Chapter Text
Aubrey was sitting in the old armchair next to Basil’s bed – the same place she always sat whenever she was hanging out in Basil’s room – reading a book. Basil, meanwhile, was lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling. Every so often he would flick his eyes over towards Aubrey before returning to the ceiling. His hands flexed nervously.
Eventually, Aubrey sighed irritably and put her book down. “Okay, enough. Basil, what is your problem?”
“Th-there’s no problem.”
Aubrey turned to look at him, her teal eyes and arched eyebrows conveying her skepticism quite well. Aubrey was very good at looking skeptical and/or unconvinced. Because she was about to go to work, she was already in her Gino’s uniform, which made it look like Basil was getting bedside pizza service. “Do you want me to guess? I can guess. Yes, we have stuff to cook dinner tonight. No, the trash collector hasn’t come yet. Yes, the trash is out. No, the stove has not been left on. Yes, you turning eighteen soon and Polly going away is scary. No, I still haven’t figured out how taxes work.”
Basil groaned. “That’s not it.”
“Is it about that party Kel wants us to go to with his basketball friends? Because I’m not really looking forward to it either, but every house has a roof, so we can just sit up there. No biggie.”
“Not that either.”
Aubrey shrugged. “I’m out of ideas, then. Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Basil sighed. “I… I think I’m in love with Sunny.”
“Yeah.”
His mouth falling open, Basil turned to Aubrey. “What do you mean, ‘yeah’?! This… this is not a ‘yeah’ thing!”
Aubrey looked unimpressed. “Literally one week ago you told me you thought Sunny was cute and that you might have a crush on him. And I already knew this, because anyone with two eyes who watches you two interact knows it. Or knows how often you two call each other. I thought there was gonna be something more than just ‘I like Sunny’. Obviously you like Sunny.”
“That’s not… true at all! Kel doesn’t know I like Sunny!”
“Kel is not the benchmark you want to be using. Maybe I’ll rephrase. Anyone who is observant can see that you like Sunny. Kim asked me a couple of weeks ago if you guys were dating yet.”
Basil paled. “W-what?”
“Oh my God, Basil. Just chill out and accept it. This is not groundbreaking news to anyone except Kel and probably also Hero, but Hero isn’t here very often so he doesn’t count.”
Basil wrung his hands. “Well… you still understand why I’m worried, don’t you?”
Aubrey hummed. Though it was now coming up on five years since Mari’s death, and the shadow of graduating high school was now on the horizon, time was never going to close over that particular wound. Even though Basil’s and Sunny’s confession at the hospital was more than a year ago, nobody, least of all Basil, had forgotten it. He hadn’t forgotten about his months in the psych ward, or hearing that Sunny had left town and thinking they’d never see each other again, or his long struggle to bring himself back to a point of some stability. Even now, whenever Basil turned his head a bit too hard he felt that familiar pull in his stomach: a constant reminder of what had once been.
Two partners in crime. That was one problem. Did they deserve to be partners in anything else? Would anyone else accept them as partners in anything else? And then there was the second, and in some ways the more prominent problem. Sunny had a prosthetic eye. That prosthetic eye was there because Basil had cut it out of him in a fit of insanity. Could that just be ignored? Probably not.
“Basil, focus on my voice,” Aubrey said flatly. “You’re freaking out again.”
Belatedly, Basil noticed that his breathing had indeed sped up and his heart was pounding out of his chest. He used Aubrey’s voice to drag him back into the real world and forced his breathing to slow, returning to a neutral (though still agitated) state.
“It feels wrong to feel this way about Sunny,” he admitted. “I… I worry about Hero especially. What he would think.”
“I think Hero has learned his lesson by now,” said Aubrey, crossing her legs. “And if not, there’s always Jamie to knock some sense into him.”
Basil winced. “I… really don’t think Jamie likes me that much, to be honest.”
“He’s just worried about Sunny. And you know how these things go. If Jamie needs to learn his lesson, Sunny will knock some sense into him. It’s like a chain of people hitting each other.”
Basil let out a nervous giggle. “W-well… he’s not… ah, unreasonable to be worried about Sunny. Since… you know… I did hurt him. Quite badly.”
Aubrey put her book down on Basil’s bedside table. “That’s true. You did. And are you worried you’ll do it again?”
“Well… yes. I don’t… obviously I don’t want to hurt him at all or anything like that. But I didn’t the first time either. It didn’t stop me from doing it. Even with how much time has passed and how much I’ve changed, I still… I just don’t know. What if it’s still there inside me? That… part of me that wants so much to stop people leaving me that it will hurt others if I let it?”
His head fell to face away from Aubrey towards the flower sitting in a pot beneath the window. In the last months his grandma had lived in this room before she died, there had been a white egret orchid sitting there: a plea for her to hear Basil’s thoughts and fears in her dreams when she was no longer present enough to talk to him herself. Since Basil’s return from hospital, though, a white chrysanthemum had taken its place. In Japanese hanakotoba, it symbolized truth. It was Basil’s promise to his grandma, to Mari, and to everyone he’d hurt through his lies. More embarrassingly, though, the Japanese connection of the flower reminded him of Sunny.
“Well, we can bring out Therapist Aubrey for a spin if you want,” said Aubrey. “But I do have to go to work soon.”
Basil smiled. Therapist Aubrey was an interesting character. Her approach could be somewhat unorthodox compared to your average therapist. And he wasn’t quite sure where Therapist Aubrey got her qualifications from. His actual therapist had it right there on the wall in her office where he could see it. Still, it was good for Basil to keep her in the loop on things. Now that it was the beginning of senior year, it was only half a year – February 18, Basil’s birthday, was the scary day – until Polly left them to run this house by themselves. The two of them had to trust each other and know what was going on. If there was anything Basil had learned from the series of catastrophic mistakes he’d made starting from the day of the recital, it was that.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Well, I guess your problem with Sunny is that you’re kind of obsessive,” said Aubrey, resting her chin on her hands. Blunt but fair. Again, the tactics were unconventional. But in a weird way, they worked. Sometimes.
Basil sighed. “Yes.”
“So I guess that’s the first question. Is it obsession or is it love? Or like, or whatever. Is ‘like’ a noun? It should be. You should be able to be in like with someone.”
Therapist Aubrey was starting to get distracted. Luckily Basil was good at keeping them on task. “How do I know the difference?”
“Well… when you think of your ideal relationship with Sunny, what’s it like?”
Basil only had to think for about half a second before his face bloomed red. “Ooh, that’s… that’s embarrassing. Oh, dear.”
“Spit it out,” Aubrey ordered.
Basil decided to close his eyes before continuing. He didn’t want to see Aubrey’s reaction to any of this. “S-so I have… ah, some fantasies. With him. Ah, there’s one where I… I take him to a nice garden and we’re… ah, we’re holding hands, and then we have a lovely lunch surrounded by all the flowers. And then…” – he groaned a little and put his arm over his eyes before going on – “...and then I tell him about all the flowers around us, and then at the end I come to the forget-me-not, which o-obviously means… ah, true love in hanakotoba. I pluck the flower and I hand it to him… ah, and I say… that this is for him, because… our love… is eternal and true.” God, he’d never felt so embarrassed in his life. He kept his eyes resolutely shut.
“Hm,” said Aubrey. “Wholesome. Suspiciously wholesome, even.”
“I have dreams about this,” Basil confessed. “And in one of those dreams I was wearing a dress, but I d-don’t think that’s relevant.”
“Okay. Any other fantasies?”
Basil was very grateful his actual therapist had never asked him this, because he’d feel compelled to respond in maximum detail and would probably lie awake at night remembering it for the rest of his life. “Just… things like that, really. Going on walks, or… or cooking him dinner… very, ah, domestic stuff.”
Aubrey was silent for a while. Basil hazarded opening his eyes and found her with her lips pursed and her expression pensive. Noticing him looking at her nervously, Aubrey spoke. “I mean, if that’s all there is to it, then I don’t really see any problem. As long as you don’t dream of… like, controlling him or anything like that. Keeping him from seeing his friends or family or whatever.”
“N-no, of course not!” said Basil, horrified. “I-I would… I would never do something like that!”
“Okay, okay. I believe you, dude. So, if you pass that test, we have the next question. What would you do if you dated Sunny and then he dumped you?”
That was not a nice thought. Basil hadn’t considered that before. He swallowed. “Ah… well… I’d probably cry. A lot. And I’d probably stay in bed for a while. You’d probably… think I was being really annoying.”
Aubrey nodded. “Anything else?”
“Well… I’d probably spend a lot of time wondering where I went wrong, haha. And maybe I would binge eat tofu. While crying. And wondering where I went wrong. D-do you think he would dump me if we dated?”
Aubrey snorted. “I’m Therapist Aubrey, not Fortune Teller Aubrey. I dunno. But you gotta be prepared for that possibility. All of that seems like a pretty normal response to being broken up with, I think. Maybe it’s not what I would do, but it seems normal.”
“What would you do if Kel broke up with you?” asked Basil.
A small smile crossed Aubrey’s face. “I’d probably cry a lot as well. But I’d head to the junkyard and make every single car there wish it had never been made. Maybe I’d pay special attention to Jamie’s car. Yknow that’s in the junkyard, by the way? Kim and I found it the other day. Looks like shit.”
“Really?” Basil asked, before remembering they needed to stay on topic. “Well that’s… cool. So… do you think I’m okay?”
Aubrey shrugged. “Therapist Aubrey gives you a pass. If there’s anything there, it’s hiding well. To be honest, I do think you should just go for it. All of us know now to watch out for any warning signs. This isn’t like the leadup to the recital or anything like that. We’ll be on the lookout. Not to scare you or anything, but yknow.”
“I get it,” Basil replied. “But then… how do I even do it? I can’t just… ask Sunny if he likes me back, can I?”
“I mean, you could.”
Basil blanched. “I-I’m not going to do that.”
Aubrey snickered. “I’m shocked. Well, I guess there’s two ways to go. You could get me or Kel to try sounding him out about it. Or you could try to worm your way in. Get him to confess to you. Although this is Sunny we’re talking about, so it might be hard.”
Basil let out a long sigh. “I just… I don’t want to risk things with him, though. We have a good thing going right now. We’re good friends again. We talk a lot. And… gosh, if he doesn’t like me back, I’ll probably send us back to the beginning.”
“If you wanna aim big, you have to take some risks,” said Aubrey. “At some point one of you is gonna have to tell the other. Do you think Sunny is more likely to do it than you? Be honest.”
“I-I don’t know! Maybe!”
“You’re actually hopeless.”
“I’ve never done this before! I’ve never… even had a crush on anyone before! I don’t know about a-any of this stuff! How did you tell Kel you liked him?”
“We were wrestling,” Aubrey replied. “I don’t think that’ll work on Sunny. But he likes music. You could get a guitar from somewhere and serenade him. That’d be funny.”
“Aubreyyyy!” Basil whined. “Be serious! I have no idea how to do this at all. Ugh, and I can’t confess to him over the phone either. I’ll have to wait until he’s physically here. But when is that next going to be? Now that we’ve all got these stupid exams…”
“I think he’ll come to Faraway for Christmas. Kel said that, and I think he got it from Hero, so I believe it.”
Basil groaned. “Christmas? That’s… so far away. How am I meant to wait until then?”
“Well, it’s either that or you grow a pair and do it earlier. Maybe you could drive to Nearby City and tell him yourself. If you’re gonna do that, though, I’m not going with you. I actually kinda like where my life is right now and I don’t wanna flame out on the interstate because someone rear-ends you at 150 miles an hour.”
Basil pouted. “Why are you being so unserious about this? I’m worried.”
“Basil, everyone worries about stuff like this. And if I got worried about everything you got worried about, I’d give myself a heart attack. This is just classic high school stuff. You have a crush and you don’t know how to tell them. Everyone goes through that.”
“Not everyone stabbed out their crush’s eye,” Basil said mournfully, before letting out a long sigh.
“Well, it doesn’t seem like Sunny holds that against you, so it’s probably okay. Anyway, I do have to go to work, so…”
Aubrey got up from the chair. But when she saw Basil’s nervous expression, she huffed and sat down on the edge of his bed. “Look, Basil, if I was worried about anything you’re telling me, I’d tell you that. If you wanna go and live your best life with Sunny, that’s fine by me. I trust you to know yourself now. And anyway, the fact that you’re even worrying about something like this just shows how far we’ve come. This is something that’s totally normal to freak out about. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re living a normal life, I’m happy. These things kinda have a way of resolving themselves.” She put a hand on Basil’s shoulder.
Basil wiped the sweat off his brow. “Th-thanks.”
“Don’t worry about it. How are you liking your hair, by the way?”
Basil reached up and brushed the ends of his hair self-consciously. Aubrey had dyed his ends green for him a few days ago, and he’d spent a lot of time looking in the mirror since then. “It’s… ah, it’s different. I don’t know if I’d… always want to have it like that, but…”
“Hey, it’s okay. Dyed hair isn’t for everyone. But at least you’ve tried it. Maybe you should ask Sunny if he likes it. Anyway, I’m gonna be late for work if I hang around any longer, so I’m gonna run. I’ll see you tonight, okay? Don’t burn anything.”
That got a smile out of Basil. As the days ticked down to when they’d be forced to live on their own, the phrase ‘don’t burn anything’ had become their little mantra. If they managed to last two weeks and the house was still standing, they’d count that a success. Still, though, any time Aubrey said it, a shot of fear did go through him. Being tossed into adulthood and independence just like that was terrifying. But, as Aubrey pointed out, they’d endured worse. They could figure out stovetops and garbage collection days and taxes.
Aubrey donned her Gino’s cap and headed out of Basil’s room, leaving Basil to his thoughts. Images of his best friend – his beautiful dark eye, his slender limbs, his adorably nerdy glasses (not that Basil’s own glasses were much less nerdy) – swam through his mind, and he sighed. He really was hopeless, wasn’t he? After all that worrying he still had no idea how he was going to approach Sunny.
Although… Aubrey’s idea actually wasn’t bad. His new hair was a good excuse to message Sunny. Sunny would want to see that. Basil got up from his bed and grabbed his phone. His selfies were awkward, but he was trying to get the hang of it. He aimed the phone at himself and gave it a big smile. Before taking the photo, though, he also grabbed his glasses and put them on. Sunny liked his glasses.
After taking the photo, Basil examined it. It was nowhere near the quality Basil could get on his Polaroid, but digitizing those was a pain. He emailed the picture to himself on the computer, then got on the computer and emailed it to Sunny – a bit roundabout, but he absolutely hated typing on phone keypads. His fingers weren’t dexterous enough for it.
Hi Sunny! Aubrey dyed my hair a few days ago. It’s green! What do you think?
No, no.
Hello, Sunny! What do you think of my hair? Aubrey dyed it a few days ago. :)
No, that didn’t feel right either.
Hi, Sunny! Check out my new hair! Aubrey did this for me. What do you think? :)
Ugh, no. A bit too informal.
Hello, Sunny. Aubrey dyed my hair a few days ago. This is what it looks like now. Do you like it?
No, that just sounded weird…
***
Jamie Carswell thought he was fantastic at video games. Jamie Carswell was, at best, mediocre at video games. The gap between him and Sunny was well nigh unbridgable. But Sunny was content to let Jamie believe that he was only one good performance away from beating him. It gave Sunny a nice ego boost.
“Damn it,” Jamie complained, putting down his controller as Sunny came away with yet another win. “If I’d just gotten that one combo on you, I would have won that.”
“Mhm,” Sunny replied. Unfortunately, it would take Jamie a lot more than one combo to beat Sunny. But there was no reason to ruin the fun.
Unfortunately for Sunny, this wasn’t the real reason he’d tempted Jamie here tonight with the carrot of an offer to play video games, which Jamie would pretty much drop anything to do with him. There was something more serious on his mind. But, in his usual way, he’d been stalling and finding excuses not to bring it up. Though his confidence had improved over the past few months, even thinking about starting this conversation was enough to make him feel small. A small part of him wondered if Jamie was start yelling at him if he brought it up, even though the rest of him knew that was totally unreasonable.
He had to talk soon. Jamie would have to head home after a few more rounds of this, and Sunny didn’t know how long it would take to muster up the courage to try again. As the next round started, Sunny – no longer capable of keeping ‘an eye’ on something, since that eye was the only eye he had – nervously switched his attention between Jamie and the screen. Jamie, of course, was lasered in on the screen: even with Sunny’s attention divided, he was still getting trounced. “Come on!” he complained. “If I’d just hit the button, like, a quarter of a second earlier, I’d be destroying you.” And if his grandmother had wheels, she would be a bike.
This round ended much more quickly than the last one, forcing Sunny to come to a decision. As Jamie flung himself back into the couch, groaning, Sunny attempted to choke out a sentence. “Can we… talk?”
Jamie turned to him, primed to deliver a sarcastic one-liner, but his demeanor changed completely when he saw Sunny’s nervous expression. “Yeah? What’s up?”
Sunny, trying to think of a way to broach the topic, drew his legs up to his chest. Jamie smirked. “Do I need to set up a mattress for myself?”
Sunny stuck his tongue out at him and returned to thinking. Jamie crossed one leg over the other and waited for Sunny to speak.
“How did you… know that… you… liked guys?”
Another one of Jamie’s infinite arsenal of grins appeared on his face. “Ah. I see. Well, the first guy I ever liked was a guy in my class in seventh grade. To be honest, looking back, I don’t really know why. He had really long billowing hair, which was probably the main reason. And he was really smart. He also looked cute in the school uniform, but most of the boys did. Anyway, I think I figured out I liked him when I started imagining myself sitting in his lap when I was bored in class. Twirling his hair and all that. Very romantic.” He laughed at his own story. “Ah, I was a lot more wholesome back then. I wonder what he’s doing now. Probably banking. He had the brains for it. Probably got a girlfriend, too.” He sighed.
Sunny tapped his socked feet on the couch. “And… you knew that that was… um, liking someone? And not just… really wanting to be friends with him?”
“Imagining something that intimate does tend to be a romantic attraction sort of deal rather than a platonic attraction. Although I do have this one friend from chem who is absolutely insistent that this kind of thing is totally normal for friend relationships between girls specifically. She claims it just represents the depth of emotional connection between two girls. Regardless of whether that’s true or not – which it totally isn’t, by the way, she’s just into her best friend – I wasn’t a teenage girl living out a semi-erotic fantasy with my best friend in a bildungsroman. So yeah, it was attraction.”
Sunny rested his chin on his knees and stared off out the window in thought.
“So,” said Jamie, grinning again, “you’ve found someone you like, huh? And that someone might be a fellow male?”
Going bright red, Sunny tucked his face behind his knees.
Jamie roared with laughter. “Ah, man. Look at you! You’re growing up. Finally paying attention to all the attractive people of the world. It’s not embarrassing to have a crush, yknow. You’re seventeen. It’s kind of par of the course, dare I say.”
“But… what if it’s… different?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like…” Sunny searched around for the words. “You wanted to… s-sit in his lap. And touch his hair. And normally… when there’s… um, love… in movies and stuff, it’s very… long walks in gardens. And boxes of chocolate. And coffee dates. And… um, stuff like that.”
“Like wholesome stuff?” Jamie asked.
“Y-yes. But what if it’s… not like that?”
“In what way?” There was a slight tinge of concern on Jamie’s face. It was making Sunny nervous.
“W-what if you… just kind of… um, really want him to… to…” God, this was embarrassing. It felt like his body was actively trying to stop him talking. “...um, have… s-sex with you? I do... I do like him in other ways as well! But... just...”
A few moments of silence followed that. Sunny hazarded a peek at Jamie, only to see that his look of mild concern had been replaced by yet another impish grin. “I see your issue,” Jamie said. “Not too worried about the romance part? Straight to the good stuff?”
Sunny groaned and hid his face again.
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Jamie said, trying to stifle giggles. “Look, to be frank, it’s not actually that surprising. You’ve been away from the world for a long time. And I’ve seen some of the stuff you drew while you were inside. It’s natural that you’re a little… uh, pent-up after all that time. I don’t think that kind of attraction is any cheaper or less real than the long walks and flowers kind. If your heart is telling you that you absolutely need to get out there and give this guy the best dick he’s ever seen in his life–”
“Be given,” Sunny corrected him, before slapping a hand over his own mouth in shock.
“Oh, sorry. That’s on me for making assumptions. Anyway, if your heart is telling you that you absolutely need to get out there and get this guy to give you the best dick you’ve ever seen in your life, then that’s what your heart is telling you. That’s fine. I’ve had both the long walks and flowers kind and the dick kind. I wouldn’t say either is better than the other, since every relationship I’ve had aside from this one has ended very quickly and acrimoniously.”
That piqued Sunny’s interest. “How many… um, boyfriends have you had?”
“As many as the leaves on the trees,” Jamie said with a flourish. “Hm, let’s see.” He started counting off on his fingers and mumbling to himself. Sunny was shocked once he went past ten. “Eh… about twelve or so. There are some unclear inclusions in there. But anyway, it’s not like it matters that much. All of them were short and tumultuous. Many of them were a fair bit older than me. I seriously would not recommend that, by the way. It has some serious drawbacks. With Hero… well, there has been some occasional tumult, but it just feels very different, you know? I don’t want to invite karma onto me or anything, but I feel like he could be the one.” He grinned. “Would you like to guess which type of love he started out as?”
Sunny winced. “Not really.” That got a cackle out of Jamie.
Frowning, Sunny chewed on that for a while. “What makes you feel like… he’s the one?”
“Oh, man. You’re head over heels, aren’t you?”
Sunny flushed. “Th-that’s not… I just want to know…”
“Look, don’t bet on your first being your last. All I’m saying. Ninety nine times out of a hundred you’ll be disappointed. You’re young and dumb and new to all this, and you’re gonna make so many mistakes it’ll make my tenth grade test scores look like Einstein doing addition. If you want to make a move, you have to be genuinely committed, obviously, but don’t elevate your expectations. And then there’s the question we boy lovers always have.”
Sunny sighed. That was not what he wanted to hear. At all. “Is he into guys?”
“Exactly! So what’s your gut saying?”
Well, it wasn’t that hard of an inference to draw. “Um… I think so,” said Sunny. “But… that doesn’t mean he likes… me…”
“Look, that’s a problem for later. If you’re lucky, he won’t know any other gay people and will take whatever he can get. But you sound confident about him being gay, so that’s good. What’s his name?”
That was the question Sunny was dreading. Ice flooded his veins, and he hid his face behind his knees again so that only his eyes were peeking out at Jamie.
Jamie snorted. “Wow. Look, I’ve lived in this city for a while now, but there’s no way I’m gonna know this… guy…” His face suddenly became serious. Sunny knew he’d figured it out. “Oh. I do know him, don’t I?”
Sunny nodded stiffly.
Jamie exhaled. “Basil. Well… that does complicate things.”
Sunny looked away. “Do… you think I shouldn’t?”
“Okay. I know I’ve said this before, but I do think I need to reiterate. Basil seems like a really sweet guy. That’s kind of the whole problem. I look at him and his flowers and his timidity and whatnot and I just don’t see the person who stabbed your eye out and helped you… uh, do that to your sister. I know he’s there, but I don’t see him. The thing I think when looking at him is ‘there’s no way this guy would ever hurt anyone’. But he did, and the fact I can’t see that in him at all scares me.”
Sunny flared up. That wasn’t the objection he had been thinking of. “He’s changed,” he said. “He’s become better. A lot. That’s not the problem. It’s… should I be allowed to? After everything I… I did to him.”
Jamie looked resigned to a battle. “Sunny, I don’t think you’re the issue here. It’s not his welfare I would be worrying about. It would be yours.”
“I trust him,” Sunny fired back.
“I don’t doubt it. But all it would take is one slip-up from Basil, and then maybe you’re blind.”
“What, so… I shouldn’t do it because… he might hurt me again?” Sunny demanded, clenching his fists.
Jamie sighed. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I’m saying that, before you go ahead with it, you need to be very, very sure that you know what’s going on in his head. And that needs to be true for the whole duration of your relationship too. Open communication is always important, but here it’s about a thousand times more so. And you need to accept that people are going to be worried and will be checking in on you. And also that you’ll never be able to tell your mom about it.”
Sunny had already considered that final point. Mom was still, to this day, resolutely anti-Basil. He was still careful only to call Basil when she wasn’t in the apartment. But… well, if there was one thing Sunny was good at, it was keeping secrets.
“There’s also this,” Jamie continued. “Remember what I said earlier about not betting on your first being your last? Still true here. The chances are that you aren’t going to be each other’s life partners. You need to think about what happens if it doesn’t work out between you. Obviously there’s the issue of how Basil would respond to that, but also how would that change things with your other friends?”
That was something Sunny hadn’t actually thought of. In that moment, breaking up with Basil seemed like an impossibility. Why would he ever do that? But he couldn’t deny that Jamie was right. It could happen. It might even be likely to happen. It might mean he would lose his best friend, this time forever.
“Look, I know I’m kind of being a downer right now,” said Jamie, “and I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. At this stage you should be experimenting with things, and that does involve taking some risks. But these aren’t really normal risks, and your relationship with Basil isn’t exactly normal either. You might think about all of this and still decide it’s something you want to try and go ahead with. All I’m saying is that you need to think about all of this stuff first.”
Sunny’s eye glazed over in thought. The desire was there. As just one example, a few days ago, Basil had sent him a picture of himself, the tips of his hair dyed green, apparently by Aubrey. He’d even had his glasses on and that little sincere smile. Sunny wanted him. The emotion was overpowering. Looking at that picture, he was shocked about how many dirty fantasies he could conjure up at the same time. Of course, the most he’d felt able to send back to Basil was ‘It looks really good’. But in reality it was so much more than that. And now, when Sunny found himself alone in his room at night, invariably he would find himself moaning Basil’s name.
But there were risks. To be honest, Sunny didn’t feel very worried that Basil would hurt him, but the thought of them breaking up did hit home. What would even happen after that? Was it worth indulging his dirty little fantasies and risk breaking up what they had now, when they’d spent so long trying to rebuild and reconnect?
“Are you still friends with any of your… exes?” Sunny asked.
“Uh, I stayed… well, acquaintances would probably be better a better word, with some of the guys from my high school that I dated. But I never dated someone as close to me as Basil is to you. Friendcest and all that.”
This was against Sunny’s entire ethos. Sunny didn’t take risks. He hid until the bad things disappeared. But here there were very strong push factors. He imagined Basil above him, out of breath and with his glasses knocked askew, his blond sidetails swaying back and forth and his slender hands on Sunny. That was a feeling Sunny was hungry for.
He would never forgive himself if he messed things up with Basil over this, or ended up hurting him. Basil had been through too much to deserve anything but the best from life. But he’d never forgive himself if he stood by and did nothing, either. ‘Friends’ wasn’t enough. ‘Best friends’ wasn’t enough.
But how?
“What will Hero think?” Sunny asked.
Jamie huffed. “Well, he’ll probably be concerned. But I’ll make sure he doesn’t get any ideas, if this is really the path you want to go down. I think – again, inviting some karma here – that he’s learned his lesson when it comes to interfering in the lives of other people.”
“He would… have the right to be concerned, though.”
“He would. As would Aubrey and Kel. And me as well. We’ll be watching and worrying and whatnot. But the proof is in the pudding. If it works out, you can thumb your nose at everyone.”
That did sound appealing.