In Your Eyes

He was asleep on the sofa when I arrived home, slack jawed and emitting quiet snores in his clearly peaceful slumber. The fairy lights pinned up around the mirror behind him flickered in an almost obnoxious manner, highlighting his presence within the darkness of the room. His bass was propped up precariously on the sofa next to him, and my chest jolted with a quiet laugh as I remembered a conversation we'd had a few weeks prior where I'd accidentally referred to it as a guitar without thinking. 

I returned my attention to the man in front of me. My housemate and best friend of two years. His arms were folded, his right foot resting sideways atop his left knee. How he could sleep in such an uncomfortable position was beyond my comprehension.

Regardless, he was beautiful. Tall, dark and handsome, with a hell of an emphasis on tall. A hell of an emphasis on handsome too, although I knew he'd never agree with me.

I swayed slightly to one side and corrected myself in an instant. I wasn't drunk, but I wasn't stone cold sober, either.

You were drunk enough to send him that text, my inner voice shouted at me. A wave of embarrassment washed over me, and I pinched the bridge of my nose with a sigh.

The brutal truth was, we had known one another for two years, but my feelings for him had been beyond platonic for over half that time. We were each other's best friends. Sometimes we finished one another's sentences. We occasionally starred in each other's YouTube videos and mocked the droves and droves of commenters who insisted "You two would make such a cute couple". As time went on, I laughed in public but cried in private, furious with myself for succumbing to the rom com cliché of falling for my best friend.

Eventually, it became harder to hide. My unrequited love made me overly emotional and therefore, overly sensitive. I spent less time with him, snapped at him over pointless things. Treating him as though he didn't matter didn't help to dull the pain, but I continued my wrath anyway, and before long being in each other's company just felt awkward and uncomfortable. The tension between us felt dark and heavy, like a thunderstorm about to break.

"You're being so weird these days. Why?" Was his out of the blue text message to me as I sat in a bar with my girlfriends.

I was sober enough to type out a coherent response, but also drunk enough to say fuck the consequences.

"Because I'm in love with you and it's killing me."

He made me wait almost half an hour for his response, and by that point my stomach was in knots and I felt like I couldn't breathe. "Come home and talk to me."

And so, there I was.

A quick glance at my phone confirmed the time: 3.15am. Too late to consider having any kind of meaningful conversation, but deep down I knew that was the reason he had crashed out on the couch. He had been waiting for me. He knew, like I knew, that this was not a conversation that could wait until the morning.

I suddenly felt nauseous, but I knew it wasn't because of the alcohol.

Part of me considered sneaking away, up the stairs, to sleep off my tipsy state and regroup in preparation for dealing with things in the morning, but as my gaze fixed on his sleeping form, I knew I couldn't do it. He deserved better than that. He'd deserved better than finding out the way he did, and now I had the opportunity to make it right.

I took a couple of steps forward and leaned close to him, running a hand idly through his dark locks. He stirred slightly with a quiet grumble, but his eyes refused to open. I moved my hand to rest atop his shoulder, shaking him gently. "Davie. Wake up."

His eyelids fluttered open, and I swiftly stepped to one side to avoid getting kicked as he stretched both his ridiculously long legs out in front of him. He stretched both arms up over his head with a few quietly muttered Italian words I couldn't understand, but I smirked, guessing what they probably meant. "What's the time?" His voice was thick with sleep, and his tone was grouchy. He reached to grab his phone from the side table before I could pull out my own.