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He’s your boyfriend, but he’s not.
You’re sitting together in his basement bedroom, and his legs are resting over yours as he lays longways along his shitty futon couch. His dark eyes study you as you hold the stupidly big glass bong in your hands, trying so hard not to fumble it. You really don’t want to look stupid in front of him.
“Scared?” he asks, and when you glance over to him he’s got the faintest hint of a smirk on his lips.
You laugh, smooth enough to cover your nerves. “Yeah, scared your nasty garlic breath is gonna be all over it.” It’s the best retort you can come up with on the fly, but it seems to satisfy him, earning a chuckle.
He leans forward. You watch as he takes the lighter from your hand and holds it up to the bowl. “I’m not letting you pussy out on this one,” he tells you, and he gestures to the bong with his chin. “Just put your mouth over the hole and breathe in.”
“Okay, jeez, I’m not stupid.” With a deep breath, you obey, pressing your lips just inside of the glass tube. The pungent taste of smoke immediately hits your mouth when you breathe in, and you pull back, already spluttering despite not even breathing it in well.
He just laughs, helping you waft away the cloud of smoke pouring from the bong and from your mouth. It makes your cheeks burn red, but you can hardly focus on your embarrassment when it feels like you’re choking on your own throat.
“Sammy,” he coos patronizingly as he shakes his head. His hand lands on your back a couple of hard times, as if trying to force the smoke from your lungs, and you’re really not sure if that helped or not. “Come on, dude, you barely even got any.”
“I don’t━” You cough the words up, eyes watering involuntarily. “Don’t smoke all day like ━ like you, you ass…” It’s hard to talk shit back to him when you can’t even breathe right.
He just flashes you a smile ━ one of those all-too-rare, genuine, crooked, toothy grins that’s just for you ━ and slides his legs off of yours. You almost whine at the loss of warmth and weight, until you realize he’s about to settle back down and straddle your lap.
“Hold still,” he mutters, and he sits perched right on your thighs, and you can’t even think straight. (Ha.) Can’t even focus on what he’s doing as he settles his light weight on your lap, mind running a million miles a second. The only thing you can really think of is how soft he is, and you realize that your hands have unconsciously found purchase on his hips ━ and that just makes you all the more flustered.
So when he takes a rip of the bong, it throws you off just a little. And through the billowy cloud of smoke, Sebastian leans forward, cups your cheeks, and presses his mouth to yours.
It’s a kiss, but it’s not. Both of your mouths are open, his lips are chapped and dry, and instinctively you breathe in the horrendous cloud of smoke that passes through his lips. You can feel the burn of it going down into your lungs, and his lips are still on yours, and you can’t help but pull back and splutter again, coughing from somewhere deep you didn’t even know existed.
“Oh, you definitely got it that time,” he says. He’s still so close to you, half-lidded eyes focused on your mouth, and you hate him for just a second. Hate how cute he is, how he looks so sharp and angry all the time but he’s actually so soft, how his eyes are so dark that you can see yourself in the reflection if you look deep enough.
You let out a couple more deep coughs, and to avoid his gaze you lay your head back against the futon, closing your eyes as you let the high settle over your brain.
You try so hard to relax and focus on allowing yourself to get high that you barely even register that he hasn’t gotten off of your lap yet. And while you’ve brought one arm up to cough into your elbow, one hand is still loosely gripping his hip, one finger looped through the belt loop of his pants.
It should be awkward. And maybe it kind of is, to you at least. But he’s the picture of nonchalance. God, when did he get so cool?
Your mind vaguely flashes back to your youth, images of the two of you in middle school when you first met. The short, twiggy ginger kid wearing glasses and a corny band tee became your fast friend, and now here he is, all these years later, perched on your lap like he belongs there, like he owns it. Maybe he kind of does. It's not the first time he’s been there, won’t be the last.
Because he’s your boyfriend, but he’s not.
The silence stretches between you, but it’s the comfortable kind. The kind you’ve learned to appreciate over years of friendship, of being the one person he doesn’t mind just existing with. You can hear the faint hum of his computer in the corner, the muffled sounds of his mom working upstairs, the soft rhythm of his breathing.
When you finally open your eyes, the world feels slower. Softer at the edges. And Sebastian is still there, still watching you with that unreadable expression that drives you absolutely insane.
“You good?” he asks, voice low.
“Yeah.” The word comes out a little dreamy, a little dumb. You blink up at him. “Yeah, I'm… this is nice.”
He snorts. “Eloquent.”
“Shut up.” But you’re smiling, and so is he ━ just barely now, just at the corners of his mouth ━ and your hand tightens on his hip without you really meaning it to.
He doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t make a joke or deflect. He just… stays. And that’s the thing about Sebastian that no one else really gets to see. Everyone thinks he’s so cold, so distant, all sharp edges and cigarette smoke. But here, in this dim basement room with you and only you, he’s just Seb. Your Seb. The kid who used to let you copy his math homework, who helped you learn your first chord on guitar, who kissed you behind the saloon last summer like it meant nothing and everything all at once.
You never talked about that kiss. You never talk about any of it.
“What?” he asks, and you realize you’ve been staring.
“Nothin’.” You swallow. “Just… thinking.”
“Don’t strain yourself.”
“Ha ha.” You roll your eyes, but your heart is doing something stupid in your chest. “I was going to say something nice, but now I’m not gonna.”
He tilts his head, dark hair falling across his eyes. “Now you have to tell me.”
“Nope.”
“Sammy.”
“Nope, nope, nope.” You pop the p each time, and he huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh.
“You’re fuckin’ annoying,” he mutters, but he’s leaning closer, and your brain short-circuits a little.
“And you love me,” you say, and it was supposed to be a tease but it comes out way more soft than you meant for it to. More… wanting.
Something flickers in his expression, there and gone. His thumb brushes against your jaw, a ghost of a touch, and you forget how to breathe for a second.
“Maybe,” he says. Just that. Just maybe.
And then he’s climbing off your lap, settling back into his corner of the futon like nothing happened, reaching for his handheld like he didn’t just turn your entire world sideways with a single word.
You stare at the ceiling. Your heart is pounding. The high is settling into your bones, making everything feel warm and distant and all too close all at once.
Maybe.
You replay it in your head, over and over, trying to dissect it. Trying to figure out what it means, what he means, what any of this means. Because that’s the problem, isn’t it? With Sebastian, nothing is ever just clear. He speaks in half-sentences and almost-touches, in stolen glances and plausible deniability. And you ━ stupid, hopeful, head-over-heels you ━ keep reading into every single thing.
“Stop thinking so loud,” he says without looking up from his game. “I can hear the cogs grinding from here.”
“Sorry my brain is inconveniencing you.”
“It is. Constantly.” But there’s no bite to it. There never really is, not with you.
You let the silence settle again, let yourself sink into the worn cushions of his futon and the hazy warmth of the high. Your eyes drift to him, the sharp line of his profile, the way his fingers move across the buttons, the slight furrow of his brow, the way his thigh still presses against yours.
He’s your boyfriend, but he’s not.
The thought circles back around, that same bruise you keep pressing on. You don’t know what you are. Friends, duh. Best friends, obviously. Something more? Something that doesn’t have a name yet, might not ever, that lives in the space between late-night whispers and lingering touches?
You want to ask. You always want to ask. But the words get stuck somewhere between your chest and your throat, tangled up in fear and hope and the terrifying possibility that asking might ruin everything.
So instead, you reach over and poke his stomach. “Wanna play something?”
He glances at you, then at the console gathering dust beneath his TV. A small smile spreads across his face, not the sharp, sarcastic one he shows everyone else, but the real one again. The one that’s just for you. Yours.
And maybe that’s enough, for now. Maybe this is enough: the two of you, tucked away in his basement, existing in the spaces between what you are and what you could be.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.