'tis the season (to love you)

CHAPTER NINE

For the first time in a good long while, Brett wakes up long before Eddy does.

He lies awake in bed for a bleary-eyed moment, watching the faint winter sunshine stream through the curtains, hazy strips of light across his vision. He is pointedly, painfully aware of the quiet snores emanating from the other side of the bed, the warmth he imagines radiating through the Pillow Wall like unstoppable lances of fire through the cloth, ashes hot enough to kindle his paper-skin.

As more of the world comes into focus, he realizes: there's a Problem. An inevitable sort of Morning Problem.

It isn't anything to be ashamed about, not really, and more so with Eddy; they've been friends far too long to be shy about something as trivial and commonplace as morning wood. Still, the memory of that blinding, blistering kiss is—something. It's a stimulating memory, whether he means it to be or not, and he certainly does not fucking mean it to be at all.

God. He shouldn't even be thinking about it still, until now, stupid brain.

(A confession he'll take to the depths of his grave: he's never been kissed like that before. Fuck, it makes him sound like an absolute wilting virgin in spite of all the people he's locked lips with, but it's true.)

And as much as he'd like to laze around some more in this half-waking, he needs to take care of his business before Eddy blinks his eyes open and sees. Sees—whatever it is he might see, and then come to the wrong conclusion.

(He's not quite sure what the conclusion is anymore.)

Hoisting himself up, Brett crawls across the mattress all ninja-like, wriggling off the bed and onto the soft rug muffling his footfalls. Skittering across the bedroom floor and into the bathroom like a startled rat isn't exactly his finest moment, but the maneuver puts several more feet and a locked door between himself and his friend, so really, it's his finest effort, at the very least.

He swans into the shower, throws his clothes in the laundry basket, grits his teeth as cold water thunders down on his skin from the shower head, and then.

Brett takes himself in hand and takes care of business, as the saying goes, with the kind of single-minded focus he normally reserves for playing Paganini pieces or high-stakes games of Operation back at the con.

And if his mind strays to someone close, someone dear, someone still wrapped up in soft sheets just on the other side of the wall—

Well. His mind's just confused by the early morning haze, is all.

• • •

Despite the strange sort of relief that settles over his shoulders after, guilt remains a persistent imp poking tiny holes in the walls of his stomach. Considering the fact that he's sitting at the breakfast counter watching the unintended star of his morning-shower fantasy trying to flip a pancake, it's more than reasonable for Brett to feel a teensy bit unsettled. Uneasy. And for all his bravado about supposedly being unshakeable with this whole thing, he's sweating bullets even in the chill of winter.

So, there's only one thing to do: pretend everything's fine and dandy like his life depends on it.

What he's done: it's not exactly an isolated occurrence, when he thinks about it. People probably think about their best friends by accident all the time when they get off, or something, so. Yes. Maybe he should just stop thinking about it now, or the man in question will—