'tis the season (to love you)

CHAPTER TWELVE

It feels as if his world is on the precipice of a knife, or perhaps a craggy clifftop hanging over a tumultuous sea of violas. Air is crystallized in his lungs, frozen and clammy against the walls of his chest.

Funny, how everything so carefully constructed can come crashing down around his ears with a single query, inadvertently aimed straight at the very heart of him. Really fucking funny, that.

You and Brett aren't really together, right?

He feels himself grow cold. Charles is watching him absorb the question with a strange smile on his face. With every millisecond that goes by without anything said in defense of his supposed relationship with his best friend, Eddy's probably slowly digging his own grave.

In the end, he settles for deflection, because he may be fucked at this point in time, but there is no way he's letting things go up in flames without doing anything to salvage the situation. There's still their prize to consider, waiting for them at the end of this. He's not about to let Brett down just yet by falling short just before the finish line.

"You're being very presumptuous," Eddy says. Very casually.

"Am I really?" The red-haired man tilts his head, narrows his eyes at him. "You don't really act like you're lovers, at least when Nana's not around." He pauses. "Or, well. You do, but he doesn't," Charles continues, and shit, that is a really low blow. Eddy looks away, fixes his gaze on the window pane, the ice crawling up the sill. "Maybe he doesn't want to feel it."

And, well. What do you say to your worst fears realized, spelled out word for word in front of you? What do you say when the faint flicker of hope you've been unknowingly keeping alive at the candlewick of your heart begins to fade away?

He can pretend. He's been doing it so well so far; he can do this much. Eddy frowns at the other man thunderously. "That's not funny."

Charles pouts. "No?"

"No."

"So what's the deal, then? Are you guys playing at something?"

Eddy takes a deep breath. Releases it. "We're not playing at anything. We don't act like lovers because that's just how we are." (It's just how we'll always be, because we're never crossing that line. Don't remind me, please, god, I—) "I don't care what he may or may not be showing the world about loving me, because I know he's mine. He's mine, and that's—that's just," and here, his voice fails him.

He's mine.

He clamps his mouth shut, but the damage had already been done. There's understanding dawning in those eyes now, and Eddy knows the jig is up. "You're in love with him, then."

He's never once confessed this to someone he barely knows, but here, miles away from everything he knows and stuck defending a supposed love for him that doesn't exist in the heart he wants it to, Eddy finds himself courageous. "Yeah," he says, resolute. Like he's been waiting a decade to say it out loud. Maybe he has. "I am."

Silence, but for the wind rustling outside.

"I see." Charles clears his throat, awkwardly shifts his weight from one foot to another. "He doesn't deserve you. And nope," he snaps a hand to stop the instinctual defense, and Eddy closes his mouth back up, "don't even try to convince me otherwise. Your opinion isn't objective, lover boy."

"Well, I mean," Eddy trails off, smiles unrepentantly because hey. "That is the man I love you're speaking of."

Charles shrugs. "Still. But⁠—he's a very lucky man for someone like you to love him without much of anything you want in return." He doesn't know what to say in response to that, and so he opts to nod wordlessly. "I know when I'm beaten, but if you ever find it in yourself one day to look for someone new and probably better? Just let me know."