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The next morning Carson rolled over and felt Josiah’s arms were still wrapped around him. The brunet slid his eyes open sleepily and saw that Josiah was already awake and looking right back at him. Those sage eyes looked tired and troubled. Carson wanted to frown, but when the memories of the previous night came back to him, all he could do was smile.

Not wanting to lose the moment--after all, he had been waiting years for this to finally happen--he closed his eyes to Josiah’s expression and pressed his face into the older boy’s fabric-covered chest. Carson had to admit that he had been expecting Josiah to tighten his hold when Carson had snuggled closer, but nothing happened.

The silence didn’t go on for more than another half a second, and Carson didn’t even get a chance to form a frown before Josiah spoke. And when the words left his mouth, they sounded so detached and defeated that Carson thought for sure he could throw up on the spot because of them.

“I’m a cheater.”

Carson’s eyes snapped open and his vision was slightly blurry from being so close to Josiah’s t-shirt. The brunet could feel his eyelashes hit the white fabric every time he blinked.

“Don’t say that,” Carson mumbled.

Just as distant as before, Josiah said, “Why not? It’s true. I’m a betrayer. A deceiver. A double-crosser, traitor, two-timer, backstabber...Whatever you wanna call it, it means the same thing.” Josiah paused and his emotionless voice abruptly switched over into angrier territories. “I’m disgusting.”

Carson had to bite his lip to keep from screaming at his friend. It also helped to keep his looming tears at bay. Hearing everything Josiah was saying made everything good that had happened between them come crashing down. And the more selfish side of him was hurt that he was ultimately the reason Josiah was currently going through such a terrible bout of self-loathing.

What was worse, though, was that even though Carson absolutely despised how hard Josiah was being on himself, it was warranted to some degree. Yes, the darker boy had technically cheated on his girlfriend of over a year. But look at the circumstances they were in. How was it even possible to break up with someone who wasn’t even conscious enough to understand what was happening?

Plus, Carson was just as much to blame as Josiah. He had been the one to kiss the older boy. He had been the one to fuck it all up and start something much more than either of them should have been weaseling into in the first place. If you really looked at it, all Josiah had done was reveal his emotions. You couldn’t punish a man for something so innocuous as that.

It was Carson’s actions, on the other hand, that were much more incriminating, which made him feel completely awful about it. But it wasn’t like he could take it back, and he somehow found it easy to accept that. And he didn’t want to take it back, he realized, as harsh as that sounded.

“You’re not disgusting,” Carson finally managed to croak. “You’re just human. We both are.”

Still seething a little, Josiah said, “Don’t you dare try to excuse what I did. And do not compare us. You’re so much better than I am.”

Carson pulled back from Josiah’s chest and noticed that the movement met absolutely no resistance from the older boy’s slackened arms. With a little flare of irritation, the brunet said, “You don’t need to beat yourself up about it, though! For fuck’s sake, anything you blame on yourself you have to blame on me as well. I made the moves, I forced it. It’s my fault and we both know it.”

“But I have a girlfriend,” Josiah argued incessantly. “And she’s laying in a goddamn hospital bed in a coma that she might never get out of. How fucking heartless does that make me? How cruel, insensitive, and repulsive does that make me?”

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Carson snapped. “Because I’m only going to tell you that it doesn’t make you any of those things. Yeah, it’s a tad morally wrong...and it goes against what society would deem acceptable, but I can fucking guarantee you that you aren’t the first, or the last person who does this.”

“A tad?” Josiah snorted, not feeling any humour as he said it.

“Oh, shut up,” Carson growled. “So you screwed up. So did I. This makes me the number one candidate for the worst friend of the year. I stabbed Ayden in the back by doing this, and I caused this kind of behaviour in you.”

“What?” Josiah couldn’t take those last few words seriously.

“I know I was clingy. And I was desperate and dependent on you for everything. I didn’t give you any space, I pushed myself on you and didn’t allow you to focus on anything but me. Now sit there and tell me that if all two people do is be with each other nonstop they won’t start fabricating feelings for each other? It’s how it works, Joe. Humans are erroneous and faulty like that. It’s what we do.”

The older boy felt his anger starting to ebb as utter disbelief hit him full force. “Carson, I don’t think you even understand what’s happening here.”

Completely thrown by this, the brunet relaxed his limbs once more and went just as slack as Josiah’s arms still were. He gazed back at his best friend’s face with a bemusement that seemed so new to him. Carson had absolutely no idea what the other boy could be trying to get at by making that statement.

“What?”

Josiah closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose. He was trying to calm himself down because he hated yelling at Carson and he knew he was getting awfully close to doing just that.

“I haven’t fabricated a thing,” the older boy said evenly. “It’s real. I know what you were trying to get at--I’m sure some kind of expert or scientist or something has done some sort of testing on that, but that’s not what’s happening here.

“Sure, hearing about your past feelings and witnessing your current ones got my attention. But they only snowballed everything,” Josiah explained, staring straight into curious blue eyes. “Carson, I’m telling you right now that what I feel wasn’t made up just because I’m supposedly lonely or something, or that it seemed favourable.”

Carson blinked twice and then cautiously asked, “How do you know that?”

“Because I haven’t been able to stop comparing every single thing we’ve done together with what I’ve done with Ayden,” Josiah said. It pained him just to admit that, and it made him hate himself that much more because it was true. “Holding your hand feels better than kissing Ayden. And kissing you...God, I can’t believe I’m even gonna say this. But, kissing you like that last night--even though it was quick and pretty innocent by most standards--felt so much more natural and enjoyable than any of the times I’ve had sex with Ayden.”

This time, Carson was so stunned, he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t blink for a while, and it felt like even the cogs in his brain had stopped because there weren’t any thoughts processing either.

Josiah blinked and he realized his eyes were welling up, so he blinked some more to try and counteract the process.

“I can’t explain it,” he said thickly through the random lump in his throat. He was searching for anything and everything in his best friend’s gorgeous eyes. “But I think you just know. You know when it feels better to be with one person instead of another. You can recognize the difference and you feel the emotions and how they’re heightened in comparison.” Lowering his deep voice to barely above a whisper, Josiah said, “Carson, that’s what it feels like with you.”

Carson took a shaky breath. He knew all too well what Josiah was defining. He had spent so long trying to match every guy to the likes of both Jayden and Josiah. No one ever matched up. And even though Carson had been in love with Jayden--and he wasn’t sure if he felt like that towards Josiah yet--his dark-skinned, curly-headed best friend was still the only guy he liked more than his ex-boyfriend.

And Carson thought that was saying a lot because the brunet had given everything to Jayden. He had been so head-over-heels for that guy before even two months of dating. Even the fact that Jayden cheated on him with a girl, no less, couldn’t completely extinguish the feelings and memories of how happy he had been with him.

But with Josiah it was completely different. Carson wasn’t ready to try and allude to the prospect of him being in love with his friend, but there was no denying that he was the only way to forget about Jayden. So of course Carson understood what Josiah had been getting at, because he felt the same way. It was just a shock to learn that he could actually be that for someone--especially when Ayden was the other option.

She was gorgeous, upbeat, and a kind soul. She was caring and lovely and had always been everyone’s first choice. Over the years Carson had easily fallen into the routine of being her understudy, so to speak. Discovering that somehow the tables had actually turned, left the brunet overwhelmed with guilt for how pleased it actually made him. Because if there was ever a reason he would ever allow himself to hurt Ayden like this, it would be this one in particular.

Carson didn’t think he had it in himself to push Josiah away even though he knew embracing it would be wrong. He had never wanted something so badly as what he could have with the noirette. And that was a future as bright as any star he had ever seen or heard of. God, how desperately he wanted that. More like, how desperately he wanted Josiah.

After too long of a silence, Josiah said, “Do you know what I mean, though?”

Carson blinked finally and his eyes stung from getting so dried out in the last minute he had spent in deep thought. He sighed deeply. “Yeah, I do.”

Josiah sighed in relief. He tightened his hold on Carson slightly and pulled the younger boy in until he had the brunet cradled against his chest once more. Even that little bit of affection affected him in ways he never thought possibly. He felt so calm with simply having Carson in his arms, he couldn’t imagine how it would feel to be with the other boy for the rest of his life.

They stayed like that, quiet and breathing in rhythm, for a few minutes. It was perfect at first. But then as times stretched on, the doubts began to crawl back into the minds of both the boys. Hating to do it, but knowing that it was necessary, Josiah ruined the moment first.

“You know this is wrong, right?” he whispered, tightening his arms around Carson even more.

The brunet nodded against his friend’s chest. “Yeah. Do you?”

Josiah swallowed back the pain. “Yeah. Which is why...why I think we should take it back a few notches. For a while at least.”

Carson nibbled on his lip and tried to hide even further in the older boy’s chest. His hands curled into tight fists in Josiah’s shirt, clinging on as tightly and for as long as he could.

Reluctantly, the younger boy mumbled a weak, “Okay.”

Josiah wanted to cry and he didn’t care about how weak that made him sound. He took a deep breath and said in an unusually small voice, “From now on we think of Ayden first. Okay?”

With as much as he really wanted to protest, Carson actually did the opposite. He only nodded his head in agreement--trying to say the words would have surely broken him--and then he attempted to get even closer against Josiah’s body. It was a futile attempt, but the older of the pair appeased Carson anyway by moving a hand up to hold the back of his head. The dark fingers sifted gently through the soft brown hair, and Josiah ducked his head down to press his lips to the top of his best friend’s head.

And because it was a Sunday, and Josiah knew he still had plenty enough time to slap a shoddy paper together for English in two days, they fell back asleep for another few hours. Just like that, with secret tears in both of their eyes and disintegrating hearts inside their chests.

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