stay with me

xolani and two have been each other's person since they were kids running around third ward and trading inside jokes nobody else got. over a decade of history between them: sleepovers, middle of the night phone calls, the kind of comfort within each other that made everything else feel like silly noise. they know each other in that deep, embarrassing way: each other's nervous habits, the laughs that don't come out right, the silences that don't need filling.

it was never supposed to be more than that.

but somewhere between growing up and growing into themselves, the lines started blurring. xo starts noticing things she has no business noticing; the way he looks at her when she's not paying attention, the way his hand always finds her without thinking, but she buries it. they've got something too good to gamble with, and she knows it. what she doesn't know is that two's been fighting the same feelings too. longer than she has, way quieter than she'd ever expect from him. he's been loving her in the margins for years. carefully, willfully, without ever letting it show.

until one night it just... slips out.

i've loved you in quiet ways for so long... i'on know how to be anything else when you around, xo.

and now it's out there. sitting between them, too big to ignore and too damn real to take back. they've survived everything together: loss, distance, the messy in between years of figuring out who they were as they grew up. but this? this is the one thing that could actually change everything.

the question isn't whether they love each other-they're both well aware of the answer to that. whether they're brave enough to stop pretending they don't, though, is up to nobody but them.