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It’s not really weird to fall for your best friend. The person you know better than anyone, the one you spend most of your time with.
It’s kinda weird when your best friend is a boy, and people consider and treat you like a boy. But even that is starting to be treated as more normal. Not by everyone (Aled would never tell his mum, for a multitude of reasons) but by many.
Daniel’s gay, he knows that. He doesn’t hide himself and who he is. Aled is glad about that, because he loves Dan and wants him to get everything he wants and deserves and that Dan gets to be openly himself.
But for Aled, the thing is that he doesn’t consider himself gay. Because… because it’s not… He’s not into Daniel because Daniel’s a *boy*. The thing is, for Aled, it’s not about boys and girls and enbies it’s… It’s that Daniel is *Dan*. Aled’s Dan, has been his for his whole life.
It’s hard to explain to people. Aled himself doesn’t really get it. Labels are not always necessary, but sometimes… one might help, in this case. But in some ways, Aled's not sure he's ready to know. He doesn't know whether it would make it better or worse.
Dan doesn’t really understand it. It hasn’t really been a problem before but… Aled’s going away to university soon, so they need to start figuring out their future(s).
Things with Dan have become strained during the summer. Sure, Dan works a lot, and Aled has started hanging out with Frances, but in some ways Aled just... He doesn't know how to talk about this. He's not sure he has the words to explain himself, in a way that doesn't hurt Dan, in a way that feels true to Aled. He feels like he's making things unnecessarily complicated, for the both of them. But he just doesn't know how to fix the situation.
Sometimes he really misses Carys. Maybe she would understand. Maybe she would know.
Aled misses the time when they could just be Aled and Dan, without all the messiness of labels and having to be out and explain themselves to people.
He misses the time university was just a far away... dream [nightmare].
Everything is just getting worse and as he cries in Frances' arms about university, on his 18th birthday party, he wishes time could just stop, sometimes. He wishes things could be simple, again.
He wishes he knew how to talk to Dan again.