♡ꜜ out of my league﹫mark lee
pairing : mark x reader (f)
genre : tiny angst, fluff, smut with some plot, bestfriend!mark, college!au, best friends to lovers.
warnings : weed, making out, fingering, unprotected sex, praising.
word count : +4k
synopsis : your best friend Mark Lee tells you all the things he believed, you were always out of his league.
Mark Lee has been in love with the same person for as long as he could remember. It’s something he took some time to understand, days to wrap his head around.
Where do you draw the line between deep friendship, platonic love between friends and a connection running deeper, a love that seeks more than the label “friends” ?
Laying on your bed, his right hand throws a tennis ball in the air, easily catching it while his left hand hold the rolled up paper between two fingers.
It’s a shame, the smoke he’s blowing out of his lungs is probably sticking to your bed sheets, ones he noticed you washed the moment he dropped his body on your bed.
Soft rose fragrance, traces of an exotic fruit he can not pin point, though Mark is sure he could recognise the perfume of your detergent between thousands of others.
Heavy sigh, smoke escaping his lips like a dragon dissolving in the air, heavy eyelids closing in front of his brown irises. He really should stop smoking, Mark thinks. It’s a black hole in his wallet, it is not that good for his health and fuck, does it makes his mind wonder.
Correction, Mark should stop smoking around you. Because, whenever he does, his mind might search in the deepest, darkest folds of his brain for a new topic, he’ll always, forever, come back to you.
Mark Lee has been in love with you for as long as he can remember.
It’s something he’s been aware of for some years now. It’s crazy how he can pinpoint the moment his mind clicked, the moment he put two and two together. He can still visualise the moment his heart went from a friendship he’d die for to a love he’d die for, one so strong he, himself, was dumbfounded by his years long blindness.
It happened right before prom, second to last year of high school. Mark Lee remembers when you stepped out of your father’s car (he doesn’t trust any other boy but Mark, he insisted on driving you to your school’s dance).
Pretty deep blue dress, it’s his favourite colour on his favourite person. You did not do anything special to your hair, only added a bit more makeup. Though, it’s not your appearance that made everything click, you’ve always been pretty, it wasn’t the first time your friend noticed.
Rather, it’s when your date shows up. It’s when one of the school’s popular kid shows up and makes you dance that he understands. He wants it to be him so bad. He wants to make you twirl, he wants to make you laugh.
Mark understands it isn’t just him being mad that you’re not answering your phone, it’s love. Jealousy, green monster eating away at his heart when he wonders if you’re still with him, it’s a hand tightly wrapping around the muscle when he wonders if you’re going to fall into someone else’s arms.
Mark remembers it, it was five years ago. Late summer night where he stayed on his phone for too long, love sick kid scrolling through pictures and pictures of his prom waiting for a text from his best friend.
He didn’t say anything, maybe Mark was a bit of a coward, and you were out of his league.
“Mark ?”
From all the things you best friend loves about you, if he had to pick, it’d be the way you say his name. No matter the intonation, no matter the context, the men loves the way it sounds coming out of your lips.
He thinks he won’t ever get enough of it, it’s intoxicating, makes him think he has the prettiest name after your own.
Eyelids slowly open, tired smile stretching his lips. You’re steading in front of your bed, freshly showered, hand turning your small projector on.
“Hm ?”, he doesn’t bother answering with words, humming softly. His head turns to the side, following your movements around the bedroom he knows like the back of his hand.
“This one or…That one ?”, you ask, playing with your remote to show your best friend two animation movies you both saw too many times.
“First one.” You’ve noticed over time, his voice always gets deeper when he smokes, brown eyes always get a shade darker.
“Alright, baby chose.”
Ah, correction. If there’s one thing that Mark loves, it’s the pet names you give him. So natural, honey filled, he wished you meant them.
Baby, babe, darling. He loves it all, he wants it all, he wants you all.
Unaware of his thoughts, you finally crawl up next to him, the shirt you’re wearing as your pyjamas riding up, Mark takes another hit at that.
Familiar sound of Netflix resonates in your room as you take yet another remote and turn your lights off, before gesturing towards your friend. You’re not an avide smoker but, you infale the smoke a few times before giving the rolled up paper back to the brunette.
Mark knows what’s about to happen, whenever your movie night has a bit of green, the movie gets long lost behind while you two would rather speak about anything and everything. After years of friendship, you’d think you two would’ve took and turned every subject under the pale moon but, Mark definitely did not expect this.
Hands free, he crushes the cigarette on the special painted bowl you have for him, Mark also loves the way you have some things for him on your house as if he lives with you.
Your right hand is quick to find his left hand, an old habit your have. Your fingers stretch against his own, comparing sizes like kids flirting, swinging your hands from left to right. Your arm easily gets tired by holding your hand up in the air like this, but the warmth of Mark’s hand and the way his fingertips rough by his guitar strings brush against your palm every now and then feels like home.
“How do you know when you’re in love ?”, your voice’s soft, mindlessly humming to the song in the animation movie Mark chose. Is that the topic you decided to bring up…? Mark’s hand stays still for a moment, following your own hand’s movement as he thinks for a while.
“Don’t give me that “You just know” bullshit.”, you mumble when he stays quiet for a bit too long.
“But I think you do, just know. I think it’s different for everyone.”, he starts, speech slightly altered by the green herb intoxicating his mind.
“How is it… For you ?”, you ask. See, you know Mark had some crushes here and there, but you don’t think he has ever been in love or, at least, he never told you.
“It’s… Loving the way they say your name, wanting to be with them as much as possible. It’s… Craving to be as close as possible.” and unconsciously, his fingers wrap around yours.
“It’s finding happiness in their joy, sharing their sadness. It’s small things like memorising the perfume they wear and what food they dislike.”
The brunette stays quiet for a moment, heavy eyes look upon your locked hands in the darkness, chest light, mind foggy.
“It’s them feeling like home.”, he finally says.
Mark smiles to himself, you do feel like home, you make everything feel like home. From the way you have a pillow and the way you keep a toothbrush for him, to the way you always feel so warm and safe.
Thankfully for you, the lack of light hides the small blush creeping on your cheeks.
Mark doesn’t know, you’ve been in love with him for years, though you’ve been aware for a bit longer. His confession takes your breathe away with a heavy sigh, you squeeze his hand.
“I was in love with you.”
Was, you take the safe route as the words fly out of your mouth before you can even understand. Even if he’s shocked, you can play the past card.
“I was in love with you too.”, silence doesn’t last long as Mark let’s out as well, eyes on the movie even though he isn’t paying any attention : his favourite line just played and he didn’t even let a giggle out.
The words make your ears ring, skin burn red, heart beat against your ribcage. He was too…? He was. He isn’t anymore.
“Why didn’t you tell me ?”, you breath out, turning to the side. You use an elbow to support your body, you dare look at your best friend’s face.
It’s crazy how he still have the still has the same baby face you’ve always known, the same pretty eyes and the same smile, his jaw got sharper with years and voice deeper and yet, he’s still the same. He’s home.
Mark, him, doesn’t dare look at you for a second. Before he does, soft eyes looking directly into yours. Why didn’t he tell you ? He knows why, he has a list of reasons why and another list of reasons why he should’ve told you he’d rather not think about right in this moment.
“You’re out of my league.”, he breathes out. You can read your best friend like a book, you know he is not joking when he tells you so. And yet, you can’t wrap your head around the idea.
“I— What, no !”, you’re almost whispering and screaming at him at the same time, getting up to sit on your knees. He was out of your league, he has always been, you never—.
“You were—. You are out of mine.”, you tell him, almost dumbfounded. For a split second, it feels like someone’s finally giving you the dream you’ve always wanted and, the moment it touches your hands, it slips through your fingers.
Can you be nostalgic of something you’ve never even experienced ? And yet, your mind grabs onto a single thing. Present tense, you’re still out of his league, he still thinks so.
In his semi-high state, the brunette chuckles out, as dumbfounded.
You wonder if there are feelings still unknown to humans because this, the pull you’re feeling at the strings of your heart and the lump in your throat combined to the angering heat taking over your body aren’t emotions you’re used to feeling at the same time.
“Hey, what’s wrong ?”, your best friend asks, an arm wrapping around your neck to pull you closer. You’re sure it’s supposed to be for hug, one you’d happily accept if you weren’t in this very situation. Both forearms stop your body from colliding against his, Mark frowns.
In another situation, he’d be able to read you like an open book and, maybe he’s thankful he isn’t completely sober right now. If he wasn’t slightly high, he’d be as red.
“Are you…Are you still in love with me ?”, you ask. It’s almost a whisper, one Mark is sure he would’ve caught if it wasn’t for the almost silent scene going on in the long forgotten movie.
Is he still in love with you ? Yes. His mind screams a loud, obnoxious yes. His body screams another loud and obnoxious yes and yet. Yet, Mark stays silent for what feels like minutes. He knows he is, he’s sure of it, he doesn’t know if he should say it.
Yes, yes, yes.
“Yeah.”
To be in love with your best friend, to confess your love after years, decades, even.
Such a simple word and yet, it hangs in the air, you can almost make it out in the slight darkness of the room. When Mark has the ability to put words on how he feels, you can’t put anything on what goes on in your brain and body when he says the simple truth. You think your heart might fall out right into your best friend’s hand, if he did not already have it. Your mind twist the word again and again just to find a fault, a break, a rupture.
There isn’t none, he’s in love with you.
There’s another few seconds where you stay silent. You decide actions speak louder than words. Where Mark pulled you into a hug, you pull him into a kiss you’ve been craving for years.
Carnal need sleeping deep in both your minds, it doesn’t need much to be awakened, burning a fire louder than hell’s. Your lips touch his. Its shy, hesitant but, when Mark’s arm tighten around your neck, no words need to be spoken.
The sweet, innocent, childlike kiss turns desperate in matter of seconds. Your best friend pulls you closer, closer, closer. He catches your leg between his, pushes your chest against his to the point where you can feel his heart hammering.
Lips move in harmony, common rhythm is quickly found and, you whine the moment he pulls away.
“Tell me.”, he breathes out against your lips, it’s a desperate plea for something he had been waiting to hear, something he thought he’d never hear. “Say it.”, it’s demanding, greedy. You give in easily.
“I’m in love with you.”
There’s a weight pulled out of your chest, you’d chant it again and again if you could. You’d scream in if you could, you’d breathe it against his skin.
The brunette pulls you into a bruising kiss, he pours his soul out, hand cupping the back of your neck.
If this is a dream, Mark is determined to not let it go. Using his body at his advantage, positions are reversed, the brunette quickly towards over you. You switched you could turn the light back on but, the colourful lights of the movie dance against his jawline and shine against his wet lips, you decide your best friend looks like a painter’s muse.
“There hasn’t been a single day where I haven’t thought about you.”, he breathes pretty words against your skin, taking his lips from your mouth to your jaw. It’s loving, deep kisses, each to mean something.
“There hasn’t been a single day where I haven’t thought about being more to you, wished we were more.”
More, more, more. You want more too, you need more too. You refuse to let go now.
“We can be, we can.”, it’s frantic. You cup his face with your hands, bringing him closer. “Spent nights thinking about what we could be.”
It makes flowers bloom in his chest, he isn’t able to take his lips away from your skin. The tip of his nose digs in your cheek, he inhales deeply. Oh, how he loves the soap you use.
“What did you see ?”, he asks, lips peppering kisses down your neck, hand gripping your shirt. You’re quick to pull it up above your hips. First wanting to completely pull it off your body, it seems the brunette isn’t patient enough.
His lips leave your neck to your tummy, butterfly kisses here and there until he stops to your panties.
“Us. Together. Living tog—.”
Your sentence’s quickly cut off by your best friend, maybe a lot more now, pressing his tongue flat against the fabric of your panties.
If you weren’t aware of how wet you were getting, you sure were now.
“Living together, yeah ?”, he asks, bringing his face closer to yours again right after disregarding his shirt somewhere. There’s a few seconds where you pose, shamelessly taking in the men’s figure.
Forehead against yours, his digits run along the line of your underwear. He’s as nervous as you are, as shaken up as you are yet, you two have never been more certain of one thing that doesn’t need to be said anymore.
Mark bites down on his lip, you almost hear tje mechanism in his head twisting and turning to find the right way to ask you.
You beat him at it anyways, nodding as your arms wrap around his neck.
There’s one thing you’ll never tell him, you spent night dreaming about a future and other were filled with thoughts of his fingers.
The guitar player had pretty hands, even prettier when they wrapped around the neck of his guitar or when he picked as some strings.
“'was too scared to tell you.”, he says and, you’d tell him you know. You know exactly how it feels, the fear of rejection by the one you’ve know you’re entire life. You’d tell him it doesn’t matter now that you now if you could.
His fingers stop you from articulating right, index and middle finger greedily collecting the wetness between your folds, the brunette doesn’t wait much longer before pushing two digits in.
“I—Mark.”, there it is, a moan of his name that intoxicates Mark more than any other drug. Pupils grow wide, ears greedy to hear more. It’s him, him managing to make you moan so softly in the dead of the night, him that has you wrapped around his finger.
“Fuck, say my name again.”, it’s another desperate plea, say his name again so he knows it isn’t a vivid dream he’s going to wake up from, say his name until it’s the only thing rolling out of your tongue.
You easily oblige when he starts moving his fingers, slowly yet, in a way that quickly had you gasping for air.
There’s nothing rough in his actions, expect from the way his teeth gaze at the skin of your neck before softly biting down just to sooth to spot with his tongue afterwards.
It’s agonising, like he wants to make sure he maps out your body to remember it perfectly after tonight. His fingers curl and drag against your walls, he remembers how and where.
His free hand creeps under your raised shirt, quickly finding your chest as his mouth finds your again.
There, he catches every sweet sound you make like he doesn’t want any body else to hear them, tongue tastes yours as they lazily battle.
“Shit, baby. Just like that, god.”, when you think Mark couldn’t get any better, his fingertips brush against a spot that has your hips raising up, slowly rocking against his hand.
“Right there ?”, you nod frantically as he does it again and again, lazily fingering you whilst he lets your hips grind against his digits.
“So fucking pretty.”, it’s a murmur once he detaches his lips from your own, wet and red by the exchange.
It’s not the first time Mark calls you pretty but at this very moment, it’s different.
His wrist twist the right way just as he’s about to pick the pace up and the familiar feeling grows alongside the flower blooming in your chest as Mark whisperes sweet nothings into your ear.
He can feel it, the way your walls clench around his fingers, it has his cock throbbing in his sweats. Carnal desire to feel you wrapped around him as his fingers speed up until you come undone around them.
It’s a mess of his name and profanities you hope your neighbours aren’t hearing.
“Want more, want you.”, you babble once you come down from your high, sweat collecting around your hairline, chest irregularly raising up and down.
When Mark seems to take too long to process your words, you take matters into your own hand.
A moment, Mark struggles to find his words and the other, his back hits the bed with a soft gasp.
He’s quick to raise with his elbows, almost having whiplash when you sit down on his lap after taking off your ruined and soaked panties.
“Let me help you with that.”, there’s a slight shyness in your voice Mark decides he’d die for when your clumsily work on the strings of his grey sweats.
Unspoken words, soft silence when you look into his eyes and help him push the fabric down his thighs. The air is thick, your heart beats harder and harder, your chest swells when Mark pulls you closer by your hips.
“I’ve been in love with you.”, he starts as you raise, lining your core with his hard member, one your eyes lingered on before he opened his mouth. There’s a pause, your lips part as to say something when you slowly sit down, but no sound comes from your mouth when Mark’s leaking head pushes inside.
“For so— so fucking long.”, he uses the last bits of air in his lungs to let it out, voice cracking when you sit inch by inch.
You wonder how you went so long without telling him, telling him you love him feels too good to take it back or ever again. There’s a slight part of you wondering where you’d be right now if you told him sooner but you’re quick to push it away.
Both hands cup his face as you bring him closer for a kiss as you fully settle on his lap, though the exchange doesn’t last long. There’s a beautiful groan coming from the men in front of you just as you moan out from the sensitivity, the fulness.
Mark’s red lips fall open the moment you start moving up and down on him, eyes rolling back the slightest bit like he forces himself to look at you as you ride him. But, when his groans turn into moans, the brunette hides his face in the crook of your neck, arms tightly wrapping around your waist.
You don’t think your can be any closer, chest against chest, your mouth to his ear as he mumbles about how you were made for him.
Up and down, up and down, your legs start burning but you keep moving on top.
“Fuck, I love you.”, it slips out when his hips meet yours halfway, not that you can say it, you swear you won’t stop doing it at any given occasion.
Mark answers my sucking on your neck, probably drawing blood as he more boldly snaps his hips against yours.
You find the same desperation as when he was kissing you, carnal need wanting to be met, he fucks into you just like he means it, switching between deep and slow to fast and short snaps.
For the second time, you feel it tighten, knot threatening to burst at any moment. If you aren’t moaning, your mouth hands silently open and thankfully, Mark can tell you’re getting close by the way you’re clenching around him.
“You’re doing so good, so so good for me.”, voice almost unrecognisable, the way you can feel every vein and the way he pulse tells you he’s as close, if not more.
“Come with me.”
After years of tuning your body to his voice, it follows the command almost immediately, there’s a few seconds where the brunette snaps his hips, slowly, deeply, right before letting a draw out moan against your neck.
It’s the last thing you hear, the way he moans you name breathlessly against your skin before you follow right behind, coming right around him like he hoped so.
Moans and body against body sound abruptly stop for heavy breathing and soft whines, you blink a few times, forehead against Mark’s baked shoulder.
He smells like the apple shampoo he almost wears, he feels like home when his arms tightly wrap around your body and rock from side to side, almost lolling you to sleep. He feels safe, familiar, comfortable.
And, right before you fall deep into sleep, you hear him slightly chuckle at his second favourite movie line.
