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Summer in New York had been a blast, but after having gone so long without seeing his friends back home, Shae was more than happy to be back in VA.
He was so excited, in fact, that the same day he got back, he asked them if they wanted to go biking, and, much to his excitement, they had said yes.
They biked for hours, Pharrell and Chad filling him in on everything in town he had missed. After all that biking, though, they needed a break, which is how they found themselves lying peacefully on a hill underneath the glow of the evening sun, their bikes tossed aside. None of them said a word, caught up in the moment and their own thoughts.
Shae didn’t mind the silence, he was used to it - after all, as hard as they tried, keeping up a conversation while biking wasn’t always the easiest thing to do. And yet he couldn’t help but feel that today things were…different, somehow. And yet he couldn’t place exactly why?
Maybe it was the addition of Chad to the group. Before it had been just him and Pharrell, until last year he had introduced him to Chad, saying that they met in the band program at school. Chad seemed nice enough, and he got along with him pretty well, for what it was worth. But maybe adding an extra person had thrown off the vibe?
Nah, that couldn’t be it. When Chad had joined the group last year, he didn’t feel the same shift. So maybe there was something that had happened during the summer that they weren’t telling him about.
But what could it be?
If someone had asked Chad a few months back how he thought he’d be spending his summer, he sure wouldn’t have guessed that he’d have spent so much time holed up in his room.
Well, it wasn’t like that was the only thing he had been doing, but just about every day he had someone swinging by, ready to make use of his music skills and all the gear he had in stock, which made it a little difficult to get out of the house.
Not that he minded, really (though his parents felt otherwise). He liked the sense of community their shared love of music brought, and his room being their meeting place meant that Pharrell was often introducing him to amazing, talented people who he knew he wouldn’t have met otherwise.
But as much as he liked all of them, those friendships were nothing compared to his closeness with Pharrell. Though the group of people showing up at his house tended to vary, Pharrell seemed to be the one constant. In fact, a lot of the time, he just showed up on his own. And so, after spending so much time together, just the two of them, a sort of unspoken bond had formed between them. When Pharrell would start chopping up and remixing old beats, Chad would wordlessly jump in and add his own flourishes, and they’d have a song in an hour. And whenever one of them was feeling down, the other would instantly be able to tell something was wrong, and would know exactly how to cheer them up.
He couldn’t quite explain it, but they seemed to understand each other in a way that others couldn’t. They had become brothers - and maybe something more than that.
And that was exactly what had Chad so freaked out. Because if he felt that way about Pharrell, what did that make him? He’d never felt that way about anyone before, yet alone another boy. It wasn’t something he had given much thought to before, especially since he thought he had felt attraction to girls. But then were any of those feelings real? What made this different? What made it the same?
Their bond as friends was already something precious. So why did Chad yearn for more, why did he desperately hope Pharrell felt the same way he did?
What if there was a way to find out?
Without thinking, he reached towards Pharrell to grab his hand-
Before quickly retracting it back.
What was he thinking? Was he seriously about to make things awkward like that just because of his own desires? What if Pharrell didn’t feel the same? Then what would’ve happened?
Not to mention, what about Shae? Even if he didn’t act weird about him liking another boy, it’d still change the way Shae saw him. He might get jealous of what he and Pharrell had, or feel left out. And Chad cared too much about Pharrell and Shae to let his own feelings ruin whatever they had.
So, as much as it ate at him, he kept his feelings to himself, for no one else to know.
What the fuck was that?
Chad had just reached out as if to touch him, his hand an inch from Pharrell’s own, before suddenly pulling away. What was that about? What was he afraid of?
Did he think Pharrell didn’t feel the same things that compelled him to do that? And did Chad think it was just because he was a guy?
For his part, Pharrell wasn’t one to focus on small details like that. To prove it, he gently brushed his hand against Chad’s, smiling softly at him. Though startled at first, Chad smiled back, eyes twinkling.
And that’s when Shae said that he’d better get going. Because at that moment, he realized what had changed, why things seemed so different.
Though surprised, Pharrell and Chad didn’t ask him to stay. And he didn’t blame them - while he know they weren’t trying to exclude them, he figured it would be best to give them their space.
After all, a bike only has two wheels.