This is the first story I have ever written outside VF so please spare me lol

Warning: self-beta'd. minor otp

It took a full minute for him to accept the dare from the annoying and noisy troop he called friends.

And it took around two minutes and a half to actually push himself up to stand in the middle of the cramped room and jerked his head to prompt the other guy to stand up as well; the slight discomfort the other guy was trying to hide was completely obvious to one's naked eye. But that wasn't really enough to pull them off their predicament, anyway, as they both knew that this was going to happen to them whether they wanted it or not.

It took a loud cheer, a heated glare, and a fiery enthusiasm from a certain red-headed, shark-toothed swimmer for them to finally stand facing each other, body pressing just an inch away from each other to face the upcoming event that wasn't really that exciting to look up to.

Finally, it took several heartbeats, a heavy sigh of a breath, and a click of a tongue for him to finally push himself to do what he was supposed to do; the dare—the little piece of shit he sure was going to regret doing later.

It only happened in a blink of five seconds—five seconds that felt like a lifetime when he finally engaged himself in the act.

He slowly brought his hand to brush the brown bangs that slightly covered his partner's face only to reveal a pair of clear green-emerald eyes; which were currently looking at him straight in the pupils with an endearing blush coloring the heated surface of his cheeks—connecting at all the right precisions through the smooth bridge of his nose and rode up to the very tips of his warm ears. He watched as those eyebrows blinked wonderingly at him, expectantly at him, as he drew his face even closer—unintentionally discovering the dazzling emerald specks that graced his irises like pearls in the deepest part of the ocean, and he suddenly found this intense urge to swim in it, dive and slice through the tempting wave to embrace the brightest, finest pearl of them all in the core of mother-nature he found in him.

As he leaned even closer, he started to notice the shortness of breath, as if he was anticipating something, that made him unable to hold in a series of short chuckle—successfully making the blush spread even wider if that's even possible to happen. He then put both palms on the sides of his partner's neck, the skin drastically grew warm underneath his touch and there were these goose bumps he accidentally touched as he laid his hands heavy on that skin.

And that was when he finally found his cue to lean in, seal the deal, and complete the dare.

It only happened in five seconds—

—but he found himself swimming in the wave of time and space; his mind suddenly creating this weird-ass fantasy where there was someone above who pressed that certain button to slow down the time to torment him, to capture him in the moment he wished he could pass in a second. But here he found himself, stuck in the game of milliseconds, while battling the sudden urge to relish in the moment he knew he couldn't pass.

It felt like the sun after the stormy night when those pair of lips touched his; its surface scrapped at all the right edges and angles that actually made his head spin in a direction he couldn't handle—pushing him with the sudden need to feel more by the addictive spell it unconsciously (or automatically) inflicted on his. He pushed his lips more insistently to get more of what he was given, his heart beat furiously underneath his chest as the hunger started crawling from the pit of his stomach to rear its ugly head; his greed and desire to take more and more of what's in front of him started to freak him out a little bit.

It surprised him a bit when a pair of hands suddenly appeared on the broad expanse of his chest—wanting to push or to pull he didn't really know, but the thought that they stayed there as the effect of his kiss made his pride swell painfully.

It was to his chagrin when the reality came crashing back onto him and slowly pulled him back from the heated act, finally finding himself looking eye-to-eye with his blushing partner from a decent distance. They stayed like that for a few seconds, absorbing the sweet taste of fresh air that they had missed in the heat of the action, as they stared at each other; eyes wide with newfound curiosity that they both couldn't decipher.

"Wow," a voice broke the silence, and he later found himself turning his head towards his red-headed friend, "never thought you got the balls to actually kiss Makoto under Nagisa's dare, Sousuke."

He spared him a smug smirk, "a man has to endure the consequences that were given to him like that, Rin," he turned towards the guy in front of him then, "right, Tachibana?"

It was when he laid his eyes on the face of the brown-haired guy in front of him did he finally realize, that—

—It might only happened in five seconds, but—

—he only needed one to know that he was drastically falling.

Hard.