father wasn’t using it. This one is his, and he can drive it whenever he wants and wherever he pleases. Because you’re both old enough for that now—driving around and going places without needing to worry about curfews and school nights and your parents’ angry texts about being home soon.

“I’m officially an adult,” you tell him in his car, drinking the last of your milkshake that, as always, he’s paid for. (It’s your birthday, though, so you think it's especially fair that he pays because no one should expect the birthday person to pay for their milkshake.)

“Congrats,” he hums, “they grow up so fast,” he adds with a soft, dramatic sniffle.

“You’re not old enough to act like there’s a difference,” you roll your eyes, “I doubt in two months you’ve learned things like how mortgages and property taxes work.”

“Well, it’s actually two months, one week, and four days,” he corrects with a pointed look, as if it really makes all the difference, “and I’ll probably still learn all that shit before you do because I’m older.”

“Yeah, but you’ll also probably die first since you’re older,” you point out cheekily.

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” he huffs.

“You always decide how things work when it’s convenient for you, you prick,” you accuse, shoving him away as he chuckles and steals a french fry from your share.

He’s stopped laughing when his eyes meet yours, and something about the way he looks at you feels a little out of the ordinary. The wrappers are crumpled, the milkshakes are almost gone, and you’re both sitting in the same parking lot you have for years in the middle of the night, nothing but just the light over your heads in his car illuminating him just enough that you can still make out that soft blue of his eyes.

Everything is the same. The parking lot, the milkshakes, the way you drain his wallet, and he lets it happen, the way it’s you and him and no one else. Nothing has changed. Nothing but you and Phainon. You’re both different—something about you and him is different.

“What?” you ask.

Phainon shrugs, smiling to himself. “Dunno,” he says. “Guess you just look old.”

You scowl as he throws you a lopsided grin. (You think, regretfully, that it’s quite handsome.) “And you look geriatric,” you hiss back.

His smile becomes a little softer, and something in it flickers—sad, maybe. You can’t tell exactly what it is, but you do know it makes something in your heart ache. Something like longing fills you up to the brim—it’s funny, you think. Even when Phainon is right next to you, all you can do is long for him anymore. You wonder when that started. Maybe it was the day you noticed he was bigger and taller. Maybe it was the day you noticed he paid with a credit card and not cash anymore, like a proper grown man. Maybe it was the day you realized his front teeth were no longer crooked and his smile was as bright as those perfectly blue eyes of his.

“I’m gonna miss this,” he admits quietly.

You don’t ask what he means. You already know.

It’s not the milkshakes, or the shared fries, or the way he always pays, no matter how much you can easily afford it on your own by now. It’s the way he’s home for you. The way you moved when you didn’t want to, and you didn’t get a say because you were only eleven and your parents made those kinds of decisions for you—when you left behind everything you loved, and Phainon took on the burden of becoming everything you’ll relearn to care about. When you promised to move away the first chance you got, he made you want to stay without trying. Now it’s not the same—now you move, and so does he, and you both make those decisions on your own because you're older now.

You’ll miss it. The quiet nights in his car and the long, stupid, pointless, aimless conversations that always meant the most when you babbled about nothing. The easy, familiar way you’ve always fit together—ever since he was twelve and you were eleven, all the way until now, after you both grew and grew and the days added up until they totaled to you both being eighteen-year-old adults. You’ll miss the way you’ll open your door, and you’ll see him waving down the street as he opens his. You’ll miss the way he can crawl to your window and sneak in to play card games, and your mother isn’t surprised as she makes him breakfast when you both accidentally fall asleep before he can leave. You’ll miss the way the world felt small, and all you knew was this. Here. Phainon and you and the town that becomes home, even when you didn’t want it to be, all because of him.

“You don’t have to miss it,” you say, trying to convince yourself it’s true. “We’re not going far.”

“Maybe not,” he murmurs. “But it won’t be like this. Not exactly.”

It won’t.

It won’t ever be like the way you guys are now, how you were over the years. When he sat on the ground and cried after being picked on and you saved him. When he came over and met your mother for the first time, and she looked relieved at the fact that you finally made some friends. When you let him borrow your favorite book, and he gave it back with the pages dog-eared and you had your first argument over your ruined book. When he rescued you after your awful first date and spent the night with you so you’d go home happy. When you rear-ended the car in front of you, and he was sitting passenger as he tried to warn you that you weren’t hitting the brakes soon enough.

“Is it a bad thing, do you think?” you murmur hesitantly, “if things change?”

“Maybe not,” he says, leaning closer as he looks at you better.

And then you kiss him. Or maybe he kisses you. What matters is that you’re kissing each other. It’s been a long time coming—your parents have teased you about him, and your friends have always been too nosy about just how close you really are, and your teachers have always meddled with seating arrangements to make sure you’re close by each other because they’re certain something is going on.

He smiles into the kiss. It’s giddy and sweet and a touch clumsy as he presses into you closer, leaning over the center console of his car to get closer to you. You giggle. A soft, delicate little sound that makes his breath hitch before he moves again to swallow it up, drinking in the small, precious little sounds of joy you make against his mouth as his hand cups your cheek and your arms swing lazily over his shoulders.

“I think things are already changing,” you breathe as soon as you pull away, “so it can’t be so bad.”

“Maybe not bad at all,” he chuckles.

“Are you still gonna miss it?” you ask softly.

“Hm,” he pretends to think, “let me try this again and see what I like better just to be sure.”

You laugh against his mouth as he kisses you, pecking your lips once, twice, a third time before he’s back to pressing his against you with a lingering pressure. Some part of you knew this was going to happen. You didn’t know when or how, but you think this is a good way to let it happen. You knew that day he came to your defense in that parking lot—when he didn’t have to, but he did because he cared enough to. When he showed you he was bigger than you remember and growing more than you realized, and could take care of you just like you took care of him. (Maybe he’s been taking care of you all this time, and you just didn’t realize it. Maybe when you stopped being lonely and finally felt like you made a home on the street that he came at the same time as you, he was looking out for you all along.)

“I think change is an inevitable part of life,” he murmurs, “we shouldn’t avoid it.”

“Hm, that’s very grown-up of you to say,” you tease.

“Thank you,” he grins—stupidly handsome, and annoyingly cheeky. And you love him for it. “I am older, you know. By two months, one—”

“—One week and four days, yes, I know,” you interrupt, rolling your eyes. “Shut up.”

He does. He shuts up only to press his lips against yours again and kiss you like he’s been waiting years to do it. (He has. He’s waited many, many years to do this. More than he thinks you might even realize—he doesn’t think you understand how much he’s changed until rather recently, but that’s okay. He could wait. He did. He waited and he waited and he’d always have waited if it was for you.)

“Do…” he pauses, nervously taking in a shaky breath as he mumbles, “do you…want to like…w-well, we don’t have to do anything…but if you want—”

“At least this much hasn’t changed,” you snort, interrupting him, “and maybe it won’t—you’re still lame.”

He scowls at that, and as if he has something to prove, he climbs (and fumbles a little) into the back seat before his hand grabs your wrist and tugs you to follow. And when you fumble your way onto his lap with a squeak, flustered as your chest is pressed right up against his own (rather sturdy one), he murmurs, “Yeah? Is that what you think?”

“Yeah,” you swallow, looking into his eyes for a short second before quickly looking away, “it is.”

“Guess I’ll just have to change that,” he hums.

Suddenly, your lips are once more coated with the heat of his, and you close your eyes and fall apart in his arms. You press more of your weight onto him, letting him slump back against the backseat of his car while your hands weave into his hair and tug. He groans deeply. It’s a sound you’ve never heard from him—ever.

His hands bring you closer, and as your body is pressed against his with even less space, you feel it—something hard that pokes against your leg that you’re certain you know what it is. But, just to be sure, you pull away to look at him.

“What’s that?” you hum, grinning smugly as you move your thighs to brush over the hardness once more, “is that—”

“You know exactly what it is,” he huffs, flushing a soft pink that you can just barely make out in the dark, “now quit talking so much.”

“You don’t like me when I’m chatty?” you pout.

“I like you always,” he says bluntly, lips forming a small pout as he adds, “but I like you a little less than other times right now for being rude.”

“I’m not being rude! I’m simply making an observation—mmph!”

He cuts you off with another hard, impatient kiss before he pulls away and lets his thumb brush over your lip, smearing your already messy lip gloss some more as he murmurs, “I always wondered how that tasted. Seen you apply it so many times.”

“It’s pretty sweet, isn’t it?” you wink cheekily, “strawberry flavored.”

With that, you wrap your lips around his thumb and slowly roll your tongue around the digit, swallowing around it as you suck. It’s probably the filthiest thing you’ve done—which is not a lot. The filthiest thing you’ve done prior was sitting on a boy’s lap and feeling his hard-on against your thigh as you kissed him. There are a lot of firsts it seems he’s hell bent on taking from you tonight. Luckily, there’s not a lot of firsts you’re unwilling to give.

He groans at the warmth of your mouth, the wet glide of your tongue making him stare at you with hazy, lust-filled eyes before he pulls his hand away from your lips, hoisting you up enough so he can reach under your skirt and pull your panties down. They’re drenched. He takes a second to stare at them through the darkness of the backseat of his car while it’s your turn to feel heat spread across your cheeks and up to your ears.

“Stop looking, you pervert!” you hiss.

He gives you a not very apologetic grin. “Sorry,” he lies through his perfect, pearly whites, “guess that’s not very chivalrous of me, huh?”

You snort as you murmur, “You had your finger in my mouth a second ago.”

“And who put that there?” he teases. You feel your cheeks burn again—but he spares you the embarrassment a second time as he pulls your underwear down your thighs enough to leave your aching cunt exposed before he murmurs, “Do it again one more time for me, baby.”

You open without thinking as he presses his middle and ring fingers into your mouth, letting your tongue roll around them, too. You coat them well, the wetness of your mouth covering his fingers as his thumb strokes your cheek. His cheeks are flushed pink from the sight alone. Your throat bobbing from every swallow around his digits has him imagining much more lewd fantasies, and you can tell that from just the way his pupils lose focus, dilating at the image of you. You moan around him, and his breath hitches as he feels the vibrations from the sound.

It’s dirty, the way he’s thinking about you. Almost as dirty as the way you look as you suck on his fingers—and when he pulls them out and uses his fingers to press into your cunt, it feels dirty to be worked open with your own spit as the lubricant that helps him slip inside easily. Well…you suppose the way your core is dripping is also part of the reason why it’s so easy, but you don’t focus on that.

Instead, the only thing you can focus on is the way he curls into you as he thrusts his fingers in and out, in and out like he knows exactly what you need. His fingers are longer than yours. The only thing that’s ever been inside of you are your own digits when it’s late and night and you force yourself to stay quiet in your room—but Phainon’s fingers reach deeper and there’s no one here you have to be quiet for, so you whimper loudly as he presses into your walls and finds some spot deep in there that you’ve never felt before.

“Well,” he chuckles, “that was easy. I found it,” he gives you a cheeky grin.

“Sh-shut up,” you hiss, the sound tapering off into a moan as the heel of his palm glides over your clit while he angles his hand in and out of you.

He’s never done this before—it’s good, and it feels better than anything you’ve ever felt yourself, but he’s still never done this before, and it shows. He doesn’t get the rhythm quite right as he goes faster than you like, and when your hand gently grabs his wrist, he pauses and looks at you in alarm.

“W-what’s wrong? You want to stop? I-I’m sorry, I…I got carried away, I didn’t think—here,” he goes to pull his fingers and you hiss, tightening your grip and keeping him in place as he pauses and looks at you, bewildered.

“Just…just go slower,” you breathe, panting softly, “that’s all.”

“O-oh…” he nods slowly at first, then again with more confidence. “Okay.”

It’s better this time. He paces it better and watches your face for your reactions as he slows the timing of his fingers pressing into you, applying pressure with every thrust against a sweet spot you didn’t even know you had. It makes your head feel light and your ears hear things all muffled. You can hear his labored breaths as he watches you, and you can hear your own (almost embarrassing) noises as he works you higher, higher, higher to some invisible height that you can feel yourself slowly become closer and closer to plummeting off of.

“K-kiss,” you gasp, pleading as you lean closer, and he chuckles before he indulges you.

“Anything you want,” he murmurs, and then that familiar warm pressure of his soft, yet chapped lips is the final push you need to fall off the edge. You whine into his mouth, and he drinks in every sound like he’s parched, swallowing down your noises as your walls flutter around his fingers.

He works you through it. It feels better when it’s someone else—he’s not distracted by the feeling of being overwhelmed to falter in rhythm or pace. In fact, he’s extra careful as he watches you, rolling his palm over your clit and pressing the tips of his fingers in and out of you as your walls erratically clamp around him.

“Fuck,” you breathe out, gasping as a particularly harsh wave of your orgasm crashes over you, “Ph-phainon, fuck.”

“Feel good?” he murmurs, kissing your jaw as your mouth parts with a soft, delicate moan. It’s endearing. He’s not even smug anymore—all you do is fill him up with affection as he watches you.

“Yes,” you gasp, “oh god, yes!”

“Good,” he hums.

His forehead presses against yours as you finish, letting you calm down and take heaving breaths while he pulls his fingers out of your cunt and rubs the small of your back with his other hand. You clutch onto his shirt, fingers grasping onto the fabric to ground yourself while he admires the glow of your sweaty, damp skin.

“When did things change for you?” you whisper, not meeting his eyes. “Between…between us?”

“Hm…” he hums softly, “Don’t know. I think…I think they never really had to change. I always knew I wanted you.”

“Oh,” you mumble, still nervously toying with the fabric of his shirt. You don’t know what to say, so you say it again. “That…oh.”

He laughs softly, like the idea of things not being the same for you doesn’t bother him. (It doesn’t. He got you, he thinks. As long as it’s that outcome, he could have always waited longer.)

“When did they change for you?”

“When we were sixteen,” you barely force out, “when you…when you took on those guys. In the parking lot.”

“On your first date that broke your heart?” He gasps, “I owe your heartbreak to swinging things in my favor? That feels a little wrong,” he says dramatically, “I almost feel like I’ve manipulated you!”

“Oh, fuck off,” you roll your eyes, breaking into a small grin.

He laughs. It’s sweet. He’s always had that charm about him, even when it didn’t make you want him badly. “I think I told you not to fall in love with me, too. Seems like my words had the opposite effect,” he wiggles his brows.

You snort, shoving him lightly as you whisper, “It just felt nice to know you care. Like my feelings were yours, too.”

His eyes soften, and Phainon, you realize, has the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen. So blue, you could mistake them for the ocean and get called over like a siren luring you in, drowning you until your lungs are heavy and filled with something that makes it hard to breathe.

“I always cared,” he hums, “still do. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” you bite your lip as you fight back a wide, giddy grin. “Yeah, I do.”

And you kiss him. This time, you know it’s you who does it first because he stiffens for a moment with a hitch of his breath before he melts into it. You’ve kissed so many times tonight, you don’t know why the feeling keeps shocking you, but it does. It’s new every time, but never unfamiliar. You know him—you know him like the back of your hand, and you’d know him with your eyes closed. But you’re still learning him. The way he parts his lips and the pattern of how he nips yours. The way he tugs you closer when he’s overwhelmed, so he can squeeze your hips and ground himself. The way he lets out a soft, barely-there whine when you tug at his hair without realizing it.

“I want you,” he breathes, “i-is that…is that okay?”

“Yes,” you practically beg, “yes—please.”

He clumsily undoes his belt and unzips his pants with shaky hands. You try not to watch and make it awkward. (It is, just a little. But it’s not bad. Nothing ever is with him.) You try to keep your expression neutral as his aching cock is finally freed from its confinements, springing up with a hard, leaky tip as pre cum collects in a small bead. It’s big—it curves a little to the side and the vein is thick along the bottom, and a part of you itches to wrap your hand around it and feel its weight in your grasp.

He flushes as you stare and breathes heavily.

“Can…can I…” You hesitate before gesturing at it.

He nearly passes out from shame when he nods too quickly, forcing himself to slow down and throw on a faux sense of nonchalance as he stutters out, “Y-yeah, yeah that…that’s cool. With me. If you want, that is.”

You nod. Slowly, hesitantly, your thumb smears the leaking pre cum at the tip along the head of his cock before you wrap your hand around him and squeeze slightly. He chokes, gripping your hips tightly as his jaw clenches and his eyes shut tightly while he tries to keep his breathing steady.

“Is this okay?” you whisper.

“More than okay,” he says, voice strained.

“Okay,” you nod, and, a little more confidently, you stroke along his length, watching as he melts and the tension leaves his shoulders, his face slackening while he lets out a soft moan. It feels good—you can tell that much as his head falls back and he lets out a soft, throaty sound when you squeeze a little at the tip before stroking down again.

It doesn’t last long, but you like it, you decide. You like making Phainon feel good. You like the way he looks when you touch him, and you like the feeling you get when you take care of him and give him something without taking anything back. But he stops you before long, and you pause as you raise a brow in confusion.

“J-just…I don’t think I’ll last if we keep…”

He’s red in the face when your eyes widen—you can tell even if it's dark. “Right,” you smile softly, “okay. Do you have…”

“Y-yeah,” he nods, “right…right, yeah.” He fishes out a condom from his pocket, and it takes everything in you not to ask the question in the back of your head of why he keeps one.

(A spark of jealousy clouds your mind for a moment, of whether or not this is something he’s done before with someone other than you to need one, but then you realize that you know Phainon. Better than anyone else, you know him, and you know he’d at least tell you if he’d ever done something like this before.

Because it’s you—you’ve known for a while now that there isn’t anyone else other than you.

The jealousy dies down, and all that’s left is endearment—you’ll tease him later about carrying a condom around like he’s preparing. For now, though, you’re grateful.)

It takes a tense moment of fumbling around with opening and rolling it over his length, trying not to let your hands visibly shake as he makes soft, breathy sound at your touch before gently, you raise your hips, hand still wrapped around his length while you guide him to your folds, the tip brushing along the slick, warm entrance of your cunt and making you both shiver. His hands find your hips, holding tightly as he guides you down, inch by slow inch taken one by one until he’s as deep as he’ll go and you’re sat on his cock, panting and quivering on his lap.

“T-tell me when it’s okay to m-move,” he grits.

“Okay,” you whisper shakily, trying to accommodate his size. It’s a stretch—it burns slightly, but you welcome it wholly. You’ve never taken anything as big as Phainon, and faintly, you hope you’ll never have to compare the size with anything else because you think this is it. This is perfect and what you were made to take. He’s perfect and what you were made to take. You fit like he was tailor-made to fit in you, and you don’t think anyone else will ever replace this.

This feeling. Him. What he means to you. Everything about Phainon is perfect to you—perfect for you. You don’t think it’ll ever be anyone but him.

“Okay,” you plead, “you��you can move now.”

With that, he guides your hips up, almost pulling you off of him completely before he brings you down, helping you slam down on him while thrusting his hips up and meeting you halfway. He’s thick, too, girth-wise—stretches you in a way that adds to the pleasure apart from just pressing against a spot your fingers used to never reach. You thought it was good before when he was just using his hand, but the real thing is even better. Everything around you stops. All you know is Phainon. All you ever want to know is Phainon.

“F-fuck,” he pants, and you barely register his voice cracking as he shoves his face into your neck, “y-you…feel incredible. I’ve always wanted you. You have no idea how fucking bad.”

Something wet hits your neck. You suck in a sharp breath as his hand pulls you down, helping you rock your hips onto him and slam down harder on his cock, taking him deeper inside of you and practically cling to him while he maneuvers your body the way he needs. The way you need.

“A-are you…seriously crying?” you gasp, “Now?”

“No,” he huffs. As if to distract you, he reaches between your bodies and finds your clit with his thumb and rolls harsh, fast circles while a strong, muscled arm wraps around your waist and guides you along a rhythm that has him nudging the tip of his cock hard and blunt against the back of your walls.

“You are,” you accuse. “Do you ever quit being a cry—” you moan and cut yourself off when his tip practically bruises the spot it presses against hard and fast, angling to meet exactly where you fall apart.

“Not a crybaby,” he argues, and his pace gets sloppy as he ruts his hips up into you. You can feel it, too—the beginnings of your second high of the night approaching you as you try to snap your hips and bounce along his length to match his pace.

It’s going to hit you harder this time. You can tell—you can practically feel it as it comes slowly but surely, creeping up on you in a way that makes you anticipate it blindly.

“M’close,” you pant, “m’so so close, Phai…Phainon.”

“Yeah? You are? M-me too, baby,” he groans. You clench around him at the pet name, and he has the audacity to chuckle about it, murmuring a low, “like being called that, huh? You’re so fuckin’ tight, baby—y’know that?”

“Fuck,” you whine, and with one last roll of your hips that he meets with his own thrust upwards, you fall apart while his thumb rubs its circles along your clit.

Your orgasm comes harder than you expect it to—it’s different when he’s that deep and stretches you out so well. It’s different when he rolls his hips to continue to fuck into you to work you through your high. It’s not like other times you’ve cum on your own, and it’s not like the time he made you cum on his fingers. This is entirely different. You can feel the twitching of his cock as the thickess bullies into you, splitting you open while you fall apart on him.

He follows not long after you, the tightening of your walls around him in spasms pulling him into his own release. It’s warm—you can make out the feeling of his release through the thin barrier of plastic as he fills it with thick ropes of cum. He pants your name through a soft, breathless voice, and you slump against his chest and lay your cheek on his shoulder as you ride through the final few waves of your peak.

When he finishes, he slumps back against the seat, chest rising and falling beneath you as he tries to catch his breath. His arms are still wrapped around you, loose and warm, like he can’t quite bring himself to let go yet.

“How was it?” he asks, voice tentative, almost shy.

“Good,” you whisper, still a little breathless. “I-it was… really good.”

“Me too,” he says with a quiet smile. You can hear it in his words. “It was really good for me, too.”

You snort. “Is that why you cried?”

He groans, burying his face against your shoulder as his arms tighten around you in protest. “No,” he grumbles, muffled. “I just… got…”

“Emotional?” you tease, the corner of your mouth twitching up.

“Yes,” he huffs, clearly flustered. “The way I feel about you…” He trails off for a second, like he’s waiting for the right words to show up. “It’s just… a lot,” he says finally, soft and vulnerable. “You make me feel a lot.”

“I know,” you say, muffled by his shirt, “I…I feel it, too.”

“Yeah?” he beams.

“Yeah,” you grin.

(You want to tell him that night—that you love him. That you have for a while. That you know you always will. You don’t have the courage to, though, but you never bring yourself to regret it. Maybe because it almost feels like he’s always known.)

— — — — — — — — — —

You’re twenty-three when Phainon proposes. It…doesn’t go how he wants.

He plans it out—it’s meticulous, and sweet, and it was going to be perfect and everything he’s ever wanted and everything he knows you wanted, too. He takes you on a nice, fancy trip, and you’re by the beach where you can feel the sun kiss your skin along with the warm breeze. On the last day, he can sit and admire you as you enjoy the beach one last time happily, and when the sun gets close to setting, he’ll drag you for a walk along the shore where the tides will come and wash away your footprints as they come. And when the sky is pink and purple and orange and every other color of the sunset that reflects in your eyes, he’ll get on one knee and ask you to be his wife.

And then it rains.

It rains hard.

You both gather your things as quickly as you can and run for the car—a fancy rental that he spent quite a pretty penny on to get for this trip, because it’s the kind you’ve always wanted to have and you’re still just barely out of college to have enough saved for it.

You climb into the car, drenched and panting from running, and still beautiful. And he feels his world crumble all at once as he sees that dazzling smile on your face while your hand brushes your forehead and wipes away droplets of water.

He notices your finger. Ringless. His heart bleeds, and everything around him feels like it's caving in on him, and he can’t breathe.

“My goodness,” you giggle, “who’d have thought the rain had it out for us on our last day, huh?”

He swallows thickly at that. And he tries—he tries so hard to keep on that brave face and act like it’s okay. It’s fine. He can wait and plan something else. He has time to make it better, more perfect for you. That’s what you deserve, anyway. He’ll make you smile bigger, make you want to say yes even harder.

This is okay. He still has you. He knows you. He knows you’ll say yes. It doesn’t matter if it’s now or a little later—he still has you.

And yet, when his face crumples and the dryness of his throat is something he realizes he’s not able to control, he understands why you’ve always called him a crybaby. Because that’s exactly what he is. He’s going to cry, and you’re going to be worried, and he’s going to have to explain why he’s upset and ruin your surprise and the most perfect moment of your life.

“Phainon?” You freeze, noticing the beginning of tears collecting in his eyes that he tries desperately to blink away. He swallows thickly, and your hand instantly moves to cup his wet face. “Baby, what’s happened? Did you leave something? We can go back and look—it’s just some rain, I don’t mind.”

“No,” he croaks, “no, it’s not that. It’s…it’s nothing,” he forces out.

“It’s not nothing,” you frown, “c’mon, you know I know you better than that. Acting like I don’t is almost insulting,” you nudge his ribs gently. It’s supposed to be good-natured. It’s supposed to be light-hearted and sweet, so he feels safe enough to let down his walls and tell you what’s on his mind because you love him. You do. You love him more than anything, and you make everything better, so he should just tell you.

But the thought of the words coming out feels like he’s a failure. Like he’s taken every ounce of your careful love and not given you what you deserved, even a little. But, as he’s starting to realize after years of arguing with you on it, Phainon is indeed a crybaby. And the tears tell on him faster than the words can, and he knows there’s no hiding anything from you.

So shakily, he grabs something small from his pocket, making you frown as you try to figure out what it is. He brings it closer, and your eyes widen, breath hitching.

You know what that is. You’d be a fool not to. You’re speechless as he sniffles and looks miserably down at the velvet box that’s tiny in his large hand.

“I…it was going to be perfect—th-the sun was supposed to set, a-and we’d go on a walk, and then when the sky was pretty I’d ask, and…and…and…” he takes a shaky breath and closes his eyes in defeat. “It was going to be perfect. For you. I had everything planned,” he croaks.

You soften. It’s quiet. For a moment, he thinks maybe this was all a mistake. Maybe you weren’t going to say yes, and all the marriage talks of the future lately were just talks and nothing more. Maybe it was too early for all this, and those were just talks of something for the distant future. Something he’d have to wait a bit longer for. And that’s fine—he would. He’d wait for you because he always has. He’s always loved you, and he’s always waited, and it’s always been okay. In the end, he’s always had you, and that’s all he’s ever needed.

Somehow, no matter how many years pass, Phainon stays loving you. At first, he thought it was a crush and that it would be just a phase, but it never went away. It’s just how he is, ingrained into him since he was young—he loves you, and he can’t stop. Somehow, every year, he grows and grows, and all it does is make more room for his love in that stubborn heart of his. He’s twelve, he’s sixteen, he’s eighteen, and he’s twenty-three. Every year he’s older and he changes, yet somehow, every year, it’s still always you. Even when you’re not there, it’s always your laugh he hears in the wind as it grazes his cheeks and leaves him with the ghost of you.

Loving you comes as easily as breathing. When the air finally settles in his lungs and lets him breathe, he starts to love you even more.

It’s that simple. It always was.

He lets out a shuddering breath and mumbles, “I-it’s okay. It was probably a bad time anyway—I got carried away. J-just forget I said anything, please. I…we can just forget—”

“Oh Phainon,” you sigh, soft and breathless, “you never change, do you, you big crybaby?”

He pouts. There are still tears clinging to his cheeks, and it only proves your point further. Still, you have enough grace not to point it out as you reach and cup his cheek to wipe away a tear gently.

“I am not a crybaby,” he denies half-heartedly, “I was just emotional, okay? Being emotionally intelligent is important!”

You smile. It’s warm and bright, and it’s the same smile he’s known for over a decade, but it’s different, too. Every year it changes a little. The days leave their small footprints along your features and carve their paths as you age, and sometimes, he sees it all at once. How much you’ve changed. How your features are a little sharper now that you’ve grown into them. How small, barely-there lines are etching into your skin where you smile the most and by your eyes where they crinkle. You’re older. You’re still you.

You smile, and it’s like he’s twelve again and nothing has changed, even if he’s twenty-three.

“Ask me,” you whisper, “I’ll say yes no matter where you ask me. So quit crying and ask, you big baby.”

“What?” he gapes, still sniffling a little.

“Ask me,” you huff, giving him a soft, impatient shove. Something about you is giddy. It’s raining outside, he’s crying yet again like he always does, while you have to deal with it, your beach day has been cut short, your surprise is ruined, and you’re drenched in the rental car that he’ll have to return tomorrow before you board your flight and go home. But still, you’re giddy.

And Phainon is in love. It’s nothing new, but it’s different. It’s better. It’s always you.

“Will you marry me?” he murmurs, “I know you said you didn’t want to be my friend that day, and I was a tiny bit of a crybaby only that day,” he gives you a pointed look as you roll your eyes, “and I know you said you’d move away and never come back and you didn’t need me to be your friend but we were friends anyway. And I was always happy being friends, but changing and being more was probably the best thing ever, so maybe we should just change one more time and be husband and wife, right? We’re not on the beach or under the sun, and we’re soaking wet, but will you marry me, anyway? So I don’t live up to the crybaby allegations?”

You laugh. The sun isn’t there anymore, but light still finds a way to break over your face as you laugh, and you cry, too. You cry with him, tears collecting in your own eyes as you nod frantically and whisper, “Yes, you idiot. Yes, I’ll marry you, of course I will. Is that even a question?”

“You’re crying,” he blinks back his own tears, “who’s the crybaby now?”

“Still you,” you snort.

He grabs your hand and just like he envisioned to leave this trip, there’s a pretty little ring on your pretty little finger that catches the light and makes you look a little more different than he remembers you, but a little better than before. He didn’t meet you with a ring on your finger, but he knows you that way now. And it’s different. It’s different and it’s good.

“I love you,” he murmurs, “even though you always lie and call me a crybaby.”

“I love you, too,” you sigh exasperatedly, “even though you lie about being the damn crybaby that you are.”

(He kisses you after. Kisses you hard over the center console of the car as your fiance just like the first time he kissed you over the center console of a car as your best friend. As Phainon. As that stupid, annoying, crybaby boy you came across when he was twelve and you were still eleven and younger by only two months, one week, and four days.)

well . i don’t rly wanna talk about it so there you have it folks. do not look at me

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