Happy Endings (a Gandrew Story)

2

It takes Garrett a while to bring himself back down to earth.

For a while, he's kinda mad that no one told him Andrew wasn't flirting with him. That they bat for different teams, and all the pining he was doing was only going to lead him down the rabbit hole that ended in a big, unmovable brick wall.

Because he had been so, so damn sure there was something going on there; that there was some kind of shared interest, that he was being flirted with too, that the way they fit together like puzzle pieces meant that they'd fit together even better if it included fun stuff like dates and kissing and all the other things that come along with the mysterious world of dating.

But no! No, Andrew was straight the whole damn time, and Garrett was just going to have to get used to being the pining best friend. Again. Apparently, he has yet to kick his bad habit of developing interest in straight guys that surly wouldn't go for Garrett Watts if they did happen to have some kind of bi-awakening.

Sad. It's real, real sad.

But Garrett Watts is no "friendzone" complainer, and he refuses to become one. Because Andrew really is an amazing guy, a great conversationalist, a perfect companion, and if being friends with him comes with the price of loving him, too, then that was just something Garrett is going to have to live with. So they coast.

Garrett buys him coffee, stares at him from across rooms, places hands on his shoulders and laughs in his ear about nothing and just accepts the pin pricks in his chest as an inevitable side-effect of Andrew.

He really does expect it to get better, though. For that ache to at least become a dull throb, like a cut healing over, but it stays sharp and hot. Some days worse, like when he sees Andrew in the morning, hair tousled from bed sheets and eyes warm but sleepy, and sometimes it's better, when he's either high enough not to care or distracted enough with work to forget.

It makes for a long couple of years.