Stay (Boy × Boy) ✔

CHAPTER 9

Do you remember the moment when you realised you were in love with someone?

Maybe your heart started beating faster or maybe it was that smile you just couldn't stop staring at. Maybe you were alone, and the realisation hit you in the late hours when you were just about to fall asleep. Maybe you were with that someone and there was this something, no matter how big or small, that made those words pop in your mind: I love this person.

William couldn't say when he had started falling in love with Aydan, but he could remember the exact moment when he realised that he didn't just love the person sitting next to him —he was in love with the person sitting next to him.

William remembered thinking: fuck, I'm falling for this guy. A guy. The guy: his best and only friend.

It had been another boiling summer, when all William wanted to do was stay in and enjoy the chill temperature in the mansion where the air conditioning was on. Aydan, on the other hand, had other plans for them.

He had basically lived the summer at William's, only going home once in while to sleep before knocking the mansion's door again. Aydan wanted it to be the summer when he would see all those things he hadn't yet to see and visit the places he hadn't yet to be at. He wanted to do that with William.

They had spent a day in an amusement park (Aydan had gotten sick after numerous rollercoaster rounds), swum in the ocean in the middle of the night (it had been raining), went to a concert (William hadn't known the band, but Aydan was a fan), watched more movies in the theatre than William had watched during his entire live, played basket ball (which was one of William's favourites),.. But the best moments were the ones when they didn't leave the mansion and just read comics and played console games.

Aydan was already 16 years old and William was 14, but they slept in the same bed. It was a very big bed, so there could have easily slept three more people in it, and it wasn't like they had to hug each other to fit in it.

Still, those rare occasions when William woke up finding Aydan nestled against him, would have been the first hint of his altered feelings: William's heart always beat a little faster and he tried not to move an inch, so that Aydan wouldn't wake up, and he could stay in his embrace eternally.

The second hint would have been the way William's eyes lingered on his friend more and more often. How much he enjoyed all the little details, that no one else would pay attention to. Details like the small faded scar on his temple or that when he smiled one corner of his mouth lifted a little higher than the other, giving him an almost unnoticeably askew smile.

William usually stole these glances when Aydan's attention was somewhere else, like when he was playing a game, or when William woke up and Aydan was still sound asleep.

The hints were there, some smaller and some so obvious it was a miracle it took William so long to realise what was happening.

Well, to be fair, he was still just a child and his only touch with gays was Brokeback Mountain he had secretly watched in the middle of the night when it came from tv. After the realisation hit William, he started watching all the BL series and read all the books he could find with "people like him". Some of those stories felt weird and too sappy for him, but in some he could really identify with, and it made him feel less alone.

The day the realisation hit William was just another Saturday in the middle of summer break, and Aydan's parents had invited William to their annual summer trip.

Once a year they packed their things in a car and spent a day driving somewhere and didn't come back until the late hours. Usually it was just the Carter family: Aydan, his dad Charles, mom Ashley and three years older brother Adam, but as William was Aydan's protege, he was almost like family.