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Andrew may not have a ton of close friends but he’s fairly certain best friends don’t kiss each other. And sure, he might have been getting in over his head when he’d fired off his entire rant about his confusion surrounding the topic of being gay, but Nick had kissed him.
And he’d lied, like a big fat liar, that he didn’t like it. Even though it’s been a week since that happened and Nick acts like there’s nothing amiss in their friendship, Andrew can’t stop replaying the moment in his mind. Nick’s lips had always caught Andrew’s attention, mesmerized by how pillowy and soft they looked, and Nick has a habit of chewing on his lower lip when he’s deep in thought, which winds up distracting Andrew much more than the harmless habit did before. Because maybe, just maybe, he’s not supposed to glue his eyes to his best friend’s lips when Nick isn’t paying him any mind. He’s definitely not supposed to wish for Nick to kiss him again.
So he buries the confusing feelings for a while under mountains of pornography and unabashed flirting (and striking out) with some of the female population, fists his hands into his sheets until he’s white-knuckled when Nick spends time at his house to prevent himself from doing something unthinkable like pouncing on him and kissing him senseless. Surprisingly, Andrew lasts like that for a month, spends day in and day out feeling like a cut live wire when Nick so much as smiles at him with that fucking mouth, and ignores Maury’s rampant teasing.
“Are you even listening to me?” An incredulous Nick asks. They’re currently hiding out in Nick’s bedroom from his scary older brother after having been chased out of the living room; Andrew would’ve vehemently defended his claim to the Birch’s couch had Judd not literally pulled a knife on the two of them and nearly succeeded in making Andrew piss his pants. Thankfully, his pants are pissless.
“Huh?”
“Jesus Christ, Andrew. What’s going on up there?” Nick taps the side of Andrew’s head, scooting closer. Their thighs could be touching if Andrew shifts an inch. He’s tempted to as he vacantly stares into Nick’s concerned eyes, breathing heavily through his nose as he licks his lips.
“I—what?” Andrew finally remembers to stutter out once Nick’s look of concern has morphed into annoyance.
“Are you okay? You’ve been doing this a lot lately,” says Nick as he squints at him.
“Doing what?”
“Zoning out all the time. Am I that boring to hang out with, oh great and mighty Andrew?”
The praise shoots straight to Andrew’s dick. He tries not to reflect too hard on that. “No! No, not at all. I didn’t realize you noticed.” He sheepishly rubs the back of his neck, pointedly ignoring Maury instructing him on all the filthy things to do to poor, sweet Nick. This isn’t a bad porno, he can’t just shove his dick down his throat with no preamble no matter how much he wants to.
“So you are doing it on purpose? Why?”
“I’m not doing anything on purpose.”
Nick huffs in frustration, blowing a wisp of brown hair out of his face. “What’s your fucking problem, dude?”
I need you to kiss me. I want you to suck my dick until I’m seeing stars and maybe return the favor if you’re up for it. I really liked when you kissed me and when you yanked me down by the collar and I’m sorry I lied. Do you think about me too? Do you wish I had kissed you back?
Somehow, none of his constant stream of thoughts seems appropriate to unleash into the open air so he elects to stare at Nick (and his lips) with wide eyes. Nick, who matches his expression, pupils enlarged, simultaneously in and out of Andrew’s reach.
“You’re my problem.” He barely contains the overwhelming urge to tackle Nick to the mattress.
“What?” Nick’s eyebrows crease in confusion. “What did I do? I didn’t even do anything to you.”
“Yeah, you did,” Andrew grits out. “A month ago.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Nick with a shrug, glancing toward the ceiling before fixing his steely gaze on Andrew. “Enlighten me.”
Andrew pins him down immediately, fusing their mouths together with a frenzied sense of desperation to the sound of Maury whooping and cheering in the background. His nose hurts from smashing his face into Nick’s, the angle is off, and he wonders if this is how Nick felt when Andrew didn’t reciprocate their first kiss: like he’s attempting to make out with a brick wall. Reality slaps him in the face when he finally realizes Nick isn’t kissing him back and he slowly opens his dread-filled eyes to the blur of Nick’s closed ones which—what the actual hell?
“Oh,” is all Nick says. Something unrecognizable flashes behind his eyes before his features smooth into a neutral expression, but he presses close enough to sit shoulder to shoulder with Andrew, thigh to thigh.
Just like the first time they kissed, they don’t broach the subject again. Andrew stews in silence over him, jerks himself raw to gay porn and the memory of his best friend’s lips on his, and spends a good majority of his spare time agonizing over every little detail of every normal interaction he has with Nick. If Nick notices anything is wrong, he either doesn’t care or is too hesitant to stir the pot even though Andrew wants to shake him by the shoulders and tell him to get fucking stirring.
Then one day, Nick sleeps over at Andrew’s house. That itself is a relatively normal occurrence, as is their irregular movie nights, and once the second film has reached its conclusion, Nick lets out a somnolent yawn, rubbing his eyes.
“Tired?” Andrew asks quietly, heart clenching. He nods and instead of retrieving his sleeping bag as per unspoken routine, he curls up on the right side of Andrew’s bed, nuzzling into the pillow. If Andrew’s mouth were any drier, he could spin wool from it.
Nick peers up at him, lifting the left edge of the blanket up for him, a silent invitation. Andrew is positive the thundering in his ears is loud enough for Nick to hear as he crawls in, at equal height with the other boy for once. This close, he notes how freakishly long Nick’s eyelashes are, how they flutter when he blinks, and can smell the faint traces of pine-scented body wash he otherwise may not have picked up on.
Andrew lets loose a shuddery breath, entranced by the lack of space between them, heady with wantwantwant coursing through his veins.
Nick kisses him. A simple press of lips to lips like their previous kisses, and his small fist encircles itself around Andrew’s shirt while Andrew tries to remember if he had already fallen asleep or not. The warm mouth on his feels real and much better than what his dreams have conjured for him thus far, so he tentatively kisses back, inhaling unsteadily through his nose.
He wonders if Nick can sense how hard his heart is jackhammering in his sternum, wonders what made Nick want to kiss him again on a random Friday, wonders if he’s simply driving himself insane. Nick licks a line across his bottom lip; Andrew’s dick is suddenly up and begging for attention, but he restrains himself, tangling his greedy hands in Nick’s normally well-kept hair.
French kissing is so much hotter than it is in porn. For one, he’s experiencing it firsthand rather than through the cold detachment of a computer screen. He suspects at least half of his enthusiasm for the act is stemming from the fact that it’s Nick who’s clumsily roaming Andrew’s mouth with his tongue, whose breathing matches Andrew’s own, who actually emits a tiny whine when Andrew fists the back of his head and throws a possessive leg over his.
They resurface for air, wide-eyed and flushed as they pant in heavy synchronicity. Nick stares at him, kiss-swollen and cute and resembling everything Andrew desires and fuck—
“Night Andrew,” says Nick, breaking their eye contact as he rolls over. Andrew wants to scream, cry, throw something at the wall, make out with Nick for hours on end, light himself on fire; anything to distract himself from how even though Nick kissed him first, twice now, he feels as though he’s being rejected. His leg is still on top of Nick’s thigh.
So maybe he can’t have everything he wants. Maybe Andrew just has to take the scraps that get thrown his way and it’s not like Nick ever spends the night sharing a bed with Andrew anymore, the tradition halting somewhere in elementary school. He aligns himself with Nick’s smaller form, tossing an arm over his waist as Nick’s flowery shampoo wafts into his nostrils, burying the urge to thrust softly into the curve of his ass because Andrew is a huge pervert, but Nick is a bit too untouchable. He can’t taint him.
“Goodnight Nick,” he whispers hoarsely, blinking rapidly to stave off the deluge of tears in his eyes. Nick merely tucks himself closer, interlacing their fingers.
They don’t talk about it in the morning because of course they don’t.
The kissing, however, increases in frequency. What used to be confined to the safety of their bedrooms has warped into Nick kissing him goodbye at the door on the tip of his toes, holding him firmly by the sleeve until the classroom empties, and planting one on him; Andrew himself is lulled into a false sense of security after the tenth kiss, starts initiating much more often than Nick does. If Nick notices, he doesn’t say anything, per the secret agreement to this portion of their relationship to apparently never speak of it aloud.
Andrew quickly tires of the entire routine, hates constantly feeling like a puppet on its last string around Nick’s seemingly unbothered nature, hates that he can’t strong-arm his way into Nick’s brain and demand explanations.
He reaches his breaking point when Nick drags him up to Andrew’s bedroom as if he’s lived there his entire life (which in a way, he has) and as soon as the door clicks shut, he’s mauling Andrew’s mouth. Andrew deserves a gold medal for pulling back despite every nerve ending in his body detailing to him in vivid detail why he should not do that.
“Nick.”
“Hm?” Nick asks, distracted, gaze falling to Andrew’s lips.
“We should talk.”
“About what?” Nick questions, tilting his head at him like a confused puppy and Andrew thinks he should reasonably earn another gold medal for not jumping his bones on the spot.
“This. The, you know, the thing we don’t talk about. We need to,” Andrew stammers out.
“I’m not following.”
“What is this? What are we doing? Why do we keep doing this?”
“I… oh.” Nick bites his lip, and that’s three gold medals earned. “I didn’t know there was anything to talk about.”
“Are you fucking with me?”
“I should be asking you that.” Nick taps his foot on the floor impatiently, shoulders hunching in defensive mode for—for what?
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
Andrew gets the feeling that they’re going to continue talking in circles unless he finally addresses the direct conflict at hand. “I’m talking about us fucking kissing, Nick! Multiple goddamn times! Why are you doing this to me?” His voice rises higher in angry desperation as his chest heaves.
“Sorry.” Nick hangs his head, which out of all the reactions he could’ve expected, an apology had not been featured on the list. “I—uh. Sorry. It’s all right if you want to stop experimenting.”
“Experimenting?!” Andrew almost shouts to conceal the sound of his heart cracking in real time.
“You said you didn’t feel anything while kissing me. But then you kissed me again and I’m your best friend, so if you wanted some guilt-free experimenting, then what was I gonna do? Say no? Not like a lot of people are lining up down the block to get a piece of Nick Birch. And I’d rather have this than—“ Nick cuts himself off, shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
Andrew glosses over the fact that he’s a person in line hoping to get a piece of Nick Birch, and mulls over his short speech with renowned anger. “So this means nothing? You’d rather have this than what?”
That same unrecognizable emotion flickers across Nick’s face as his mouth settles into a thin line and Andrew detests that he’s still drawn to it like a moth to a flame. “Andrew.”
“Than what, Nick?” He spits out hotly.
“Than nothing at fucking all! I like you, okay, is that what you want to fucking hear? I really like you. And I know you don’t like me like that, never did, because you didn’t feel anything at all and I knew that, and I still…” The fight drains out of Nick as he clamps down hard enough on his bottom lip to draw blood. “Whatever. It really doesn’t matter.” He shuffles toward the door, arching an annoyed eyebrow at Andrew when he shoots an unsteady arm out to block his path.
“I’ve lost so much sleep over you it’s un-fucking-real. I thought you didn’t like me. Because you never brought it up and you’ve never even mentioned having gay thoughts and—“
“Jesus Andrew, I never brought it up because I believe in self-preservation. Can I go now since I don’t even have that anymore?”
“I’m in love with you,” he rushes out, effectively halting Nick in his mission to duck under Andrew’s arm and escape. “I’m really sorry.”
He watches Nick go through a cycle of emotions, perhaps the five stages of grief if he’d been bluffing about liking Andrew after all. “You’re in love with me?”
“Yeah. Maybe. Maybe, yes.”
“Should we… do something about that?” Nick wrings his nervous hands together as Andrew wipes the last trace of dried blood off of Nick’s lip.
“If we don’t, I’m going to bash my head through a wall.”
A small smile teases the corner of his lips. “Don’t do that. You’re really in love with me?”
Andrew rolls his eyes, about to retort with a sassy reply but Nick kisses his answer out of him, yanking him down to his level in a manner Andrew should not find so mind-numbingly attractive. Nick walks them into Andrew’s computer chair and he idly wonders just how the hell he’s lived this much of his life without the delectable heat of Nick squirming around in his lap, blinking innocently at him before trailing down to his neck. Andrew’s arms wrap possessively around the smaller boy’s waist, relishing in the wet kisses Nick presses to his collarbone as Maury gives him an ear-splitting grin and a thumbs up from across the room.
He aims an enthusiastic thumbs up right back at his hormone monster before returning his hand to its previous position curled around Nick’s body, the ugly misery that has tinged his mood all these months dissipating the tighter he grips onto Nick.