Reality And Us

Chapter Twenty Five

It was late afternoon on a beautiful yet cold Thursday, and Nicklas was walking home with a smile decorating his face. Him and Zane had hung out that day, and it had been lovely to spend time together with the other.

He wasn't really happy about having to go home, he wanted to spend more time with his friend. Why wouldn't he want to? The boy was so nice and funny, it was too easy to forget reality when being around him. And Nick loved that smile.

He had wanted to ask Zane about his boyfriend, but he ended up not even trying to introduce this topic. He hadn't wanted to make the other unhappy.

Instead, Nick had, after finishing their work-out, just talked to his friend, and the two of them had laughed quite a bit together.

It was too easy to just let yourself be and laugh so loudly when being with Zane.

Once the older of the two had to go home, Nicklas had obviously been quite unhappy. And he had hugged his friend goodbye.

It might seem like something pretty normal to do, but usually embracing someone was a way of showing emotional support, at least to Nick it was. And honestly, he barely gave any emotional support, because he wasn't good at it, felt awkward and uncomfortable. Still, he had hugged his friend. It had been a nice hug, not too long and not too short, but the boy wished it would have lasted longer.

That hug really hadn't been planned, but he had looked at his friend and had just needed to be closer. It was weird, uncommon, but he had done it - after all, when being with Zane, he usually acted a lot more free and careless, not thinking too much about his own actions.

The second they had said goodbye Nick had kind of missed the other already - or maybe just the way he felt around his friend.

He was still smiling, because he couldn't stop thinking about the other's laugh. He would've cringed at himself if he hadn't been busy grinning at the thought of Zane.

Well, and thinking about his friend, he realized the boy would go home now. To his boyfriend. And suddenly Nick wasn't grinning anymore.

Honestly, it might've been the fact that he suspected Zane's boyfriend to be toxic, but really, after he had caught himself staring at the older boy a few times that day, caught himself thinking about the other too often these past few days, he really wasn't sure if care for a friend was the only reason he disliked Lee.

Sure, it was a huge and definitely the most important one, but chances were that he was actually jealous. A bit, at least.

He wasn't really used to that feeling, he wasn't used to being interested in someone. After all, he had spent most of his life pretending to be straight, and he had barely just stopped fooling himself, and now he already had these kinds of feelings for a guy.

A guy he happened to be friends with. Great.

He had started to realize it not too long ago, maybe just that day, maybe the day before, and he already was lost on what to do now with that new piece of information.

Not wanting to harm their friendship he decided it'd probably be the best if he'd just try and forget about the way he felt so happy and giddy, about how much closer he wanted to be to the other, about how it felt to embrace each other - he'd ignore it, for the sake of their friendship.

Besides, Zane had relationship problems, obviously, and even if he stopped being with Lee, he still would have to completely recover. Nicklas didn't really know in what ways his friend was hurt.

And in addition to that, he didn't even know if those to him still unknown emotions would actually stick around longer, or if they'd just at some point disappear. He didn't even know what exactly was going on inside of him.