Moments 

It all began with adolescent curiosity.

The first time they truly felt each other's temperature was under the old cover of Chanyeol's childhood bed. Their clammy hands gripped onto each other's hardened length with uncertainty and neither dared to move. Both boys were shaking slightly with ecstasy and fear, excited for the pending pleasure and thrill to come but also terrified of the awkwardness when it all ends. Over and over again, they assured themselves that there will not be a reoccurrence. They are just helping each other out because what else are best friends for?

With trepidation looming over his buzzed mind, Kyungsoo was the first to react. Lightly, he scratched the scorching skin under his fingers and relished in the sharp intake of pleasurable inhale escaping from Chanyeol's chapped lips. He doesn't understand why his best friend's quiet but lustful plea for more of his touch aroused him even more, but Kyungsoo knew he didn't want to this feeling to stop. So he on, becoming more aggressive yet playful with each flicker of his wrist and rub of skin on skin. Biting back his moans, Chanyeol responded him with clumsy touches of his own and before long, the air under the cover was hot and musty, saturated with their intermingling scents. Kyungsoo shut his eyes and rolled his head backward. He tried not to lose his mind from being overwhelmed by Chanyeol's distinct smell, the texture of his calloused finger pads, and the heavy sound of the lanky boy's labored breaths. All of it was so intoxicating, like the most delirious drug sending him to heaven, hell, and back. Then as they both ascended to , releasing themselves all over each other, Kyungsoo heard Chanyeol call out his name as if screaming for salvation. In that moment, something snapped in his mind, like a branch of cherry blossom falling to the ground. Suddenly, his world was flushed with pink as if overtaken by a spring storm of flower petals, and Kyungsoo leaned in. He kissed Chanyeol. And Chanyeol kissed him back.

It was almost summer. They were seventeen. Kyungsoo and Chanyeol have opened the pandora's box.

Curiosity was eventually replaced by a desperate need for ual exploration as the boys grew into young men. A nameless magnetism of sensuality flourished between them as they tried to become people they were not. By day, they were strangers with paralleled lives they found hard to call their own, and by night, they were the most intimate lovers under the starless sky and being the truest of themselves they could ever be. Chanyeol gently traced a line of butterfly kisses down the groove of Kyungsoo's back and he smiled smugly as the shorter man trapped beneath him shuddered with pleasure. Without any words, he entered Kyungsoo from behind in one and swallowed a satisfied groan as the other's tightness clamped around him. The familiar warmth he has known since they were curious boys enveloped his eager length as if welcoming him back home, and in a sense, Kyungsoo was Chanyeol's home. He always had been.

Slowly but surely, Chanyeol began to mark his scent into Kyungsoo's body, sliding in and out until their bodies were covered in a thin layer of sweat. The quiet whispers of moans and mumbles of love echoed in the darkness as limbs tangled and lips locked. From the blade of Kyungsoo's shoulders up to the nape of his long slender neck, Chanyeol left behind a crooked line of love bites into the shorter man's tender flesh. Like a beast acting on primal instinct, he wanted to claim Kyungsoo as his own and declare it to the world.

Maybe at one point in his life, he thought Kyungsoo was a phase, a best friend whom he had explored identity with. Then one morning Chanyeol woke up and realized that Kyungsoo was his everything, his maker and undoer, and someone irreplaceable. He tried to imagine a life without the shorter man but he only drew blank because it was impossible for him to even imagine such a thing. So as they laid back to chest, Chanyeol cradled his best friend and the love of his life in his arms, and he pressed a soft kiss on the tiny mole at the back of Kyungsoo's neck. "I love you," he whispered in the hushed night, "I'm tired of living a life where you're not always around. I want to be with you." And Kyungsoo answered him, just as quietly: "Me too."

It was winter. They were going on thirty. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo began their life together.

Cesare Pavese had said 'we do not remember days, but we remember moments.' Years down the road, when time has whitewashed their hair and etched wrinkles into their handsome faces, neither Kyungsoo nor Chanyeol could remember all the days they had walked through hand in hand. But they did remember the small moments in their ordinary yet extraordinary life, may it be a shared smile across the breakfast table, a hug to pacify a fight, or an action of passion that lingered throughout the night. To know every inch of each other's skin and the temperature of their beings, all that Kyungsoo and Chanyeol have loved about and loved of each other were embedded in those thousands of billions of moments they created together.

They may have begun with adolescent curiosity but they ended with a lifetime of promises. As Kyungsoo watched Chanyeol's sleeping face in the early dawn, his lips stretched into a gentle and fond smile unknowing to himself.

It was love. They were in love. 

FIN

For Nat. From Cat.

4 years with EXO & 4 ears with chansoo <3