“Mm. You smell good,” Bryce mumbled.
Sage closed his eyes for a second. “I swear to God, Bryce.”
“Soap and… Sage.” Bryce snorted at his own joke, then went boneless again, sliding right back onto the cushion. Sage caught him before he cracked his skull on the coffee table and ended up half sprawled on top of him, braced on one palm, the other knotted in the front of Bryce’s shirt.
They were close enough that Bryce’s lashes touched Sage’s cheek. Close enough to see the constellation of a few faint freckles over Bryce’s nose. Close enough to know that if Sage lowered his head an inch, they’d be kissing again.
He didn’t. Instead, he eased back. “You’re sleeping here. Fine. Your funeral.”
He tried to arrange Bryce into something comfortable. A pillow, blanket, arm not about to fall off the edge. Bryce sighed, settled, and the room quieted again. The only sound was Bryce’s occasional snore.
Sage sat on the rug with his back against the couch and let himself relax. His heart finally slowed. His hands had a tiny shake he hadn’t noticed. He pressed his fingers flat on the carpet to stop it and took several deep breaths.
“Okay,” he told the empty room. “Weird night. Not a big deal. Nothing to talk about.”
He lasted all of twenty seconds before his brain replayed the kiss again. He grimaced, then laughed under his breath because it was ridiculous to be a twenty-two-year-old man, an engineering major, someone who could debug code at three in the morning and still be thrown by a two-second kiss from his best friend.
Tipping his head back, Sage rested it against the cushion near Bryce’s shoulder. The couch springs creaked as Bryce moved, his arm sliding until his wrist draped over Sage’s collarbone. Not quite a hug. More like gravity doing its thing, but Sage didn’t move.
He watched the light at the window shift across the floor, the blinds cutting it into small bars. Dust motes hung in the beams from the lamp. He’d always liked quiet like this. The kind you had to be close to someone to share. He’d just never noticed how easy it was with Bryce, how the silence filled up with something that wasn’t empty. How comfortable he was with Bryce.
“Guys like us don’t do long term,” Bryce had said last month, somewhere between one breakup and the next. They’d laughed about it then, blamed class schedules and bad timing and their combined habit of choosing the wrong person because it was convenient or distracting or some other reason. It hadn’t felt like a problem talking about it, but now the words floated up and made his stomach clench.
Sage touched his lips again, annoyed with himself when that little spark fired under his skin. Maybe it had been the surprise. Maybe he’d just liked being wanted after a week of feeling like an afterthought to group projects and lab deadlines. Maybe his brain was assigning meaning where there wasn’t any. Maybe it was nothing more than a drunken kiss, and he should forget about it.
Sage should ask Bryce when he wakes up, he told himself. Make a joke out of it. Call him an idiot again. Watch him pretendnot to be embarrassed. They’d laugh and move on. It had worked for every other stupid thing they’d done, so it would work for this too.
Sucking in a deep breath, Sage’s fingers curled in the carpet. He could not mention it at all and wait to see if Bryce brought the kiss up first. That felt like the safest way to handle it. Cowardly, but safer.
Bryce’s arm slid a fraction more, heavy and warm, and settled around Sage’s shoulder. Instinct had Sage’s hand come up to hold his wrist, so it didn’t fall and wake him. The bracelet Bryce always wore—a thin black cord—was cool against Sage’s palm, and Sage rubbed his thumb against it before realizing what he was doing and stopping the motion.
He stared at their hands for a long moment. His thumb moved once along Bryce’s knuckles. He didn’t mean to do it. It just…happened. The small, steady bones under his touch made something in his chest ease, so he did it again.
“Don’t read into it,” he whispered to himself.
A car passed outside. Somewhere down the hall, a door shut. The radiator coughed. Bryce’s breathing evened out. The apartment felt small and warm, and Sage sat in silence, his hand on Bryce’s.
Sage’s eyes began to sting from the lamp. He reached up with his free hand and clicked it off. The room dropped into soft darkness with light filtering in from outside. It made the sound of Bryce’s breathing louder. Sage shifted, careful not to jostle him, and slid down a little so his shoulder could rest more comfortably under Bryce’s forearm.
His thoughts bounced from circuits and deadlines, and the way Bryce’s eyes looked lighter when he laughed. The heat low in his belly that had flared at a stupid kiss. Confusion that didn’t feel like panic, just a problem he needed more data to solve.
“Science,” he muttered, mouth quirking in the dark. “Run the numbers. I know science. I understand science.”
Bryce breathed out, a soft huff against the back of Sage’s neck like an answer. It should’ve been weird, but it wasn’t. Not then. Sage let his eyes close. Just for a minute.
When he woke later, his cheek hurt from the seam of the rug, and his back protested. As he woke up fully, he realized two things at once. His hand was still on Bryce’s wrist, and his lips still felt like they had a mark on them from Bryce’s lips that no one else could see.
He didn’t touch his mouth this time, but he didn’t need to. The memory was clear enough, the sensation embedded in his memory.
“Idiot,” he murmured, not sure which of them he meant. Probably more himself because the sensation of Bryce’s lips on his own kept replaying in his mind.
He shifted, trying to stand, and misjudged his position. His knee bumped the coffee table, and Bryce stirred, mumbling something that sounded like Sage’s name. His arm tightened for a second before letting go.
Sage froze again, breath caught halfway. It set his heart off like he’d sprinted the last flight of stairs. “Sleep,” he whispered, because that was easier than anything else.
Pulling the blanket up once more, he smoothed it over Bryce’s chest. He slid back down onto the rug, hooked one foot under the couch to keep from rolling, and let his head rest against the cushion near Bryce’s shoulder.
The last thing he felt before sleep caught him was the steady rise and fall of Bryce’s chest under his palm. It was enough to quiet the part of his brain that wanted to label things. Sage fell asleep there, next to Bryce, his lips still tingling.
